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PyAcphFlightsLogbook

Flight logbook for glider written in Python that automates detection of takeoff and landing events (airfield and schedule) by processing the APRS traffic from the Open Glider Network. As the program tracks events at aircraft level it can detect landing and take-off on different airfields. The detected take-off and landing times are approximate only. The accuracy is around 1 or 2 minutes.

This is a work in progress. Currently, in addition to take-off and landing events, the tool detects the launch method (aerotowing, self-launching or winch launching) and in the case of a towing, identifies the tow plane. It calculates also the flight duration.

Main features:

  • Detection of take-off and landing time
  • Flight duration calculation
  • Launch method (tow plane, winch or autonome) detection
  • Identification of the tow plane
  • Detection of the runway used for tak-eoff & landing

Future releases could have additional features :

  • Outlanding detection and location
  • REST APIs to get logbook by ICAO, by aircraft id, by date range,...
  • ...

Usage

Executing the logbook python program is straight forward. It supports 2 arguments that are optionals. For the prerequisites before launching the program see the installation section

# execute the tool with default config file ./acph-logbook.ini
python3 acph-logbook.py

# or with a specific config file
python3 acph-logbook.py -i path-to-my-config-file.ini

Example to get the help

# get the help
python3 acph-logbook.py -h

#this will return the following output
usage: acph-logbook.py [-h] [-i CONFIG_FILE]

ACPH Glider flight logbook daemon

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i CONFIG_FILE, --ini CONFIG_FILE path to the ini config file, default value is ./acph-logbook.ini

Online demo

The program doesn't provide any APIs or front-end right now, but you can have a look to the implementation we did at ACPH with a specific front-end develop for our website. There is also a REST API available to retrieve logbook for a specific date & airfield. To date processing of APRS aircraft beacons are limited to 200km around LFHA, so there is a chance that you don't see any data for your airport. 😕

ACPH Glider logbook

ACPH REST API endpoints reference

Resource Base route Preferred method Description
logbook/<date>/<icao> ./wp-json/acph/v1 GET Retrieve the logbook of the day date for the airfield identified by it's icao code. 
# Example: retrieve the logbook for LFHA on August 29th, 2020
curl https://aeroclub-issoire.fr/wp-json/acph/v1/logbook/2020-08-29/LFHA

Configuration

The program uses a configuration file to initialize settings related to database connection, logging behavior, APRS connection & filtering and other general settings.

The section [logbook] is used to initialize general parameters for the logbook

[logbook]
; OGN devices database source: could be local or remote
ognddb = local
; Airport codes database source: could be local or remote
acdb = local
; persistence could be MySQL or JSON
persistence = MySQL
; number of days we keep logbook entry in the database
purge = 30

The section [aprs] is used to initialize parameters related to APRS server connection and APRS messages filtering

[aprs]
user = <aprs user>
passcode = <aprs passcode>
# any valid APRS filter like r/45.5138/3.2661/200, see http://www.aprs-is.net/javAPRSFilter.aspx
filter = <aprs filter>

The section [mysql_connector_python] is used to initialize parameters for database connection

[mysql_connector_python]
database = <database-name>
user = <user>
password = <password>
host = <ip adress or dns name>

Sections for logging configuration are the standard ones of python logger package (see logging.config python documentation for more information). The default configuration logs messages up to INFO level in the log file ./logs/acph-aprs.log' and message up to WARNING level on a slack channel (using webhook Slack API).

...
[handlers]
keys=fileHandler,slackHandler

[handler_fileHandler]
class=FileHandler
level=INFO
formatter=acphFormatter
args=('./logs/acph-aprs.log',)

[handler_slackHandler]
class=slack_logger.SlackHandler
level=WARNING
formatter=acphSlackFormatter
args=('Put your webhook URL here',)
...

Installation

The program requires Python 3. It has been developed and test only with Python 3.8.5 and Python 3.7.3

# To know your python 3 version
python3 -V

Download & install python dependencies

The logbook python program requires the following python packages. These packages have to be accessible through PYTHONPATH.

  • geographiclib v1.50
  • geopy v2.1.0
  • mysql-connector-python v8.0.23
  • ogn-client v1.0.1
  • pid v3.0.4
  • slack-logger v0.3.1

The best option it's to install them using pip. As for example:

pip3 install geopy

Setup the MySql database

By default the program use a MySql database to store the results. Assuming you have already a MySql database running, run the script setup_db.py to initialize the required tables. This need to be done only once when the database structure evolved or to create tables. The script uses acph-logbook.ini configuration file to get database connection parameters

python3 ./setup_db.py

Working principles

  • process in realtime OGN APRS messages
  • for each aircraft detect events like take-off and landing and store them in a database
  • keep x days of retention in the database
  • rely on the following open data resources

Contributing

Pending: 😕 to do!