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I bought a "NooElec NESDR Mini 2 USB RTL-SDR & ADS-B Receiver Set" [0] from Amazon a few months ago. It worked without any issues with both Linux and OS X. I'
by jlgaddis 11y ago
I bought a "NooElec NESDR Mini 2 USB RTL-SDR & ADS-B Receiver Set" [0] from Amazon a few months ago. It worked without any issues with both Linux and OS X.
I've had a ham radio license for a little over 21 years so I've always been interested in radio but the whole SDR thing is new to me. I still really haven't done a whole lot with it but it's fun to play with.
The neatest thing I did was set it up on the balcony of our 23rd floor condo on Panama City Beach (facing the Gulf of Mexico) and used dump1090 [1] to plot aircraft locations (using ADS-B) on a map. I was able to "see" planes a few hundred miles away (thanks to the height and facing out over the water) but was also able to see them at pretty much ground level.
I have access to a bunch of buildings (mostly on top of big hills) across the southern portion of Indiana thanks to my job and have been thinking about building a bunch of "ADS-B receivers" (using Raspberry Pi's or similar) and putting them out in these buildings so that I can cover a wide area. (I really only probably need about three as long as I put them in the right locations, geographically speaking.)
Edit: I do need to find a good external/outside antenna designed for 1090 MHz, if anyone has any firsthand recommendations.
In addition, at one of these locations there's a communications tower used by a pager company to transmit pages so I've thought about building a POCSAG receiver with one of these devices as well.
Unrelated to SDR, but I'm also planning on putting together a bunch of stratum 0 NTP servers (using GPS) and deploying them at these same locations as well. They will primarily be for my own use at work (ISP) but I expect to make publicly available a few stratum 1 servers as well.
[0]: http://amzn.com/B00P2UOU72 http://amzn.com/B00P2UOU72
[1]: https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 https://github.com/antirez/dump1090
- sandworm101 11y agoTracking aircraft with a passive radio receiver? You just sold me on SDR.
- sokoloff 11y agoIt's ADS-B-[1], which has some limitations (don't imagine you're getting every target, etc), but it is damned cool nonetheless. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_%E2%80%93_broadcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan...
- aduitsis 11y agoAnother happy NooElec customer here, wholeheartedly recommended.
- thawkins 11y ago+1 for the noelec device. You can make an external ariel with a bunch of 11cm coax elements coupled together and placed inside a piece of 1/2 plastic pipe. http://www.balarad.net http://www.balarad.net
- ipsin 11y agoAlso like the NooElec -- the price is right. But it took me a while to figure out I had to kalibrate it, using the GSM network. http://www.rtl-sdr.com/how-to-calibrate-rtl-sdr-using-kalibrate-rtl-on-linux/ http://www.rtl-sdr.com/how-to-calibrate-rtl-sdr-using-kalibr...