8 ms·

Flightradar24 ADS-B Receivers On-board a Surface Ocean Robot

138 points by dewey 10y ago

beambot 10y ago
> we have received and processed ADS-B signals collected by our autonomous boat... I wish the article would've explained: (1) What is ADS-B, and (2) why does it matter. Without that context, I have no idea if this is significant or not... EDIT: Given FlightRadar's business... I'm guessing it helps with flight tracking. This wasn't entirely apparent from an outsider reading that blog for the first time.
- ShinyCyril 10y ago
  Aircraft broadcast ADS-B signals which contain tracking information, which is used by live flight trackers to map out each flight in real-time. The problem is that there are large blind spots when aircraft go over oceans due to the lack of receivers, so this is intended to increase coverage.
- avh02 10y ago
  ADS-B signals (from my limited knowledge) are transmitted by aircraft showing some basic data like location, altitude, speed, callsign, aircraft model and a few other things. They only have a range of a few hundred kilometers so a website that does flight tracking using a global network of (volunteer) receivers, it's a step in their coverage to be picking up signals over the oceans. Also it's just cool.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Good info on ADS-B https://www.renderlab.net/projects/ADS-B/ https://www.renderlab.net/projects/ADS-B/ Also just google "Defcon ads-b", there are a few.
- w8rbt 10y ago
  You can track planes over you with free software and a small homemade antenna: Free software: https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 Inexpensive antenna: http://antirez.com/news/46 http://antirez.com/news/46
- yardie 10y ago
  It's an industry specific, aviation, app. Chances are, if you are there you have a glancing familiarity with what it means and how it works. If you didn't know and were interested 2 minutes on Wikipedia would have you sorted out. Unless writers are getting paid per word most computer blogs aren't defining CPU, GPU, USB, HDMI for their readers.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
anotheryou 10y ago
Who are Flightrarad24 clients? Why do they care about planes in the middle of nowhere :) ?
- train_robber 10y ago
  A lot of enthusiasts are a big part of that I guess. I've been a paying user for quite some time now and I primarily use it as a few minutes of distraction every day.
- clebio 10y ago
  see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441989 > The problem is that there are large blind spots when aircraft go over oceans due to the lack of receivers, so this is intended to increase coverage.
- w32stuxnet 10y ago
  My company pays to license their feeds for our own use. I think that their business model is fairly solid.
  - anotheryou 10y ago
    what does your company do?
    - MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
      If I had to guess, something with finance. Observing meatspace logistics allows one to draw certain conclusions earlier than the rest of the market. Right now, there are people observing chinese factories, reporting number of shifts etc. to some guy in a remote office.
      - anotheryou 10y ago
        haha, the stock market is such a funny game. thanks
      - 10y ago
cagey_vet 10y ago
while i love the platform, fr24 filters results so you arent likely to see ultra-cool stuff. adsbexchange does a more open job of not filtering submitted data.
- shocks 10y ago
  Can you give an example of this ultra-cool stuff? :)
  - ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
    Military aircraft?
    - cagey_vet 10y ago
      if you give a man a URL he will surf for a day, if you tell him to go to adsbexchange and set up his own filter to see ultra-cool stuff, he upvotes the source.
  - swingbridge 10y ago
    High profile aircraft (ie Trump Force One) tend to ask for their data to be scrubbed from these sites and the sites typically comply; however the data from those planes is still transmitted unencrypted over open airways for anyone to listen in. A network of people who share data could reconstructed and view the data that others wanted removed from public view.
mkj 10y ago
Won't barnacles be a problem?
nippoo 10y ago
A network of these, with logging of historical data, would very possibly have helped with MH370 / Air France 447 etc. If they can maintain coverage of most of the oceans, this'll be an incredibly useful tool for future lost flights... not to mention real-time updates for flight arrival times etc. I'm amazed that we currently don't have any idea where aircraft are (except self-reporting) over most international waters...
- swingbridge 10y ago
  Not likely as I believe they turned off the transponder, which is what these devices listen for.
  - caf 10y ago
    That's correct, in the case of MH370. ADS-B is essentially self-reporting.
  - nacnud 10y ago
    Maybe the disappearance of the transponder signal could trigger another method of investigation, e.g. visual tracking via Planet Labs network of satellites.
  - verelo 10y ago
    Planes have a variety of transponder options available, all of which can be turned on/off independently. Mode C (and sometimes Mode S) is the most common today and most important for entering controlled airspace (most airspace in the US is controlled). While ADS-B is an option, it's not yet mandatory (making its practical uses less than ideal in many cases). It won't be mandated until Jan 1 2020 in the US, and the first FAA laws on the ADS-B transponders were not published until May 2010. Source: https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1 https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1 ADS-B is amazing, yet I also find it's amazing it took so long to become more popular given how helpful it is. With an ADS-B receiver (I always have a stratus 2S on board while i fly) you get info like the call signs, speeds, positions and altitudes of other aircraft, while a Mode C transponder simply is a pinging beacon that air traffic can use to identify primary (radar based) targets. Mode C/S will give the pilot no advantage other than knowing that ATC can see them. Sadly in my case I only have an ADS-B receiver and no transmitter combined with a Mode C transponder, so i get some situational awareness and weather updates, but I do not contribute to the 'vision' of other pilots with my device. Stratus 2S: http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/ipad-iphone-android/ipad-gps-and-weather/stratus-2s-ads-b-receiver-for-ipad.html/ http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/ipad-iphone-android/ipad-gp...
nacnud 10y ago
Given that the antennae are at surface level and the aircraft are probably between 25,000ft and 40,000ft, I wonder what the ideal maximum range of the receivers would be?
- emilburzo 10y ago
  With a basic RTLSDR and a random small TV antenna (nothing optimized for this use case), from my apartment I've picked up airplanes that were at 40000ft and at a distance of ~ 100 km (62 miles). Optimizing the antenna and the hardware (and using a lot less cable for the antenna than I have) would probably increase that significantly.
- pricechild 10y ago
  With VHF a handy formula is miles = 1.25sqrt(feet) So 25000ft gives a range of ~190 miles, 40000ft gives ~240 miles.
  - nacnud 10y ago
    Thanks! The target area is approximately 250 miles equidistant from Iceland & Norway, so it's feasible that one of these boats could cover the entire area (under ideal conditions).
  - mduell 10y ago
    ADS-B is not on a VHF frequency.
    - pricechild 10y ago
      It is indeed UHF. I should've put "VHF/UHF" in the original comment as the formula is reasonable for both. They're both Line of Sight and that's really what the approximation is about.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deutronium 10y ago
I thought this was interesting "The GOMX-3 satellite orbits the earth approximately every 90 minutes at a speed of 27440 kilometers per hour" - https://blog.flightradar24.com/blog/tracking-flights-with-satellite-based-ads-b-receivers/ https://blog.flightradar24.com/blog/tracking-flights-with-sa... I was assuming it would be a geostationary satellite they would be using.
- 8bitben 10y ago
  Does that mean they can only get ADS-B data from the tracker every 90 minutes?
  - deutronium 10y ago
    I would assume so yeah. I'd be interested to know if there's any reasonably affordable satellite system that you could use for closer to real-time data.
    - mirashii 10y ago
      My company, Spire, is doing fundamentally the same type of tracking as is described here, except for ships using AIS. By building a constellation of satellites with different orbits, and using a network of groundstations, you can achieve near-real time data. These would be no exception, it's just a matter of scaling up from one to n satellites and having the coverage of a groundstation network to support them.
      - lorenzhs 10y ago
        Oh I read about your company in the Economist recently, I thought that was really cool! Here's the article, for anyone interested: http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/space-2016 http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... (the bit on Spire is in section 3). That you're also doing atmospheric measurements for weather forecasting seems pretty neat.
    - fbender 10y ago
prplhaz4 10y ago
For anyone interested in how this robot is getting around the ocean... >> Wave energy is greatest at the water’s surface, decreasing rapidly with increasing depth. The Wave Glider’s unique two-part architecture exploits this difference in energy to provide forward propulsion. http://www.liquid-robotics.com/platform/how-it-works/ http://www.liquid-robotics.com/platform/how-it-works/
dv_dt 10y ago
Why ADS-B instead of a transponder system for ships? e.g. AIS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste... Hmm, maybe ADS-B systems are more compact...

138 points by dewey 10y ago

> we have received and processed ADS-B signals collected by our autonomous boat... I wish the article would've explained: (1) What is ADS-B, and (2) why does it matter. Without that context, I have no idea if this is significant or not... EDIT: Given FlightRadar's business... I'm guessing it helps with flight tracking. This wasn't entirely apparent from an outsider reading that blog for the first time.

ShinyCyril 10y ago
Aircraft broadcast ADS-B signals which contain tracking information, which is used by live flight trackers to map out each flight in real-time. The problem is that there are large blind spots when aircraft go over oceans due to the lack of receivers, so this is intended to increase coverage.
avh02 10y ago
ADS-B signals (from my limited knowledge) are transmitted by aircraft showing some basic data like location, altitude, speed, callsign, aircraft model and a few other things. They only have a range of a few hundred kilometers so a website that does flight tracking using a global network of (volunteer) receivers, it's a step in their coverage to be picking up signals over the oceans. Also it's just cool.
seanp2k2 10y ago
Good info on ADS-B https://www.renderlab.net/projects/ADS-B/ https://www.renderlab.net/projects/ADS-B/ Also just google "Defcon ads-b", there are a few.
w8rbt 10y ago
You can track planes over you with free software and a small homemade antenna: Free software: https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 Inexpensive antenna: http://antirez.com/news/46 http://antirez.com/news/46
yardie 10y ago
It's an industry specific, aviation, app. Chances are, if you are there you have a glancing familiarity with what it means and how it works. If you didn't know and were interested 2 minutes on Wikipedia would have you sorted out. Unless writers are getting paid per word most computer blogs aren't defining CPU, GPU, USB, HDMI for their readers.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

anotheryou 10y ago

Who are Flightrarad24 clients? Why do they care about planes in the middle of nowhere :) ?

train_robber 10y ago
A lot of enthusiasts are a big part of that I guess. I've been a paying user for quite some time now and I primarily use it as a few minutes of distraction every day.
clebio 10y ago
see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441989 > The problem is that there are large blind spots when aircraft go over oceans due to the lack of receivers, so this is intended to increase coverage.
w32stuxnet 10y ago
My company pays to license their feeds for our own use. I think that their business model is fairly solid.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  what does your company do?
  - MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
    If I had to guess, something with finance. Observing meatspace logistics allows one to draw certain conclusions earlier than the rest of the market. Right now, there are people observing chinese factories, reporting number of shifts etc. to some guy in a remote office.
    - anotheryou 10y ago
      haha, the stock market is such a funny game. thanks
    - 10y ago

cagey_vet 10y ago

while i love the platform, fr24 filters results so you arent likely to see ultra-cool stuff. adsbexchange does a more open job of not filtering submitted data.

shocks 10y ago
Can you give an example of this ultra-cool stuff? :)
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  Military aircraft?
  - cagey_vet 10y ago
    if you give a man a URL he will surf for a day, if you tell him to go to adsbexchange and set up his own filter to see ultra-cool stuff, he upvotes the source.
- swingbridge 10y ago
  High profile aircraft (ie Trump Force One) tend to ask for their data to be scrubbed from these sites and the sites typically comply; however the data from those planes is still transmitted unencrypted over open airways for anyone to listen in. A network of people who share data could reconstructed and view the data that others wanted removed from public view.

mkj 10y ago

Won't barnacles be a problem?

nippoo 10y ago

A network of these, with logging of historical data, would very possibly have helped with MH370 / Air France 447 etc. If they can maintain coverage of most of the oceans, this'll be an incredibly useful tool for future lost flights... not to mention real-time updates for flight arrival times etc. I'm amazed that we currently don't have any idea where aircraft are (except self-reporting) over most international waters...

swingbridge 10y ago
Not likely as I believe they turned off the transponder, which is what these devices listen for.
- caf 10y ago
  That's correct, in the case of MH370. ADS-B is essentially self-reporting.
- nacnud 10y ago
  Maybe the disappearance of the transponder signal could trigger another method of investigation, e.g. visual tracking via Planet Labs network of satellites.
- verelo 10y ago
  Planes have a variety of transponder options available, all of which can be turned on/off independently. Mode C (and sometimes Mode S) is the most common today and most important for entering controlled airspace (most airspace in the US is controlled). While ADS-B is an option, it's not yet mandatory (making its practical uses less than ideal in many cases). It won't be mandated until Jan 1 2020 in the US, and the first FAA laws on the ADS-B transponders were not published until May 2010. Source: https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1 https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/faq/#g1 ADS-B is amazing, yet I also find it's amazing it took so long to become more popular given how helpful it is. With an ADS-B receiver (I always have a stratus 2S on board while i fly) you get info like the call signs, speeds, positions and altitudes of other aircraft, while a Mode C transponder simply is a pinging beacon that air traffic can use to identify primary (radar based) targets. Mode C/S will give the pilot no advantage other than knowing that ATC can see them. Sadly in my case I only have an ADS-B receiver and no transmitter combined with a Mode C transponder, so i get some situational awareness and weather updates, but I do not contribute to the 'vision' of other pilots with my device. Stratus 2S: http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/ipad-iphone-android/ipad-gps-and-weather/stratus-2s-ads-b-receiver-for-ipad.html/ http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/ipad-iphone-android/ipad-gp...

nacnud 10y ago

Given that the antennae are at surface level and the aircraft are probably between 25,000ft and 40,000ft, I wonder what the ideal maximum range of the receivers would be?

emilburzo 10y ago
With a basic RTLSDR and a random small TV antenna (nothing optimized for this use case), from my apartment I've picked up airplanes that were at 40000ft and at a distance of ~ 100 km (62 miles). Optimizing the antenna and the hardware (and using a lot less cable for the antenna than I have) would probably increase that significantly.
pricechild 10y ago
With VHF a handy formula is miles = 1.25sqrt(feet) So 25000ft gives a range of ~190 miles, 40000ft gives ~240 miles.
- nacnud 10y ago
  Thanks! The target area is approximately 250 miles equidistant from Iceland & Norway, so it's feasible that one of these boats could cover the entire area (under ideal conditions).
- mduell 10y ago
  ADS-B is not on a VHF frequency.
  - pricechild 10y ago
    It is indeed UHF. I should've put "VHF/UHF" in the original comment as the formula is reasonable for both. They're both Line of Sight and that's really what the approximation is about.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

deutronium 10y ago

I thought this was interesting "The GOMX-3 satellite orbits the earth approximately every 90 minutes at a speed of 27440 kilometers per hour" - https://blog.flightradar24.com/blog/tracking-flights-with-satellite-based-ads-b-receivers/ https://blog.flightradar24.com/blog/tracking-flights-with-sa... I was assuming it would be a geostationary satellite they would be using.

8bitben 10y ago
Does that mean they can only get ADS-B data from the tracker every 90 minutes?
- deutronium 10y ago
  I would assume so yeah. I'd be interested to know if there's any reasonably affordable satellite system that you could use for closer to real-time data.
  - mirashii 10y ago
    My company, Spire, is doing fundamentally the same type of tracking as is described here, except for ships using AIS. By building a constellation of satellites with different orbits, and using a network of groundstations, you can achieve near-real time data. These would be no exception, it's just a matter of scaling up from one to n satellites and having the coverage of a groundstation network to support them.
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      Oh I read about your company in the Economist recently, I thought that was really cool! Here's the article, for anyone interested: http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/space-2016 http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/spa... (the bit on Spire is in section 3). That you're also doing atmospheric measurements for weather forecasting seems pretty neat.
  - fbender 10y ago

prplhaz4 10y ago

For anyone interested in how this robot is getting around the ocean... >> Wave energy is greatest at the water’s surface, decreasing rapidly with increasing depth. The Wave Glider’s unique two-part architecture exploits this difference in energy to provide forward propulsion. http://www.liquid-robotics.com/platform/how-it-works/ http://www.liquid-robotics.com/platform/how-it-works/

dv_dt 10y ago

Why ADS-B instead of a transponder system for ships? e.g. AIS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_syste... Hmm, maybe ADS-B systems are more compact...