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Monitor Airplane Traffic with a Raspberry Pi
- RIMR 6y agoI am getting a little annoyed when people do a basic Linux tutorial, but make it seem like some sort of incredible use of a Raspberry Pi. RTL-SDR stuff is pretty popular, but plugging one into an RPi just doesn't feel like much of an accomplishment on the RPi front.
- ryandrake 6y agoClicked the article wondering, does it boil down to "Install PiAware?". Yup, it boils down to "Install PiAware." I mean, at least put a twist on it and build your own half wave antenna or something! What would impress me would be two SDRs, one monitoring ADS-B and the other tuned to VHF, pulling down the ATC radio transmissions, recognizing the speech, deducing the tail numbers, and then visually associating them with the ADS-B traces on the map. Now that would be impressive! I've had VHF and ADS-B on my roof for the past few years but never got around to doing the speech parsing.
- vegasbrianc 6y agoAlways room for improvement agreed. I plan on expanding on this further since it is so much easier than previously to get up and running where it took me days to get the container running with everything. Since I'm in lockdown I have a lot of time on my hands to break out my soldering iron and more hardware. ;)
- jcims 6y agoYou could also try MLAT with the ATC comms to get a plausibly more deterministic source for the transmissions. I've done a decent amount of work with voice recognition for fire/police and the technology just isn't quite there yet. ATC comms probably have a lot less variation than police/fire calls, so you could probably train some custom models with a bunch of labeled ATC data to get you in the vicinity. Couple other sources: - Passive radar - Some pretty interesting results in this area https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/passive-radar/ https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/passive-radar/ - Sound detection/recognition/localization - Could correlate with ADSB to label sounds with known airframes to help train an identification model - Video detection
- vegasbrianc 6y agoCool thanks. Will have a look
- jcims 6y agoIf you knock out any of theses definitely share that as well. I live a hundred miles from Wright Patt and constantly see aircraft that don't show up on any of these sites and don't transmit ADS-B that I'm able to receive.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago+1, a lot of these tutorials are just clickbait.
- vegasbrianc 6y agoI'm open to suggestions to make it better
- eeZah7Ux 6y agoHonestly, either put in innovative, non-trivial content or remove it.
- tnorthcutt 6y agoI'm really glad this got posted here. I'd never heard of PiAware, and now I have a new project I can do with my son that'll have tangible results and be a great learning process for both of us. Thanks for writing this up and sharing it to HN, vegasbrianc!
- jcims 6y agoWhat part of it annoys you? Or maybe rate your level of annoyance from 1/10 along these steps. - He builds the receiver using hardware he bough/owns/borrowed and software/documentation that he finds on the Internet. - He documents the process and his rationale/experience. - He shares that document on his blog - Someone posts a link to the article on HN - Sufficient HN readers vote on the link to get it to the front page. - People comment on it. - You start typing in the comment box. - You click submit.
- briandear 6y agoBecause it’s fun!
- gsich 6y agoFor a "fun" project you usually don't want your main machine to run 24/7 just to do this task. Energy consumption is not that great for a full x86 machine. But a Pi? No problem running that forever.
- anonu 6y agoOr just run antirez's dump1090 https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 with the appropriate ADS-B dongle > Ever wonder what airplane is flying overhead? Also - not all planes broadcast ADS-B. Also - theres a privacy push to mask a plane's real tail number in ADS-B broadcasts - relevant for private planes (not commercial)
- OliverJones 6y agoI'm an open-source dump1090-on-rPi fanboi. This thing works great. I live near a somewhat dangerous river mouth, and dump1090 shows me who the helicopters are when they show up. Coast Guard? TV News? I use it with a cheezy indoor antenna for my rtl-sde dongle. Plenty of range for what I'm doing. I can also see the high-altitude airliners going to and from JFK. If you live in the sticks (I don't) flightAware will provide their rPi / receiver / antenna for free, in return for your data feed. I think they're still trying to get more receivers in places like Labrador and Greenland -- definitely fly-over territory.
- vegasbrianc 6y agoYes, I plan on building a custom antenna so I can place it outside
- sbisson 6y agoThe antenna from Pimoroni in the UK are a good price and give you a good splat (I get nearly 200nm from near sea level in London with an antenna in a window).
- EricAtFA 6y agoRegarding the last bit, that is correct. We (I'm FlightAware's ADS-B Program Manager) send ADS-B receivers free of charge to places we need better coverage. Labrador and Greenland are great examples. If you're interested please visit our website, specifically the FlightFeeder page.
- 6y ago
- heelix 6y agoThe Pi became part of my essential hardware for flying with the Stratux project. You could plug an RTL-SDR into a Pi, add a wifi adapter, and have it broadcast weather and other ADS-B equipped aircraft to some of the flying tools. With Avare, ForeFlight, FlyQ (most of the other EFB software out there except Garmin) it will overlay the information on the moving map. http://stratux.me http://stratux.me is the project I'm most familiar with. If you just want to use the hardware it is a very easy paint by number setup. https://www.reddit.com/r/stratux https://www.reddit.com/r/stratux If you are looking for a community. If you wanted to jump into a GoLang project, this is a really interesting codebase. https://github.com/cyoung/stratux https://github.com/cyoung/stratux
- vegasbrianc 6y agoThanks for the project links. I will have to check them out.
- ericpauley 6y agoHow do you feel about the reliability of this setup? I currently use a Dual GPS for (VFR) navigation and am wanting to get ADS-B in, but I want to reduce the risk of distraction caused by a failing receiver (or backup AHRS) in flight. Has the Stratux proven as reliable as more integrated solutions like a Sentry Mini?
- noitpmeder 6y agoYeah I would be greatly concerned about using a Pi for this task. The SD card issues alone are enough to warrant a different platform.
- heelix 6y agoI'm usually my own worst enemy of messing with a working image, so if it was broken, it was usually my own fault. I use the same Bluetooth GPS receiver with Avare on an Android tablet in conjunction with a Pi and a pair of antennas. The stock images are more or less fool proof if you pick USB radio receivers that are on the supported list. I had wired a GPS to it too at one point - but had an incident with a model airplane and a lake, so continue to use the external Dual. I've never gotten around to putting it in a one unit case.. basically end up tossing it in the back seat dangling everywhere. I replaced our Stratus (guess where the project name originated from) with the homemade one. On the recommended hardware, it is solid. I was also able to (usually) make it work on non-certified (if you can call this hand rolled combination certifiable) hardware like the pi zero. Hit and miss with the newer stuff. Need to pick up one of the newer pis to help out with the porting. By far, my biggest issue was making sure the battery pack was charged. https://www.sportys.com/stratus-3-ads-b-receiver.html https://www.sportys.com/stratus-3-ads-b-receiver.html
- OrangeMango 6y agoWhat would really make me excited would be if Pi4 could eliminate the RTL-SDR altogether by doing the DSP via ARM Neon instructions. Is it even close to being powerful enough?
- vegasbrianc 6y agoWell I do have an Nvidia Jetson that I can also get going...
- jcims 6y agoThe challenge is that the raspberry pi doesn't have an analog to digital converter with enough bandwidth to sample the ADS-B data, or any way to downconvert the signal from 1090MHz to see it to begin with, so you are going to need hardware. ADSB uses pulse amplitude modulation, so if you built or bought a downconverter and amplifier, you might be able to pick up the modulation by sending the downconverted/amplified signal to a GPIO pin and reading its state at say 5-10 MHz. It'd be pretty messy and you'd have to write the demodulator from scratch, but might be able to pickup the frame decoding from one of the other products out there to actually read the content. Would be a really fun project but not likely to save money and definitely not time.
- OrangeMango 6y agoExcellent comment, thank you :)
- TomVDB 6y agoThe RTL-SDR is only an RF front-end that brings down the desired RF signal to a baseband frequency, followed by an quadrature AD converter, followed by a USB interface. All the DSP operations are already done by the Raspberry Pi. http://aaronscher.com/wireless_com_SDR/rtl_sdr_info.html http://aaronscher.com/wireless_com_SDR/rtl_sdr_info.html In the diagram above, it shows “DSP” but that’s just two basic multiplications and a low pass filter. It doesn’t do any heavy lifting. If you want to get rid of the RTL-SDR, you’d need that analog RF block and the AD converter inside the Pi. That doesn’t make a lot of sense of a general purpose SOC.
- umvi 6y agoSo how do I actually see which airplanes are in the sky at a given moment? I went here: https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/vegasbrianc https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/vegasbrianc (from TFA) but it's all just stats. I want to see "Ok, that's an NBC helicopter overhead" or "Oh, that's a flight to Denver overhead")
- vegasbrianc 6y agoYou would need to be local to see the Map from the blog post. However, you can use FlightAware to zoom into Denver to see whats overhead.
- zymhan 6y agoSo you'll go to a site like https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ https://globe.adsbexchange.com/
- umvi 6y agoSo how do I actually see which airplanes are in the sky at a given moment? I went here: https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/vegasbrianc https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/vegasbrianc (from TFA) but it's all just stats. I want to see "Ok, that's an NBC helicopter overhead" or "Oh, that's a flight to Denver overhead") Or is that only available if you have access to the pi itself?
- vegasbrianc 6y agoCorrect, you need access to the Pi itself. However, you can use the FlightAware map to zoom in on Denver
- bdamm 6y agoDoesn't the main view show that? https://flightaware.com/live/ https://flightaware.com/live/
- dfcab 6y agoCheck the Flightradar24 app (https://www.flightradar24.com https://www.flightradar24.com), I use it all the time to determine the helicopter or airplane nearby.
- umvi 6y agoWow this is great. Do military aircraft show up? Sometimes I hear them roaring overhead and want to know what kind it is.
- commiebob 6y agoIf you want to see military aircraft use ADS-B exchange: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ there is a filter (click the U button on the map) that will only show military aircraft. The commercial ADS-B tracking sites filter out these and many other aircraft. Enjoy.
- sbisson 6y agoIf you are running your own receiver, you should see them on your map, especially if you are part of a MLAT network for calculating position data for aircraft that only transmit Mode-S data. The key issue is ICAO hex to aircraft mappings, and there you'll need to either do a lookup against (often commercial APIs) or build your own registration database from public data.
- NKosmatos 6y agoIt's nice to see tutorials like this one, especially since FlightAware is community powered. The cost for most of the materials is relatively small, but what seems to be a somewhat problem is the availability and price of properly supported RTL-SDR USB sticks.
- jjwiseman 6y agoCommercial flight trackers encourage enthusiasts to feed them data, then take money from operators to hide that data. If you want everyone to have access to the data, consider feeding a network that doesn't censor or block anything, like ADS-B Exchange (https://www.adsbexchange.com/ https://www.adsbexchange.com/). A project like Dictator Alert (https://dictatoralert.org/ https://dictatoralert.org/) uses ADS-B Exchange because the authoritarian regimes they're tracking can just pay a commercial site to hide their aircraft—they don't like being tracked. My Advisory Circular bots (https://skycircl.es/bots/ https://skycircl.es/bots/), which tweet in real time whenever they detect police, FBI, military, news or fire aircraft circling, and my "What's Overhead?" Siri shortcut (https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1238149529469202433 https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1238149529469202433) use ADS-B Exchange because a lot of the most interesting aircraft are the ones that are blocked on commercial trackers.
- rozab 6y agoThis is really interesting stuff. Do you know of any services which show aircraft present in ADS-B but missing in, say, FlightRadar24?
- sbisson 6y agoTry https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ for a good unfiltered map.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoADSB and Opensky are the big ones. IIRC one of them censors aircraft on the owners' request but because they're lower profile lots of planes that are blocked on Flightaware are still visible. One of them also has an API that returns "interesting" aircraft (military, government, owned by celebrities etc) which is fun to look at Edit: I think it's Opensky that filters their data. Not many planes are filtered but their coverage also isn't as comprehensive as ADSBExchange. For one specific usecase I did find Opensky's API easier to work with
- glup 6y agoSeconded. In the SF Bay Area the “fun” (or worrisome) planes are on adsbexchange but not FlightRadar24.
- sbisson 6y agoI've been working on an updated version of the AboveTustin twitterbot code to work with the latest Piaware images, using chromedriver and tar1090, along with Josh Douch's free ICAO hex lookup APIs (I should be adding ADSBExchange support soon, but, hey kittens!). You can find it here: https://github.com/shbisson/OverPutney https://github.com/shbisson/OverPutney . This version is currently at 33 days uptime on my Piaware set up, and tweeting at @OverPutney.
- gfo 6y agoThis might be the wrong forum for my question. Please direct me to the correct place if that's true. I don't use the coax connection in my home at all. Meanwhile, there is a coax jack on my roof in case I ever wanted to put a TV there and use actual cable. I assume it's possible to mount an antenna on my roof and use the existing coax wiring to connect to the dongle FlightAware offers? Has anyone done something similar?
- mhh__ 6y agoWith the right impedance matching and good coax cable I don't see why not.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mystcb 6y agoCurrently I have a similar setup but the data is sent to FlightRadar24 and you get a $499.99/year Business subscription for free for doing exactly this (but sending the data to them). So, the question I wanted to bring up (and might be controversial) is to know what the differences between the two are? Taking a quick look around it does feel like FlightAware has a lot more openness to it than FR24, which is interesting for me, but I am interested in other opinions on this? I mean, getting the subscription for pushing the data is always a nice bonus, kinda tempted to just push data to both, and have another Pi sitting in my loft! Personally, I love just being nosey and seeing the flights around my area, but I am just a bit strange like that ;)
- sbisson 6y agoYou can send to many different services at the same time!
- mystcb 6y agoStarted going down the rabbit hole of links just after posting this, and yes! I had no idea! Just need to work it out! - At the moment I am using the FR24 image they sent out, but I have spotted that the SD Card is in read only mode at the moment and something doesn't look right. Maybe its a sign telling me to go down this rabbit hole! Thanks ;)
- sbisson 6y agoI've moved my Pi4-based system over to SSD; living here near Heathrow I destroyed my first SD card in 3 months of writes...
- thiatt 6y agoThere’s also radarbox.com if you’re interested
- mike_d 6y agoThe "Business Subscription" is just a ploy to get people to feed them data for free. If you contact them and actually ask for business services the price is wayyyy more. You should feed to ADSBexchange which is a free and open community run network for flight tracking. They don't censor planes for money like FA/FR24/Radarbox/etc do.
- pdx_flyer 6y agoYou can feed FlightAware and FlightRadar24 and ADS-B Exchange all at the same time.
- thiatt 6y agoThere’s also RadarBox.com https://www.radarbox.com/raspberry-pi https://www.radarbox.com/raspberry-pi
- jfrunyon 6y agoUS be like: "you're not allowed to see the live position of aircraft" US also be like: "let's make it super easy for anyone to tell where every aircraft is"
- throw0101a 6y agoFrom a practical point of view, isn't the growing use of satellite ADS-B tracking making these types of devices less important? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aireon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aireon
- thiatt 6y agoFor a less well known tracker you can also check RadarBox.com
- golem14 6y agoHow reliable is the data? E.g., I found a number of planes with tail numbers N333AX - N335AX flying along the ocean near King City, CA in weird patterns. But the data also says "took off in King city". ex: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N330AX https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N330AX Are these planes sending bogus data (like shifted by a tens of miles ?) They are old Archer Hunter planes (apparently) owned by some trust., and two of them seem to have flown very close together.
- mike_d 6y agoIt is very illegal to transmit false location data. Some older planes don't have GPS enabled transponders so they can only be accurately pinpointed when interrogated by radar. To get a fix tracking networks will calculate the time the signal arrived at multiple receivers and work out the math to ballpark the location.
- ohazi 6y agoThe deadline for ADS-B conversion was January 2020, so pretty much all of the older aircraft have either been converted, or can no longer be flown without a waiver (which, at this point, will pretty much only be given if you're flying to a shop for the upgrade).
- ohazi 6y agoN330AX is a Hawker Hunter, a jet fighter from the 1950s. It's not surprising that it's owned by a company nor that it flies in formation with similar aircraft. Flying an airplane like this over water for noise abatement purposes is also common, because they're really loud. The flight path looks like airshow practice.
- jjwiseman 6y agoThe military does a lot of training and exercises off the coast near Los Angeles, and those aircraft are most likely "aggressor"/target aircraft. See, e.g., https://defpost.com/atac-hawker-hunter-aggressor-aircraft-crashes-off-hawaii-injuring-pilot/ https://defpost.com/atac-hawker-hunter-aggressor-aircraft-cr... Their ownership is obscured via the TVPX trust company, but they're really operated by Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC): https://atacusa.com/ https://atacusa.com/ This sort of training happens all the time, and you get used to seeing lots of aircraft circling around over the ocean in southern California. Edit: Right now in that area I see aircraft from at least two other contractors that do threat simulation for military training, plus an unknown military aircraft. Sometimes you can check the AIS tracking sites and see military ships in the area, too.
- alexellisuk 6y agoThis reminds me of my post back in 2017 of a very similar topic - Get eyes in the sky with your Raspberry Pi - https://blog.alexellis.io/track-flights-with-rpi/ https://blog.alexellis.io/track-flights-with-rpi/ Someone mentioned dit to me today, so I thought I'd stop by. Good post Brian. I haven't actually got mine connected anymore, but still find it fascinating.
- wiedehopf 6y agoA few pointers to get a receiver going if you're interested and don't want to use the Flightaware image: https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/adsb-receiver-shopping-list https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/adsb-receiver-sh... https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/Raspbian-Lite:-ADS-B-receiver https://github.com/wiedehopf/adsb-wiki/wiki/Raspbian-Lite:-A...
- aftbit 6y agoIt seems like everyone is running an ADS-B feeder these days. I'd love to see a similar article that discusses capturing and decoding ACARS messages between planes and dispatch.
- jimmytucson 6y agoThe dongle is what’s monitoring the traffic. You can get one on Amazon for $25. Here’s mine: https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined/dp/B0129EBDS2 https://www.amazon.com/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Define... I use airplanejs to display the airplanes overhead: https://github.com/watson/airplanejs https://github.com/watson/airplanejs There’s a ton of other interesting stuff you can do with the dongle, too. Here’s a great place to start: https://luaradio.io/new-to-sdr.html https://luaradio.io/new-to-sdr.html
- jonah 6y agoOur local monitoring system consists of ADS-B receivers (Antenna > filters > SDR dongle > Raspberry Pi) on five mountain tops feeding into a local instance of Virtual Radar Server[1] which aggregates the data and provides a web frontend. We pick up traffic from Sacramento to 1/3 the way down the Baja Peninsula. [1] https://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/ https://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/
- foxcharlie 6y agoCollecting the data is just the beginning. You can build a lot of interesting stuff from there. Check out my ADS-B project: www.foxtrotcharlie.ovh