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Show HN: We built the smallest dual-band aircraft tracker

We've been building open source embedded ADS-B receivers for a while, and spent the past 8 months smallifying our existing receiver tech with a new chip from Semtech. Ask me anything about ADSB or hardware manufacturing!

storywatch 1mo ago
Any plans to launch a competitor to the ForeFlight Sentry? The current Sentry is severely overpriced. A normal non ADS-B iPad GPS flight module is almost 10% the price of the Sentry https://www.garmin.com/p/645104/ https://www.garmin.com/p/645104/
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  We have a competitor for the high end of the electronic flight bag market, we call it ADSBee Winglet: https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ We're focusing on embedded applications with ADSBee m1421 applications right now but it's definitely tempting to roll m1421 into a smaller flight bag device. It's something we might get back around to once we have Winglet off the ground.
mysterydip 1mo ago
I was about to say, “coolnamesalltaken already has a pretty small one,” but you are them! I’m definitely excited by this project, I have something I wanted to add ADS-B integration to and this looks like an even better option! As for a question, how do you balance low power with performance? Is there a target range or use case to decide the performance envelope?
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  Ha, it's very fun to see that people know about the project! ADSBee 1421's very low power consumption is determined by its architecture. Where ADSBee 1090 has a discrete RF frontend with multiple power hungry LNAs and a power detector chip, plus a dual core RP2040, an ESP32 S3 module, and a CC1312, ADSBee 1421 just has an LR2021 chip and a CC1314. A single LNA on the ADSBee 1090's RF frontend actually draws about as much power as the whole m1421! The tradeoff is that we have fewer CPU cycles available for crunching packets compared to the ADSBee 1090, and the LR2021 has some quirks that result in it only being able to receive ADS-B packets in its maximum dynamic range configuration (so we support Mode S DF17 only, no squitter packets or altitude / surveillance replies like you get with DF4/5/11). That said, this has been plenty for customers who are looking for an aircraft detect and avoid solution plus UAT traffic / weather. Based on our testing so far, ADSBee m1421 is well suited to general aviation applications (portable flight bag / cockpit avionics), drone flight controllers (aircraft detect and avoid), and anything that needs to be low cost or easy to run off a solar panel or little battery. For customers looking to build something like an airport ground station, where they want all squitter and extended squitter packet formats and a higher max packet rate, we still recommend the ADSBee 1090 three-MCU architecture.
  - mysterydip 1mo ago
    Thanks for the info! That helps with the decision.
btreecat 1mo ago
Finally UAT support! How's the software side though? Last time I looked dump1090 worked well, but there was no way to decode UAT packets. Something on my to-do list, that's now become more plausible with Claude assisting the research.
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  On the SDR side, dump978 is what most people use, but SDRs are generally not well suited to embedded applications in terms of power / form factor / cost. Our firmware is fully open source, and our UAT decoder was introduced last year and has been working well (I think we've shaken all the bugs out at this point). We implemented everything from scratch so that it would run efficiently on our embedded RF MCU (TI CC1314). We support both UAT ADSB and UAT uplink (weather / traffic data). Our firwmare repo is here: https://github.com/PantsForBirds/adsbee https://github.com/PantsForBirds/adsbee. It's always open for bug reports or PRs!
  - btreecat 1mo ago
    Yeah I had looked into dump978 in the past, but it was broken. I see it had updates back in 2023, maybe it compiles again. Thanks!
dang 1mo ago
Related (I think). Others? Show HN: ADSBee, an open source dual band embedded ADS-B receiver for anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459195 - Jan 2026 (3 comments)
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  Yes, that's also us! The post you shared was from our ADSBee 1090 series of receivers, which are based on RP2040 PIO and a discrete RF frontend. Our new receiver is much smaller and optimized specifically for low power and embedded detect and avoid applications.
huhtenberg 1mo ago
Wasn't this exact post on the front page just few days ago?
- dang 1mo ago
  It might have been on the frontpage for a few minutes, but not long. We put it in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it got a re-up.
mfrieswyk 1mo ago
Exciting! Picked up a dev kit to mess with and maybe build into my drone.
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  Awesome! Would love to see you on the discord: https://pantsforbirds.com/discord https://pantsforbirds.com/discord
RachelF 1mo ago
Looks good. However, an RF question: Both CC1314 and LR2021 are sub 1GHz components, are you not working outside their spec at 1.090GHz?
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  Components are specced on the datasheet according to regulatory requirements (e.g. where the ISM band is). What they can actually receive comes down to the performance of the RF frontend and the firmware :)
aftbit 1mo ago
Wow that's incredibly cool! I've been doing ADS-B with a tracker in my window using a pair of RTL-SDRs for more than a decade at this point. This seems like it could make a nice improvement to the Stratux project (ADS-B in / poor man's TCAS for small planes) as well.
- CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
  We make a few devices already that work as a drop-in stratux replacement! An ultra low cost version based on m1421 is definitely on our minds but we're focusing on keeping up with our preorders for Winglet first. Most of the work on sensor integration should be able to be ported to an m1421 based receiver in the future if we decide to go that route. https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-1090u/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-1090u/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/
hbcondo714 1mo ago
Our tenants live in our property that is in a known Airport Influence Area ("AIA")[1] but this year, they reported to us the noise associated with the airport's Instrument Approach Procedures have increased. Airplanes arriving at the airport fly less than 1,000 feet in elevation right above our neighborhood. Even worse, airplanes come in consecutively so the noise is back to back w/o much reprieve. The Noise and Capacity Office allows to manually report[2] such aircraft but I'm wondering if this device can detect these aircrafts which can lead to report submission. Any insight on doing this is appreciated! [1] https://lacounty.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7cb3fb165b0143c3993eaf6748c7d2e1 https://lacounty.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7cb3fb165... [2] https://viewpoint.emsbk.com/lgb7 https://viewpoint.emsbk.com/lgb7
- g_p 1mo ago
  The data broadcast from ADS-B includes both GPS position (Lat + Lon) and altitude. If you created a bounding box, you could add a height parameter to make it 3D, and get a list of such aircraft and the timestamps of their transmissions while inside that (3D) bounding box. That wouldn't be too difficult to do with a little bit of filtering of the feed coming out of an ADS-B receiver.
  - toomuchtodo 1mo ago
    An RF receiver is not required for the subject use case, they can use existing ADS-B IP feeds, process the feed (either live or with historical data) according to the 3D bounding box, and generate reports based on flight paths intersecting the bounding box. https://www.adsb.lol/ https://www.adsb.lol/ Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080289 - November 2025 (106 comments)
nubinetwork 1mo ago
Neat, I didn't know the LR2021 could do adsb... I've been looking at it for flrc...
Patrickkkkkkkk 1mo ago
whos this actually for? , your icp to be precise What would make the next 90 days a success for you?

storywatch 1mo ago

Any plans to launch a competitor to the ForeFlight Sentry? The current Sentry is severely overpriced. A normal non ADS-B iPad GPS flight module is almost 10% the price of the Sentry https://www.garmin.com/p/645104/ https://www.garmin.com/p/645104/

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
We have a competitor for the high end of the electronic flight bag market, we call it ADSBee Winglet: https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ We're focusing on embedded applications with ADSBee m1421 applications right now but it's definitely tempting to roll m1421 into a smaller flight bag device. It's something we might get back around to once we have Winglet off the ground.

mysterydip 1mo ago

I was about to say, “coolnamesalltaken already has a pretty small one,” but you are them! I’m definitely excited by this project, I have something I wanted to add ADS-B integration to and this looks like an even better option! As for a question, how do you balance low power with performance? Is there a target range or use case to decide the performance envelope?

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
Ha, it's very fun to see that people know about the project! ADSBee 1421's very low power consumption is determined by its architecture. Where ADSBee 1090 has a discrete RF frontend with multiple power hungry LNAs and a power detector chip, plus a dual core RP2040, an ESP32 S3 module, and a CC1312, ADSBee 1421 just has an LR2021 chip and a CC1314. A single LNA on the ADSBee 1090's RF frontend actually draws about as much power as the whole m1421! The tradeoff is that we have fewer CPU cycles available for crunching packets compared to the ADSBee 1090, and the LR2021 has some quirks that result in it only being able to receive ADS-B packets in its maximum dynamic range configuration (so we support Mode S DF17 only, no squitter packets or altitude / surveillance replies like you get with DF4/5/11). That said, this has been plenty for customers who are looking for an aircraft detect and avoid solution plus UAT traffic / weather. Based on our testing so far, ADSBee m1421 is well suited to general aviation applications (portable flight bag / cockpit avionics), drone flight controllers (aircraft detect and avoid), and anything that needs to be low cost or easy to run off a solar panel or little battery. For customers looking to build something like an airport ground station, where they want all squitter and extended squitter packet formats and a higher max packet rate, we still recommend the ADSBee 1090 three-MCU architecture.
- mysterydip 1mo ago
  Thanks for the info! That helps with the decision.

btreecat 1mo ago

Finally UAT support! How's the software side though? Last time I looked dump1090 worked well, but there was no way to decode UAT packets. Something on my to-do list, that's now become more plausible with Claude assisting the research.

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
On the SDR side, dump978 is what most people use, but SDRs are generally not well suited to embedded applications in terms of power / form factor / cost. Our firmware is fully open source, and our UAT decoder was introduced last year and has been working well (I think we've shaken all the bugs out at this point). We implemented everything from scratch so that it would run efficiently on our embedded RF MCU (TI CC1314). We support both UAT ADSB and UAT uplink (weather / traffic data). Our firwmare repo is here: https://github.com/PantsForBirds/adsbee https://github.com/PantsForBirds/adsbee. It's always open for bug reports or PRs!
- btreecat 1mo ago
  Yeah I had looked into dump978 in the past, but it was broken. I see it had updates back in 2023, maybe it compiles again. Thanks!

dang 1mo ago

Related (I think). Others? Show HN: ADSBee, an open source dual band embedded ADS-B receiver for anything - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46459195 - Jan 2026 (3 comments)

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
Yes, that's also us! The post you shared was from our ADSBee 1090 series of receivers, which are based on RP2040 PIO and a discrete RF frontend. Our new receiver is much smaller and optimized specifically for low power and embedded detect and avoid applications.

huhtenberg 1mo ago

Wasn't this exact post on the front page just few days ago?

dang 1mo ago
It might have been on the frontpage for a few minutes, but not long. We put it in the second-chance pool (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it got a re-up.

mfrieswyk 1mo ago

Exciting! Picked up a dev kit to mess with and maybe build into my drone.

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
Awesome! Would love to see you on the discord: https://pantsforbirds.com/discord https://pantsforbirds.com/discord

RachelF 1mo ago

Looks good. However, an RF question: Both CC1314 and LR2021 are sub 1GHz components, are you not working outside their spec at 1.090GHz?

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
Components are specced on the datasheet according to regulatory requirements (e.g. where the ISM band is). What they can actually receive comes down to the performance of the RF frontend and the firmware :)

aftbit 1mo ago

Wow that's incredibly cool! I've been doing ADS-B with a tracker in my window using a pair of RTL-SDRs for more than a decade at this point. This seems like it could make a nice improvement to the Stratux project (ADS-B in / poor man's TCAS for small planes) as well.

CoolNamesAllTkn 1mo ago
We make a few devices already that work as a drop-in stratux replacement! An ultra low cost version based on m1421 is definitely on our minds but we're focusing on keeping up with our preorders for Winglet first. Most of the work on sensor integration should be able to be ported to an m1421 based receiver in the future if we decide to go that route. https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-1090u/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-1090u/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/ https://pantsforbirds.com/product/adsbee-winglet/

hbcondo714 1mo ago

Our tenants live in our property that is in a known Airport Influence Area ("AIA")[1] but this year, they reported to us the noise associated with the airport's Instrument Approach Procedures have increased. Airplanes arriving at the airport fly less than 1,000 feet in elevation right above our neighborhood. Even worse, airplanes come in consecutively so the noise is back to back w/o much reprieve. The Noise and Capacity Office allows to manually report[2] such aircraft but I'm wondering if this device can detect these aircrafts which can lead to report submission. Any insight on doing this is appreciated! [1] https://lacounty.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7cb3fb165b0143c3993eaf6748c7d2e1 https://lacounty.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7cb3fb165... [2] https://viewpoint.emsbk.com/lgb7 https://viewpoint.emsbk.com/lgb7

g_p 1mo ago
The data broadcast from ADS-B includes both GPS position (Lat + Lon) and altitude. If you created a bounding box, you could add a height parameter to make it 3D, and get a list of such aircraft and the timestamps of their transmissions while inside that (3D) bounding box. That wouldn't be too difficult to do with a little bit of filtering of the feed coming out of an ADS-B receiver.
- toomuchtodo 1mo ago
  An RF receiver is not required for the subject use case, they can use existing ADS-B IP feeds, process the feed (either live or with historical data) according to the 3D bounding box, and generate reports based on flight paths intersecting the bounding box. https://www.adsb.lol/ https://www.adsb.lol/ Airloom – 3D Flight Tracker - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080289 - November 2025 (106 comments)

nubinetwork 1mo ago

Neat, I didn't know the LR2021 could do adsb... I've been looking at it for flrc...

Patrickkkkkkkk 1mo ago

whos this actually for? , your icp to be precise What would make the next 90 days a success for you?