Monitor Airplane Traffic with a Raspberry Pi

Commercial 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&#x27;t censor or block anything, like ADS-B Exchange (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adsbexchange.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.adsbexchange.com&#x2F;</a>).<p>A project like Dictator Alert (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictatoralert.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictatoralert.org&#x2F;</a>) uses ADS-B Exchange because the authoritarian regimes they&#x27;re tracking can just pay a commercial site to hide their aircraft—they don&#x27;t like being tracked.<p>My Advisory Circular bots (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skycircl.es&#x2F;bots&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skycircl.es&#x2F;bots&#x2F;</a>), which tweet in real time whenever they detect police, FBI, military, news or fire aircraft circling, and my &quot;What&#x27;s Overhead?&quot; Siri shortcut (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;lemonodor&#x2F;status&#x2F;1238149529469202433" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;lemonodor&#x2F;status&#x2F;1238149529469202433</a>) use ADS-B Exchange because a lot of the most interesting aircraft are the ones that are blocked on commercial trackers.

The 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.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratux.me" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stratux.me</a><p>is the project I&#x27;m most familiar with. If you just want to use the hardware it is a very easy paint by number setup.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;stratux" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;stratux</a><p>If you are looking for a community.<p>If you wanted to jump into a GoLang project, this is a really interesting codebase.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cyoung&#x2F;stratux" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;cyoung&#x2F;stratux</a>

Or just run antirez&#x27;s dump1090 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;antirez&#x2F;dump1090" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;antirez&#x2F;dump1090</a> with the appropriate ADS-B dongle<p>&gt; Ever wonder what airplane is flying overhead?<p>Also - not all planes broadcast ADS-B. Also - theres a privacy push to mask a plane&#x27;s real tail number in ADS-B broadcasts - relevant for private planes (not commercial)

A few pointers to get a receiver going if you&#x27;re interested and don&#x27;t want to use the Flightaware image: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wiedehopf&#x2F;adsb-wiki&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;adsb-receiver-shopping-list" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wiedehopf&#x2F;adsb-wiki&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;adsb-receiver-sh...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wiedehopf&#x2F;adsb-wiki&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raspbian-Lite:-ADS-B-receiver" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wiedehopf&#x2F;adsb-wiki&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Raspbian-Lite:-A...</a>

Currently I have a similar setup but the data is sent to FlightRadar24 and you get a $499.99&#x2F;year Business subscription for free for doing exactly this (but sending the data to them).<p>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?<p>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!<p>Personally, I love just being nosey and seeing the flights around my area, but I am just a bit strange like that ;)

The dongle is what’s monitoring the traffic. You can get one on Amazon for $25. Here’s mine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B0129EBDS2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Define...</a><p>I use airplanejs to display the airplanes overhead: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;watson&#x2F;airplanejs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;watson&#x2F;airplanejs</a><p>There’s a ton of other interesting stuff you can do with the dongle, too. Here’s a great place to start: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;luaradio.io&#x2F;new-to-sdr.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;luaradio.io&#x2F;new-to-sdr.html</a>

I&#x27;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&#x27;s free ICAO hex lookup APIs (I should be adding ADSBExchange support soon, but, hey kittens!).<p>You can find it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;shbisson&#x2F;OverPutney" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;shbisson&#x2F;OverPutney</a> . This version is currently at 33 days uptime on my Piaware set up, and tweeting at @OverPutney.

How 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 &quot;took off in King city&quot;.<p>ex: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;live&#x2F;flight&#x2F;N330AX" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;live&#x2F;flight&#x2F;N330AX</a><p>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.

It seems like everyone is running an ADS-B feeder these days. I&#x27;d love to see a similar article that discusses capturing and decoding ACARS messages between planes and dispatch.

So how do I actually see which airplanes are in the sky at a given moment? I went here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;adsb&#x2F;stats&#x2F;user&#x2F;vegasbrianc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;adsb&#x2F;stats&#x2F;user&#x2F;vegasbrianc</a><p>(from TFA) but it&#x27;s all just stats. I want to see &quot;Ok, that&#x27;s an NBC helicopter overhead&quot; or &quot;Oh, that&#x27;s a flight to Denver overhead&quot;)<p>Or is that only available if you have access to the pi itself?

Our local monitoring system consists of ADS-B receivers (Antenna &gt; filters &gt; SDR dongle &gt; 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.<p>We pick up traffic from Sacramento to 1&#x2F;3 the way down the Baja Peninsula.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.virtualradarserver.co.uk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.virtualradarserver.co.uk&#x2F;</a>

What would really make me excited would be if Pi4 could eliminate the RTL-SDR altogether by doing the DSP via ARM Neon instructions.<p>Is it even close to being powerful enough?

So how do I actually see which airplanes are in the sky at a given moment? I went here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;adsb&#x2F;stats&#x2F;user&#x2F;vegasbrianc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;flightaware.com&#x2F;adsb&#x2F;stats&#x2F;user&#x2F;vegasbrianc</a><p>(from TFA) but it&#x27;s all just stats. I want to see &quot;Ok, that&#x27;s an NBC helicopter overhead&quot; or &quot;Oh, that&#x27;s a flight to Denver overhead&quot;)

This might be the wrong forum for my question. Please direct me to the correct place if that&#x27;s true.<p>I don&#x27;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.<p>I assume it&#x27;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?

It&#x27;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.

From a practical point of view, isn&#x27;t the growing use of satellite ADS-B tracking making these types of devices less important?<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Aireon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Aireon</a>

You can feed FlightAware and FlightRadar24 and ADS-B Exchange all at the same time.

Collecting 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

This reminds me of my post back in 2017 of a very similar topic - Get eyes in the sky with your Raspberry Pi - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.alexellis.io&#x2F;track-flights-with-rpi&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.alexellis.io&#x2F;track-flights-with-rpi&#x2F;</a><p>Someone mentioned dit to me today, so I thought I&#x27;d stop by. Good post Brian. I haven&#x27;t actually got mine connected anymore, but still find it fascinating.

For a less well known tracker you can also check RadarBox.com

US be like: &quot;you&#x27;re not allowed to see the live position of aircraft&quot;<p>US also be like: &quot;let&#x27;s make it super easy for anyone to tell where every aircraft is&quot;

I 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.<p>RTL-SDR stuff is pretty popular, but plugging one into an RPi just doesn&#x27;t feel like much of an accomplishment on the RPi front.