Electronics Weekly
It uses a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+, a Micro USB power supply, a microSD card (you may also need an SD card adapter), a USB ADS-B receiver dongle and a Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ case (optional but recommended). Specifically, the maker used the NESDR Mini (TV28T v2) USB RTL-SDR, DVB-T & ADS-B Receiver Set).
The heart of the system, however, is the use of the Flightradar24 software.
Apparently, the Flightradar24 operating system image for Raspberry Pi includes a built-in web server. It enables you to host a small web page on your local network to display all the flight data collected. All accessible via your usual browser, of course.
“This tutorial will focus on the information transmitted by the transponders installed on aircraft flying overhead using Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B). These avionic systems provide information to identify aircraft, as well as their barometric altitude, to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems on the ground and to the Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems (TCAS) on other aircraft. Listening in to these signals provides a fascinating insight into a world we all take for granted.”
If you're reasonably handy with a Pi and the command line, it's not hard to set up. Tutorial here https://t.co/L2gbVLEqez
— Kate isn't really here any more (@katebevan) May 19, 2023
Full information is provided for the various steps involved, from initial setup and providing Wi-Fi credentials to setting up Flightradar24 and how to view aircraft tracking data…
You can read more information on the detailed description of the project on the tutorial section of the Raspberry Pi website.
After tracking the skies, you may want to track the seas…
“Building on this project might take you on a journey to more complex systems with better antennas, or perhaps a solar-powered receiving station. The sky’s the limit! Unless of course the sky isn’t your thing and you’re more interested in the sea, in which case you might want to look into receivers for Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders capable of listening to position, identification, and other information about ocean-going vessels.”
SDR
It’s not the first such system we’ve covered here on Gadget Master. Back in 2017, we highlighted a Pi-based flight tracker system by DesignSpark blogger Andrew Back, who used SDR hardware to track aircraft hundreds of kilometres away….
Using Adafruit’s SDR USB stick and the PiTFT Plus 3.5 Raspberry Pi Touchscreen, plus a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, he showed how you can build a low-cost plane watcher. It displays the tracking information from the Mode-S transponders of aircraft.
In the post, Andrew takes you through the full set up and provides details of the variety of software options available for receiving and decoding Mode-S transmissions for a more sophisticated display.
See also: Raspberry Pi RP2040 powers inch-sized TinyTV screen
There is this cool technology that now exists that allows computers to talk to each other, even across the world from each other. People can now send letters electronically to others and the messages are received within minutes instead of days. Through even more advancements, pictures, audio, and even video may be sent. The collection of interconnected networks of computers is usually referred to as the Internet.
I have been using a Raspberry Pi, along with RTL-SDR dongles for over 7 years to track aircraft and feed that data to several different aggregators of flight information but primarily FlightAware; I also feed it to FlightRadar24. Had this capability been something that has only recently become possible, I may not laugh so much at such an article, but this is far from being new. It had already been out for some time before I started, at the beginning of 2016, but others had been doing so even longer. There were thousands of feeders back at the beginning of 2016.
Don’t give up the day job.