Agreed! I picked one up and learned about ADSB protocol and usage, and now have a live view of the air traffic in my vicinity. Sure, I could use one of the websites that tracks that info, but there's something about viewing it on your own equipment.
Once you have a receiver, you can use a raspberry pi image like https://adsb.im/home to easily feed data to more than 20 different networks. FlightAware, FlightRadar24, ADS-B Exchange, airplanes.live, TheAirTraffic, etc. Most of the networks give extra privileges to people who feed them data.
I also recently found a use for my rpi 3b as well. I bought a $30 USB SDR Receiver [0] and started collecting ADS-B [1] data and uploading to ADS-B Exchange [2]. I have been collecting flight data for aircraft flying overhead for a few weeks now and it is super interesting to see what kinds of aircraft are flying around me. There are a lot more military planes that I would've expected.
If anyone is interested, you can build your own adsb receiver for very cheap (under 50$), and you can forward the data to all the platforms - ADSB-exchange, airplanes.live, flightradar, flightaware, etc.
You'll get the business tier plans on the commercial sites for free, and you'll feed the community exchanges.
You'll also be getting the data directly, so they aren't censored, and don't rely on the internet.
See the release notes here: https://rsadsb.github.io/v0.4.0.html
This projects uses Software Defined Radios to view airplanes in the sky from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillance%E2%80%93Broadcast protocol. This is rather inexpensive, and easy to setup on your own!
See https://github.com/rsadsb/adsb_deku and https://github.com/rsadsb/dump1090_rs for code building and running examples.
> You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data.
"top tier" may be overstating it but setting up a RPi and $20 USB ASDB receiver will get you the $90/month Enterprise feed [1]. Still a great deal if this is a topic that interests you.
Flightradar24, as well as all sorts of similar services (FlightAware, ADSB-Exchange, etc.) let anyone watch the location of any aircraft with ADS-B in real time (as well as list everywhere the plain has been and playback previous flights)
Interesting project, thanks! But it is also important to mention AdsbExchange as the data source. They have quite a big expenses on AWS to keep it running and unlike FlightRadar24 or similar they doesn't censor any aircraft or take blocking requests by aircraft owners which is reasonable considering this data is public an anyone with sdr-compatible dvb-t dongle can receive them.
I work on flight data recorders, mainly in rotorcraft but some small fixed wing aircraft. The current generation does use a satellite connection for real time tracking, as well as sending high level caution information, and a few data parameters. Really the cost of sending data over the satellite is the real issue. However this is coming down.
Outside of that, the ADS-B requirement is a huge help in knowing where aircraft are and where they are going.
I have an Android phone with an OTG cable and SDR Touch and ADSB# - that lets me "see" any plane transmitting ADSB signals around me without any need for a network connection.
(I use that as part of my safety setup when flying drones. If I'm out of cellular connection or my iPad running FlightRadar24 fails, I have a backup self contained plane detection system.)
You can get free enterprise access to a lot of the major flight tracker services by setting up an ADSB receiver and feeding the data to them. Basically they give you full access to everything as if you were paying for the top tier of their services, because you're helping increase the coverage of their data. A few such services:
There's also https://www.adsbexchange.com/ which doesn't filter their data (probably much to the chagrin of various businesses and governments). If you see/hear a weird plane above and you can't find it on the commercial services above, check ADSB Exchange.
I would love to see an open source network of ADS-B collectors form, similar to what's available for the APRS-IS [1] network. The big ADS-B players (Flightaware and FlightRadar24) get their ADS-B feeds from the FAA (5-min delayed) and supplement it with real-time over-the-air collection from volunteers around the world. These companies give away small ethernet-connected collection servers to the volunteers and in exchange, they get the data and keep it proprietary.
It sure would be nice if there was a network to collect and pass around this data for free consumption by whoever wanted to use it.
You can use the same dongle to tap into ADS-B signals to get realtime ATC and display it on a map. Also, it's interesting to just sit and listen to SFO ATC audio channel.
It very clearly is. By watching ADSB data, I can build a picture of your travel patterns. I will be able to determine where you go, when, and could lay an ambush for you once I've found a pattern.
Same thing if I put a tracking device on your personal conveyance.
AF1 routinely turns off their ADSB transponder, as do military aircraft. They generally do not when operating in high traffic areas, but will if they are over commercial airspace and want to mask their position.
While this data's purpose is primarily for safety and to make ATC job easier, it was never intended to used as a public tracking system.
What's cool is that aviation can be so stifling at times with training, rules, regulations, etc, that it seems that certain very cool traditions are either set in stone, or born and survive relatively intact.
ADSB reporting, which powers these flight tracking sites that are available to the public, is (relatively speaking) a very new thing to aviation and the general public. And the fact that these maneuvers are absolutely fantastic training and aviation problem solving and you've got the perfect storm for a newly born tradition that will continue to survive and evolve.
In what is probably the biggest case, FlightAware, a lot of the data comes from a fleet of users running ADS-B[1] receivers feeding data into their system. ADS-B data is what Air Traffic Control uses to track planes, and it's receivable using using a cheap TV tuner and a raspberry pi[2]. It ends up being probably the best way to track planes very precisely, as long as you can get enough coverage, which flightaware manages to do pretty well [3]. They then package this data and sell it via an API/tools for Fixed Base Operators or apps like Just Landed.
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.
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