Raspberry Pi Flight Tracker with ADS-B Beacons

Inspiration

We wanted to do something with radio signals, the hidden message transmitted across our skies.

What it does

Using an RTL-SDR dongle, we are able to receive ADS-B signals from planes at 1090MHz. This information includes their location, speed, altitude. We then pass this information to FlightAware, which is a community-contributed project that attempts to keep track of the location of planes around the world.

Feeder site: https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/site/99345

How I built it

We hooked up the Raspberry Pi to a RTL-SDR dongle which is able to receive at 1090MHz, the frequency at which ADS-B is transmitted. ADS-B is broadcasted by aircraft to enable it to be tracked by air traffic control ground stations and other aircraft.

We then used piaware to collect these broadcasts and forward it to FlightAware.

Challenges I ran into

If we were able to position our antenna in a high open area, we would be able to receive omni-directional aircraft signals. However, we did not have access to such a space and therefore we had to put our setup indoors, causing the data received to be limited to line of sight, reducing the amount of information we can receive.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Working product that contributes to a crowd-sourced project. It was interesting how even though we don't see or hear anything in the sky we are still receiving a lot of broadcasts from planes, showing how much invisible information there is in the sky waiting to be discovered.