Build an ADS-B Receiver - PiAware

[Dave Blake]

ADS-B (Automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast) is a cooperative surveillance technology in which an aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcasts it, enabling it to be tracked. The information can be received by air traffic control ground stations as a replacement for secondary radar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... -broadcast

You can now build and run your own ADS-B ground station, receive real-time data directly from airplanes and display the data in a web browser. Your ground station can also automatically feed your data to FlightAware. You will need to have a Flight Aware account to feed data to them but there is no-charge to have a Flight Aware account.

Flight Aware has made it easy to build a PiAware ADS-B ground receiver with complete instructions here: http://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build

You can use a low-cost computer called a Raspberry Pi (about $40 USD) and an ADS-B Receiver USB dongle with Indoor Antenna (about $22 USD). I have built one and my total cost was about $80 USD with Raspberry Pi, case, power adapter, micro SD card, and ADS-B receiver dongle.

Here's my ADS-B public feed page: http://76.176.211.112:8080/ Scroll the map to about 90 miles north-west of Chicago and you should see live aircraft on the map. My receiver is located about 10 miles north of Chicago/Rockford Int'l Airport - KRFD.

There is also a Flight Crew on Flight Aware created by Marty Becker called SunAir Express. You can join it and your ADS-B stats will be counted toward our SAX team. Join here: http://flightaware.com/flightcrew/6587/1474

View the Flight Aware ADS-B stats and the SunAir Express Flight Crew stats here: http://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/

Here's my Flight Aware ADS-B stats page: http://flightaware.com/user/dblake5356/adsb

[Marty_Becker]

I built my Raspberry Pi (RPi) ADS-B setup at the beginning of 2014. Since then, I have been feeding the Plane Finder site ( http://www.planefinder.net )

With Flight Aware releasing their ADS-B software for the RPi recently, I installed it last week. I am the other part of the Flight Aware/SunAir Express "Flight Crew" with Dave Blake. My coverage is in the Chicago Area. Dave and I overlap our coverage a bit between Chicago and Rockford.

My public feed: http://www.flyingnut.com/adsbmap

My Flight Aware ADS-B page: http://flightaware.com/user/beckerm13/adsb

Contact Dave or I with any questions.

[Dave Blake]

My Raspberry Pi model B+ with ADS-B dongle and indoor antenna.

[Marty_Becker]

One other advantage of feeding Flight Aware is they upgrade your account to the Enterprise level. They normally charge $89.95/month for this account type.

[Dave Blake]

You'll find answers to many ADS-B PiAware questions here at the Flight Aware forum:
http://discussions.flightaware.com/ads- ... cking-f21/

[Marty_Becker]

The Flight Aware Flight Crew is not just for those feeding flight data to Flight Aware. Anyone with a Flight Aware account can join a crew.

[Marty_Becker]

I have now written a program to feed the aircraft observations from my RPi to a database on my hosting site. This has allowed me to determine specifics about the aircraft such as type, registration and whether it is military by matching the aircraft hexcode with a couple of other database tables containing specific aircraft information. Two new lists are accessible, one list with unique observations of military/government aircraft, and another list of all unique aircraft observations.

Military/Government Observations: http://www.flyingnut.com/adsbmap/adsbMilitaryObs.php

All Aircraft Observations: http://www.flyingnut.com/adsbmap/adsbObs.php

Both of these lists can also be accessed from the map: http://www.flyingnut.com/adsbmap/

[Marty_Becker]

I recently built a new antenna that Dave Blake also uses. It has increased my coverage out to approximately 195 miles.

[Dave Blake]

Here are the instructions to build the ADS-B ground plane antenna that Marty and I use. It's pretty easy to build and doesn't cost much.

Marty has his antenna inside his attic while I put mine outside on a mast.

[orac]

Although not flying these days, I still check into the forum from time to time and found this thread of interest. So I ordered all the parts the week before Christmas and got it running today. That Raspberry pi is slick. Joined your Flight Aware team. Using the antenna included with the dongle in my attic for now, but plan to make my own for outside when weather gets a little nicer. I really wish there was a similarly inexpensive way to receive the ADS UAT broadcasts from the g/a aircraft.
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Neil

[Marty_Becker]

Welcome, Neil. As for antennas, the simple to build ground plane has performed well. Dave had some weather issues with his outside ground plane being unprotected. He built a cantenna with a cover and it too has performed well.

Cantenna: http://forum.planefinder.net/threads/ad ... 23/page-16

[Dave Blake]

I tried making three different 1090 MHz antennas; an eight element collinear, a ground plane and a cantenna. I didn't have good results with the collinear antenna and from what I've read on many forums they are the trickiest to make correctly. I had good results with both the ground plane and cantenna and both are easy to make. The Cantenna is the easiest to make since it doesn't require any soldering.

If you put an cantenna or ground plane antenna outside the top whip element should be weather protected at the bottom. Moisture can gets down inside the connector and then into the cable. Some clear silicone can seal the area or you can use some kind of jar or even a 2 litter pop bottle to protect it. I found a 2 QT jar at Walmart that was cheep and works for protection. But the first time I used it some moisture got inside so then I sealed the jar with some clear silicone and I made a hole in the bottom for ventilation in case of condensation.

The best way to avoid signal loss is to keep the SDR dongle as close as possible to the 1090 MHz antenna. Also you should use quality coax for the feed line between the antenna and SDR dongle. The quad-shield RG6 coax used for satellite dishes works well for the high frequency of the 1090 MHz antenna. Or you can do what I did and use a USB extension cable to keep the feed line as short as possible.

Here's some photos of the cantenna I built and the jar I use for weather protection.

[orac]

Interesting. Was planning a home-built collinear, but now may consider a cantenna.

The long USB extension cable doesn't suffer any losses I guess, unlike the obvious losses one would get with a long run of RG-6? Are you running a powered preamp with it?

Link to my live feed - http://104.34.183.180:8088/
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Neil

[Dave Blake]

Are you running a powered preamp with it?

I thought about an inline amp for a while but went with the USB extension cable instead.

Menards has an inline amp for about $15 but the power injector to run it is harder to come by unless you make your own. I've seen them on Amazon and eBay.

Here's the link for the inline amp on on Menards.
http://www.menards.com/main/electrical/ ... c-6295.htm

I tested the cantenna for a week. It worked well and I couldn't tell much difference from it and my ground plane. I ended up going back to the ground plane.

I checked your Flight Aware tracking stats. Even with you little stock antenna it looks like you are getting about what I get with my outdoor ground plane. But you are in a "target rich" location for traffic.

[Marty_Becker]

I am now running a flight tracking map from my hosting site with data from my RPi.

http://www.flyingnut.com/adsbmap

With the supporting aircraft database tables, I can now show appropriate aircraft icon types, similar to how I do it on the SAX map. I also identify military/government aircraft in the side table with a highlighted orange row. On a suggestion from Dave Blake, I change the aircraft icon color to orange for any military/government aircraft that is map plot-able.

[Marty_Becker]

Neil,

If you want a version of the map code that gets rid of those awful SVG-type aircraft icons, let me know your current email address. I can send you the map version I sent to Dave Blake that has the red icons with data tags.

[orac]

Spent a few days last week saving polar plots of the traffic at my location using the stock antenna. Two nights ago I made a coaxial colinear antenna as discussed in a lot of places on the internet. Was kind of a pain to get just right, particularly making sure the two elements weren't shorted to each other. In the end I succeeded and connected it in the same locattion in my attic about an hour ago.

What a difference. Many many more planes in sight, and a big increase in range. Will let it run a few days and post some before/after polar plots from VRS.

I updated the direct link in my earlier post if you want to take a look with the new antenna hooked up.

Will take a while before I get it set up with a static address if that's possible while my provider doesn't provide me with a static address. And I prefer the VRS presentation, but I don't know if I can set up the Pi to use that for it's Internet server. After that I'll turn my attention to icons and other pretty parts of the display.
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Neil

[Dave Blake]

Spent a few days last week saving polar plots of the traffic at my location using the stock antenna. Two nights ago I made a coaxial colinear antenna as discussed in a lot of places on the internet. Was kind of a pain to get just right, particularly making sure the two elements weren't shorted to each other. In the end I succeeded and connected it in the same location in my attic about an hour ago.

What a difference. Many many more planes in sight, and a big increase in range. Will let it run a few days and post some before/after polar plots from VRS.

I updated the direct link in my earlier post if you want to take a look with the new antenna hooked up.

Will take a while before I get it set up with a static address if that's possible while my provider doesn't provide me with a static address. And I prefer the VRS presentation, but I don't know if I can set up the Pi to use that for it's Internet server. After that I'll turn my attention to icons and other pretty parts of the display.
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Neil

Congratulations on your CoCo antenna build results! Your map is crowded now.

My CoCo builds were not successful but I'm getting good results with my little ground plane. I don't have a static IP but I've been lucky that it hasn't changed in over a year now. Thanks for sharing your new IP so we can view your map and happy plane spotting!

[Marty_Becker]

I built a cantenna last weekend. With this new antenna and moving the location in my attic by about eight feet horizontally and two feet vertically, I have increased my observed aircraft count by several hundred and the aircraft message count by 25000+. It still amazes me how good a soda can antenna performs and in the attic too.

[Marty_Becker]

Neil,

Your setup is performing well, as your stats on FlightAware are looking good recently.

[orac]

Have had some router problems lately (losing connection to the internet), so my counts have been down. Before - original stick antenna - and after - colinear coax - plots shown below. Rings are 25nm apart.

range all FL Tuesday 06JAN orig ant sm.jpg

range all FL Tuesday 13JAN coco ant sm.jpg

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Neil

[David Vega]

Came across this today. Using an old Android phone to build an ADS-B receiver.

Dave Vega
sax702

[Dave Blake]

Came across this today. Using an old Android phone to build an ADS-B receiver.

Dave Vega
sax702

Interesting way to put an old Android phone to use.

[orac]

Thought I'd update the link to my site - is now http://172.112.231.64:8088/
And my statistics - http://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/oracfa

I see our "Team" is ranked #53 on the FlightAware list.

Looking at Marty's ADS-B site, it looks like the "heat map" function has been removed. I always liked that feature and wish I had the know how to add it to my ADS-B display. I am also planning to add UAT978 to my station in the near future.

I'm currently experimenting with the notch filter that FlightAware recommends to see if it improves my performance. (Early results are extremely promising.) Even without it, the latest version of the Pi software has improved my stats.

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Neil

[Dave Blake]

Here's updated links to my ADS-B feeder maps & stats.

Home Feeder in Loves Park: http://98.222.116.153:8080/
Work Feeder in Rockford: http://98.227.87.26:8080/
My FlightAware Stats: https://flightaware.com/adsb/stats/user/dblake5356

I had to repair my antenna at home a few months back. After about 4 years the plastic jar I used to protect the antenna failed in high winds. The height of the antenna is about 8 feet lower now so its range also a little lower now.

Last year i upgraded my work feeder with a FlightAware 1090 antennas and a FlightAware Pro Stick with amp and filter. The new equipment improved the range and now it tracks about 50% more positions then my home feeder setup. I don't have any plans to do any UAT978 tracking. 1090 tracking is enough for me.