Making a FlightAware ADS-B feeder with a Raspberry Pi 3 and RTL-SDR dongle

It’s been nearly a year since I acquired both the RTL-SDR (above) and Rasperry Pi 3 (below)r.

Remember when I made a plea for Pi 3 projects just last year––?

Although many of you suggested some great projects, I never actually got around to doing any of them. Now, don’t get me wrong––I wanted to, of course, but simply got involved with reviews, NPOTA, two months of travel…and, well, life.

Then, last week at the Winter SWL Fest, a common theme emerged in both presentations and discussions: the numerous applications of the super-cheap, and thus super-ubiquitous, RTL-SDR dongle. In their engaging presentations, both Dan Srebnick and Mark Fahey––SWLing Post contributors and good friends––focused on the power of the RTL-SDR, expounding upon some simple, inexpensive applications in their forums. It was inspiring. Also, buddy Eddie Muro showed me just how easily an ADS-B receiver could be set up using an Android phone.

Back to the Pi. Though I was already aware the Pi 3 and RTL-SDR could be united to make an ADS-B receiver, watching Mark Fahey talk about how simply one could feed the FlightAware network with ADS-B data finally hooked me. Why not, indeed? Here was fun to be had!

Mark preparing to woo his captive audience at the Winter SWL Fest!

I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, so Tuesday, the day following my return, I set the afternoon aside. I rolled up my sleeves, and with my long-neglected Pi 3 and RTL-SDR, got ready to cook up a flight sensor.

I figured I was probably missing a component or two, and fully expected the process to be complicated, but decided I wouldn’t let this deter me. And guess what? I was wrong on both counts!

FlightAware ADS-B feeder recipe

Ingredients:

A computer to install the PiAware image on a MicroSD card
A Raspberry Pi (I use the Pi 3 which is available bare-bones and in starter packages like this one)
An RTL-SDR receiver, of which there are a couple of popular options:
- The RTL-SDR V3 (I like this package, which ships with antennas)
- The FlightAware SDR dongle with filter (no included antenna)
A MicroSD card (mine was 8GB, more than enough for this application), and
An antenna. This one is often used for ADS-B, though I found the smaller telescopic whip that shipped with my RTL-SDR dongle works well.

If you only plan to use this SDR and antenna as an ADS-B feeder, you might go for the FlightAware Dongle and 1090 MHz antenna combo.

Directions:

Note: I used this excellent PiAware ADS-B feeder tutorial to build my system–it’s detailed and doesn’t make the lofty assumption that you actually understand formatting cards, building disk images, and/or editing config text files.

Directions below are a highly distilled version of that tutorial. If you’re new to all of this, as I was, follow these directions instead of the above tutorial. Be aware that the directions assume you’re using the Pi 3 and a Windows PC to burn the image file.

Download PiAware image, 7-zip, SD card formatter, and the Win32 Disk Imager. Decompress all compressed files, install and note the folder locations.
Register your username at FlightAware–presuming you don’t already have an account, of course.
Use SD Card Formatter to format your MicroSD card. Just make sure you’re formatting the correct drive, else you could easily wipe the wrong disk/card!
Use Win32 Disk imager to write the PiAware image to your MicroSD card.
If using WiFi, open Windows Explorer. Locate text document called piaware-config on the MicroSD card, open it with a text editor, and locate the WiFi ssid and password locations. Per the config comments, edit them to match your WiFi system. Note that any special characters in both the name and password will require the use of quotation marks (again, noted in the config file comments). Save the file in the same location on the disc image.
Remove the microSD card containing the PiAware image; insert it into the Pi 3.
Connect the RTL-SDR or FlightAware dongle to the Raspberry Pi. Attach an appropriate antenna to the RTL-SDR. Note: You’ll get the best results if you place the antenna outdoors with line of sight to the skies.
Plug the Raspberry Pi 3 into a power source…and cross your fingers!
Grab a cup of coffee, walk the dog, or listen to this 12 minute version of the BBC countdown; it could take at least this long for FlightAware to start receiving data from your ADS-B feeder.
When you see this My ADS-B button in the header of FlightAware (see below), you’ll know you’re in business. Congratulations! You can now watch the skies.

Feeding FlightAware

After my ADS-B receiver had been in operation for a while, I was very impressed with the data FlightAware was able to pull from my ADS-B feed. I was equally impressed with the number of distant aircraft I could receive with such a modest antenna––a number of them up to 135 miles from my location. Once I find a suitable outdoor location for the mag mount antenna, currently indoors, I expect the reception distance will increase significantly.

You can also connect to the live feed from your ADS-B receiver through your local network. Here’s a screenshot of my live data:

Future plans

At the moment, my ADS-B receiver is located indoors, in a south-facing window.

It works, but clearly isn’t ideal. Since the Pi 3 connects to my network via WiFi, I intend to install the full ADS-B receiver system into a small weatherproof case and mount it outside. My Pi 3 has no case, so I purchased an inexpensive one yesterday. I should be able to feed it power with an outdoor outlet…but I’m very tempted to experiment with making it solar powered. To find out if this is a logical move, I need to observe and measure the power requirements first, and will be doing that in the next few weeks.

Meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying watching the (amazingly busy) traffic in the skies…and the kid in me relishes it!

Thanks, Mark, for the great idea!

Have any SWLing Post readers attempted to build a solar-powered or outdoor ADS-B receiver? Please comment!

Photo of the new Elad FDM-S3

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Rafman, who shares the following photos that were originally posted by Alberto (I2PHD) on the Elad email reflector. Alberto noted:

“Here it is…. shown for the first time today at the Montichiari Ham Fest. Price TBD….”

Many thanks, Rafman, for the tip!

We’ll continue to post FDM-S3 updates as they become available. I will also plan to review the FDM-S3 when it hits the market.

Click here to view the Elad website.

RTÉ to continue on longwave through June 2019

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(Source: Radio Today)

RTÉ has agreed to continue its longwave 252 service in the UK until the end of June 2019.

After that, RTÉ hopes Radio 1 will gain approval from UK authorities to launch via a chain of small broadcast networks which cover main urban centres. Currently, a broadcaster has to be based in the UK to obtain an Ofcom licence.

RTÉ says using the DAB+ platform will be considerably less (approx one fifth) than the present quarter of a million per annum that RTÉ expends in running costs for 252.[…]

Continue reading at Radio Today.

From the Isle of Music & Uncle Bill’s Melting Pot, Week of March 13-18

Bishops ask for “restoration” of Vatican shortwave transmissions to Africa

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(Source: Yahoo News via London Shortwave)

Vatican City (AFP) – African bishops have asked Radio Vatican, the official radio of the pope, to restore shortwave transmissions to the continent, the Catholic agency Fides reported on Friday.

[…]The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), meeting in the Ghanaian capital Accra, has written a letter expressing “concern about the recent shutdown of the shortwave services of the radio, which afforded millions of Africans the opportunity to hear (the) Holy Father and share in the Church’s concerns and mission,” Fides said.

[…]This year, services to Africa, Asia and the Middle East will be slashed, Fides said.”While recognising that Vatican Radio services can still be received through the Internet,” the SECAM said “many Africans simply do not have the means or the technology to enjoy such services”.

[…]Radio Vatican was created in 1931 and has services in 45 languages.

With the latest move “a heritage is in the process of being destroyed,” a Fides journalist told AFP.

Read the full article at Yahoo News.

Cornell engineers invent two-way radio on a single chip

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Tom Ally, who shares the following news via the Cornell Chronicle:

Engineers devise two-way radio on a single chip

Two-way communication requires, of course, both send and receive capabilities. But putting them in the same device requires a filter between the send and receive circuits to provide signal isolation.

Without a significant filter, communication would be impossible.

“Your transmit signal is [10 to the power 14] times stronger than your receive signal,” said Alyosha Molnar, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE). “That’s 100 trillion times stronger – that’s a really hard problem.”

But researchers in Molnar’s lab have offered up a solution.

Molnar and collaborator Alyssa Apsel, professor of ECE, have devised a method for both transmitting and receiving a radio signal on a single chip, which ultimately could help change the way wireless communication is done.

Their work is described in “A wideband fully integrated software-defined transceiver for FDD and TDD operation,” published online Jan. 27 in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Journal of Solid-State Circuits. Doctoral student Hazal Yüksel and Dong Yang, Ph.D. ’15, are co-lead authors.

Separating the send and receive bands is difficult enough, but the problem is compounded by the ever-increasing number of bands in the latest devices. From GPS to Bluetooth to Wi-Fi, each band requires a filter to stop the strong transmit signals from drowning out reception.

Molnar and Apsel have come up with an ingenious way to separate the signals. Their idea lies in the transmitter – actually a series of six subtransmitters all hooked into an artificial transmission line. Each sends its signal at regular intervals, and their individually weighted outputs are programmed so that they combine to produce a radio frequency signal in the forward direction, at the antenna port, while canceling out at the receive port.

The programmability of the individual outputs allows this simultaneous summation and cancellation to be tuned across a wide range of frequencies, and to adjust to signal strength at the antenna.

“In one direction, it’s a filter and you basically get this cancellation,” Apsel said. “And in the other direction, it’s an amplifier.”

“You put the antenna at one end and the amplified signal goes out the antenna, and you put the receiver at the other end and that’s where the nulling happens,” Molnar said. “Your receiver sees the antenna through this wire, the transmission line, but it doesn’t see the transmit signal because it’s canceling itself out at that end.” […]

Continue reading on the Cornell Chronicle.

Shortwave Shindig rebroadcast via WRMI tonight!

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Jess Puglisi of WGXC (Wave Farm) and David Goren at the 2017 Shortwave Shindig live broadcast.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Cuff, for sharing the following details:

Repeat shortwave airing of the Shortwave Shindig on WRMI — Saturday 3/11 0300 UTC, same time as last week; same frequencies (9395 aimed north, 6855 aimed west).

Thanks to David Goren and Jeff White for arranging this!! Will update as on-demand / streaming availability is determined.

David Goren (left) and Richard Cuff (right) during the Shindig live broadcast.

Note that for those of us in North America, the Shindig rebroadcast will take place at 22:00 EST tonight (0300 UTC Saturday) on 9,395 kHz aimed north and 6,855 kHz aimed west from WRMI.

I plan to record the broadcast tonight as propagation was so poor last week, very few listeners could enjoy it.