Building an Inexpensive ADS-B Receiving and Sharing Station

[KS4JU]

Here is an article on building a relatively inexpensive ADS-B receiving / sharing station based on the RTL2832U / R820T based DVB-T stick and a Mini-ITX motherboard. The complete system will run about $200. It in no way competes with commercial ADS-B receivers, but for a fraction of the price it can work pretty well and is a great way to get involved in the ADS-B monitoring hobby. You can use it as a receiving base station alone or add the Flightradar24 linux program to share your data. Basically the article combines using gr-air-modes,a RTL2832U dongle, with a small custom built computer for complete package. This may appeal more to those who have wanted to try this, but did not want to put Linux on their only computer or tie it up as an 24/7 ADS-B sharing system. The small computer and case wind up about the size of a standard radio receiver and will fit nicely with your other gear.

Building an Inexpensive ADS-B Receiving and Sharing Station | Ham Radio Science

[KD5WEK]

Pretty new to the whole aircraft monitoring hobby and gave this article a good read after being pointed in the direction of ADS-B by another user here. I stumbled across what I would call its sister article as well and found some great information !

RTL1090 ADS-B Decoder for Windows | Ham Radio Science

This details how to use the same aforementioned RTL2832U / R820T based DVB-T stick in conjunction with jetvision.de software connecting it to plane plotter or virtual radar.

Considering that the stick itself from the Nooelec Ebay store runs only 16.95 + free shipping how could one pass this up for a inexpensive entry into ADS-B monitoring ??

Newsky TV28T V2 USB DVB T Rtl SDR Receiver RTL2832U R820T Tuner MCX Input | eBay

I went ahead and ordered mine and will see how this little project goes ! I will keep you posted as I work on it.

Adam

[ATCTech]

If you snoop around this and other forums on RR you'll find lots of people have already done this and yes, it works very well. I have it running here 24/7.

Cheers!

[KD5WEK]

That's very encouraging to hear, as I said this is pretty new to me am also doing some ACARS monitoring as well if you see my other thread.

[ATCTech]

And FWIW, that's the exact dongle I have running for ADS-B. A word of advice, 1090MHz is pure line of sight and requires a proper antenna to get any range. Go up as high as you can with good feedline and a real antenna.

Cheers!

[KD5WEK]

Thanks for the tip !

[bgav]

Originally Posted by ATCTech

And FWIW, that's the exact dongle I have running for ADS-B. A word of advice, 1090MHz is pure line of sight and requires a proper antenna to get any range. Go up as high as you can with good feedline and a real antenna.

Cheers!

I've been logging planes in excess of 80nm with the included antenna on my NooElec R820T SDR. I do plan on upgrading to a DPD Productions antenna. The airplane selected (yellow) in the screenshot below was 103nm using the cheesy included antenna.



Three things I highly recommend are:

1. installing the DataBase Writer plugin for Virtual Radar Server so that you can have a comprehensive log and run reports

2. Installing SBSPopulate with flags (airline logos) & aircraft silhouettes

3. Create an account at libhomeradar.org and install the Flightshare app which does a lot of thing for you including keeping an online log of your tracking and a nice web-browser based flight tracking map display.

[KD5WEK]

Ok so the dongle has arrived, currently installed, have virtual radar server functioning, installed sbspopulate, not sure where and how to get the flags and silhouettes up and running although I do see a column for the silhouettes in virtual radar ?? Is that something that takes time to populate I don't see any settings for it anywhere except for in virtual radar ?

Currently am indoors, antenna on top of a short mast, getting about 60nm range for now. Can't complain for the inexpensive entry into the hobby. I am sure as I elevate my antenna that will increase however I would like a hand with the flags and silhouettes if you have any information..

Adam

[bgav]

Download silhouette logos and Operator Logos Version 1 here. Create a silhouettes folder in your VRS default folder. Unzip the silhouettes to the root of the Silhouettes folder. Create a Flags folder and unzip the operator logos to the root of the Flags folder.

Download alternative operator logos here which I prefer, much cleaner with operator paint scheme and tail graphics.



Make sure you have the DatabaseWriter plugin installed in VRS and point SBSPopulate to your Basestation.sqb file (displays BaseStation path in the bottom of the SBSPopulate window). If you have everything configured correctly, go to the Auto Populate tab and hit start. You should start to see aircraft data populating different fields.



Another good utility is SBSPlotter to plot an outline of your intercepts. Screengrab below is using stock antenna that came with my dongle.



Restart everything after clearing your browser cache. You should start to see logos and silhouettes in VRS. You will now be hooked, enjoy!

[Jay911]

Can someone explain to me how an RTL installation "can't compete with commercial ADS-B receivers" (and I presume "commercial" refers to RadarBox, SBS, etc)? I've gone from an ANRB which was eating 100% of my CPU constantly to an RTLSDR on PlanePlotter recently and PP barely takes 4% of the CPU on average. What features am I not enjoying that I would have had, had I stayed with a "commercial" receiver? I could put an ACARS receiver together if I really wanted to, I suppose - but I never pick up much ACARS data here. That's about the only thing that I had on the ANRB (and again it was an add-on there) that I don't have in my PP setup.

[bgav]

Originally Posted by Jay911

Can someone explain to me how an RTL installation "can't compete with commercial ADS-B receivers" (and I presume "commercial" refers to RadarBox, SBS, etc)? I've gone from an ANRB which was eating 100% of my CPU constantly to an RTLSDR on PlanePlotter recently and PP barely takes 4% of the CPU on average. What features am I not enjoying that I would have had, had I stayed with a "commercial" receiver? I could put an ACARS receiver together if I really wanted to, I suppose - but I never pick up much ACARS data here. That's about the only thing that I had on the ANRB (and again it was an add-on there) that I don't have in my PP setup.

That's a great question, and I'm sure the commercial ADS-B receiver box manufacturers aren't too happy about $20 commodity RTL2832U dongles, they must be hurting sales. Do the commercial boxes capture more frames & frames/sec? Probably quite a bit more from what I've read, but if you compare the frames/dollar ratio, and the ability to get into the hobby for about $20 and get great results even with the included antenna, then it's a no brainer.

[MikeOxlong]

I just got my RTL dongle up and running tonight. I've also got a Radar Box so I'll run them side by side and compare.

[MtnBiker2005]

Originally Posted by bgav

Do the commercial boxes capture more frames & frames/sec? Probably quite a bit more from what I've read, but if you compare the frames/dollar ratio.

Nice to see the price dropping for this aircraft monitoring hobby!

From FR24 Mike...

Originally Posted by Mike

Radarbox receiver was developed some times back in 2005-2006 i think and nothing has changed since that. FR24 receiver was developed in late 2012.
If you connect both beside each other the FR24 receiver should handle about 100% more frames and data than the Radarbox receiver.
Some tests that I have seen lately shows that even a DVB-T stick handles more frames and data than the Radarbox receiver

[KD5WEK]

Absolutely 100% on the money !! Thanks for help...

[KD5WEK]

Ok I just caught a HELLA long shot here. nearly 2400NMI ! This is just a fluke but wow ! Normally I dont get anything over about 60 - 65mni but just once ! HAHA !

Adam

[ATCTech]

Not a fluke, it's a defective transponder. There is no chance 1GHz+ is traveling that far and following the curvature of the earth, sorry.

[Jay911]

That looks, if I remember my geography right, like the aircraft is right on the equator. Perhaps the latitude got misplaced?

[ATCTech]

Could be. I saw one on ADS-B half way between Hawaii and Fiji a few weeks back with a Canadian registration. I was at work at the time and looked it up on the live ATC system. The airplane had departed YYZ and wasn't even as far as the DJB VOR (just west of Cleveland) but his magic box was telling the world otherwise. It wasn't exactly 90 or 180 degrees out of whack, it was just plain wrong..<g>

[MtnBiker2005]

Just call it the "Gulfstream" bug.

[Jay911]

I currently have a WestJet flight going backwards at 424 kts over the Rockies on my "scope". Either the heading is screwy or someone is about to have a very bad day.