I recently purchased a 868/916 MHz Antenna which allegedly has a frequency range of 800 - 2500 Mhz. It's my intention to use this with a UKHASnet node, but this will require some planning and construction. Rather than waiting I thought I'd put it to use, and some members of the London Hack Space have been playing with PiAware, a software image that allows a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR dongle to receive ADS-B location data from Aeroplanes and forward it to flightaware.com, a popular site for viewing live Aeroplane locations and additional information.
As I had all the required bits, I thought I'd give it a go.
To setup a Raspberry Pi / RTL-SDR receiver you will need the following-
- Raspberry Pi 2 or above, and peripherals (SD Card, Power Supply ETC)
- RTL-SDR Dongle (Ideally with a TCXO)
- Antenna
The install and setup guide can be found at Flight Aware's website here
You will also need to register a Flight Aware account here, which will get linked to your receiver using some magic (I assume it matches IP addresses). You then get a 'stats' page which will show your contribution to the network and ranking. You can view mine here. You also get a tool to configure and maintaining the Raspberry Pi based receiver, including updates, which is a nice touch.
You can also view the data that your receiver is picking up by logging into your account and clicking 'view live data' whilst connected to the same network as the Raspberry Pi.
Theres some more pictures of my setup below-
Overall it was quick and easy to set this up, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in Aeroplanes or Radio.
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