Having fun with my ADS-B tracker project
How it started
Some years ago, I bumped into an article on Mashable about Jeremy Merrill using a Raspberry Pi ADS-B tracker to detect aircraft flying over his house and display the origin or destination of that plane (see article here and github there). As my place is just on a busy plane corridor, that gave me an idea. I decided to work on a similar project based on Piaware.
Looking at how he did it and at the long literature you can find on the web on ADS-B, I created this site, my own software in Python to run on my Pi and other fun stuffs. I also ran into this site by SonicGoose and that gave me many new ideas (including the basic structure of this site — I never had any experience of html or php before).
One key part is getting access to aircraft databases to get more info from the ModeS hex code you get from the Piaware tracker. I am sharing my own database of planes, airports and routes I detected with one of my trackers (I have a fixed one at home, another one in Briancon in France (solar powered and connected by SigFox!) and a mobile one I take with me during my trips over the world).
When I started few years ago, I didn’t know that it will become such a fun project!
Updates
Update of installation script and new links
Update of the Radar page that now use my own positions database. Added aircraft silhouettes and Airlines logo.
Changed the domain to FoxtrotCharlie.ovh !!!
Changed landing page and reworked index for Google
Added Great Circle tracks between origin, destination and seen positions on Radar
Added Airports data, API page, better sitemap for Google index
Added a solar powered ADS-B tracker in Briancon, with a SigFox interface by SNOC to send new / special planes to this database when Wifi is off — works great!
Running an ADS-B tracker on a solar panel is quite challenging. After some research, I believed a 20W solar panel would be enough, but the stick consumption is very high, and solar energy production is far from stable… after few month using it, I would need about 80W to be able to power the system for 24h (Raspberry Pi 4 + Flightaware Pro Stick Plus + SNOC SigFox). SigFox is a great solution to replace a 4G modem which would also take too much energy. The limitation to 6 messages per hour is manageable, as I am only reporting new or special planes to this website, while the detailed data are stored and shared when the device has access to wifi.
The biggest issue I didn’t plan for was that the Pi doesn’t have a RTC, so time was wrong (it only progress when the Pi is on, about 8 to 12h per day… after few days, it was completely off). Hopefully, I could also use the downlink SigFox messages to get the network time and update the Pi time at each boot.
Here the limitation is at 4 messages per day. It is controlled by the callback feature so it is quite easy to be sure you will not exceed the budget, even with a Pi with no idea what is current date or time. Next step is to work on shuting down properly the Pi when battery is low in order to avoid memory issue. So far it works with multiple wild shutdowns per day, but I don’t know for how long.
Updated the stats page to show more details
Added tweets on Sigfox interface with Briancon tracker
Working on adding MoPi-2 on the solar powered tracker to allow clean power down. Changed all the time in UTC. With trackers everywhere, it doesn’t make sens anymore to be on Hong Kong time.
Added a new blog. Let’s hope I will post regularly from now on! API optimisation — reduced the errors from 2% to 0.05%
New landing page with a RSS feed reader to get up to date links to my blog posts. Let’s see the impact on Search ranking!
Upgraded all my Raspberry Pi code to Python3. I have been delaying that for a long time, but it was much easier than expected. Further optimisation of the API to reduce the error rate further. Some trackers are now at 0 errors, some still at 0.05%, still struggling to understand why.
Added tweets for key aircraft on ADSBexchange and daily’s catch of special and military aircraft, with screenshot. Adding tar1090 on all my trackers.
Interesting links on ADS-B trackers
The Mashable article that started everything,
Flyover github, a great place to start,
Piaware from Flightaware,
Raspberry Pi,
SonicGoose, that inspired me to create my own database of aircraft, flights, airports…
ADSB-Exchange which has great APIs and a true global, unfiltered coverage,
The very good adsb-receiver on github,
The awesome OpenSky, with it’s great interface,
The excellent AboveTustin, if you want to tweet the planes flying over,
Radarspotting for its aircraft silhouettes and forum always full of resources,
tar1090, the interface used by ADSBexchange,
And for sure Foxtrotcharlie!
Have fun with your ADS-B trackers!
