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Comment by OliverJones | Hacker News Reader

I'm an open-source dump1090-on-rPi fanboi. This thing works great. I live near a somewhat dangerous river mouth, and dump1090 shows me who the helicopters are when they show up. Coast Guard? TV News?

I use it with a cheezy indoor antenna for my rtl-sde dongle. Plenty of range for what I'm doing.

I can also see the high-altitude airliners going to and from JFK.

If you live in the sticks (I don't) flightAware will provide their rPi / receiver / antenna for free, in return for your data feed. I think they're still trying to get more receivers in places like Labrador and Greenland -- definitely fly-over territory.

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Regarding the last bit, that is correct. We (I'm FlightAware's ADS-B Program Manager) send ADS-B receivers free of charge to places we need better coverage. Labrador and Greenland are great examples. If you're interested please visit our website, specifically the FlightFeeder page.

Thank you! I have been running one of those FlightFeeders for over a year now. Antenna mounted on the roof at 11m above ground. As an EE I can say those feeders have much better hardware than average Pi+RTL-SDR+wire. Thanks to a very good GNSS receiver inside I can also now tell exactly where my house is at any time ;). Have you also tried to use the data from GPS network for any other purpose than flight tracking (seismology, atmospheric studies)?

Glad you like our gear and really appreciate you being a host!

We haven't done anything with the GPS data yet and probably won't with this generation of FlightFeeders. We're currently in the design phase for a Pi4 based kit with a brand new FlightAware designed SDR. Part of that project includes an Epic for what we're calling "Science Packages" internally. What you suggest fits in with that concept.

Do you have any plans to include AIS for ship tracking as well? I guess that would need a second SDR, or perhaps you can cycle through the two frequencies and get enough messages to still be usable?

Edit: Or maybe support for ATC radio traffic? Again, it probably needs a second SDR, but it would make it much easier for those who are interested than it is now. I would love to be able to just run some daemon and get an audio stream on a local port and maybe an audio player in the web client.

Considering FlightAware is getting rich off your data, selling blocking services, actively working against enthusiasts through lobbying with NBAA and EU authorities.

FA / FR24 offering nothing in return but a fake enterprise account, a bunch of gimmicks, basically good marketing to trick fools into proving them 10 of millions of dollars in free data a month.

Suggest looking up https://www.adsbexchange.com/ and talking to them about hardware - that way everyone can make good use of the data instead of FlightAware and Daniel Baker getting rich from a business model based on extortion.

Absurd to me that people brag about hosting FlightAware or FR24 hardware while in reality all they are is getting fucked while FA and FR24 run off with bags of money.

Yes, I plan on building a custom antenna so I can place it outside

The antenna from Pimoroni in the UK are a good price and give you a good splat (I get nearly 200nm from near sea level in London with an antenna in a window).

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