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Comment by SteveNuts | Hacker News Reader

Another fun project would be to build your own ADS-B receiver!

https://www.adsbexchange.com/ways-to-join-the-exchange/

Just a few weeks ago I got interested in this as well ("where does FR24 get its data from?"). I ended up buying a cheap RTL-SDR dongle (R820T2) and a small outdoor antenna. I run the free dump1090 tool (I'm on Fedora) to decode ADS-B messages, then my own simple "radar-like" visualization program ([1]) connects to dump1090's network socket to receive decoded data (SBS1 textual format). Even with the antenna just sitting in my room (on a photo tripod), I typically receive data from 10-20 aircraft, up to 190 km away. I drove to a hilltop this weekend (some 600 m higher) and immediately got >100 aircraft, up to 500 km.

[1] https://github.com/GreatAttractor/plane-tracker

I don't have any experience with it myself, but you can provide your ADS-B data to ADS-B exchange. https://www.adsbexchange.com/ways-to-join-the-exchange/

If you share your data with these sites, they usually give you premium access for free.

https://www.flightradar24.com/premium

I share ADS-B data, how do I activate my free Business plan subscription?

Please sign up for a free Basic account using the following link using the same email address with which you registered your feed. Once your feed is live, your complimentary Business subscription will be activated.

Heads up - IIRC ADSB-exchange was sold out, an alternative might be adsb.fi

Regardless you can send your ADS-B data to all of them - ADSB-exchange, adsb.fi, flightradar, flightaware, etc.

That way you get all of the benefits and contribute community data.

aiui there was some kerfuffle over adsb.fi DNS ownership - I think https://airplanes.live is where the OSS community gravitated.

Ah I've been out of the loop - thanks for correcting me!

The ADS-B Exchange situation is more complicated than it "was sold out," and there are valid reasons for not wanting to use them–but it is still the most comprehensive source of uncensored flight tracking data.

I have done the same thing in C# and ArcGIS maps.

I'm going to test it out in an airplane. My map is dynamic, doesn't have to be stationary, and works offline.

I set one up a few months ago and was really surprised at how much coverage I got–I thought I might need an outdoor one, or at least to fiddle with it a bit, but even just plopped on my desk behind my computer screen on the ground floor of a three story house in a dense area I’m picking up planes from miles all around.

I built a little app that processes the data to count how many are flying low over the park nearby, so I can go there when it’s quiet: https://noisy.today/prospect-park/

I see your use of rust, and I have to mention I designed a Rust ADS-B decoder and TUI radar application myself ([1])

[1] https://github.com/rsadsb/adsb_deku/

Thanks, good to know! Looks like I'll switch to dump1090_rs.

Once you have a receiver, you can use a raspberry pi image like https://adsb.im/home to easily feed data to more than 20 different networks. FlightAware, FlightRadar24, ADS-B Exchange, airplanes.live, TheAirTraffic, etc. Most of the networks give extra privileges to people who feed them data.

Not as fun as building your own, but note that you can apply for a free receiver from FR24.

https://www.flightradar24.com/apply-for-receiver

That's incredible, whats the catch!?

I reckon if I shelled out for a business plan I could start doing some simple stuff with free tier / extra paid features

> That's incredible, whats the catch!?

They prioritize low-coverage areas (no idea how generous they are for covered areas).

Nearly all of their position data is from these receivers, so you're providing them with more coverage/redundancy for the plane positions.

The hardware is relatively cheap (under 50$) and I don't imagine the business tier costs them much money.

> I reckon if I shelled out for a business plan I could start doing some simple stuff with free tier / extra paid features

You don't need to they'll give it to you for free.

sidenote: You can build your own with an rtl-sdr and a raspberry pi/cheap computer. If you do this you can forward the data to all of the commercial sites for the free perks, and to all of the community sites.

Mine serves as a fun party trick. I never built this out but I always wanted to build a little display that shows the overhead plane's src/dest, speed, and altitude using the antenna.

That's quite genius, I wonder whether Apple's I/O and Radio APIs will let me do this on mobile...

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