Wesley Mitchell's Raspberry Pi Flight Tracker Puts Local Aircraft on a Quartet of 64×64 LED Matrices
Receiving ADS-B signals using an RTL-SDR, this Python-driven display maps out nearby aircraft in real-time.
Maker Wesley Mitchell has put a quartet of 64×64 RGB LED matrices and a Raspberry Pi to work tracking nearby aircraft, using data gathered by an RTL-SDR software-defined radio dongle.
"I built this flight tracker from four 64×64 LED matrices, a Raspberry Pi 4, and a[n] RTL-SDR dongle," Mitchell explains of the project, which provides live tracking of aircraft within radio range. "I am using Dump 1090 [ADS-B software] and RTL-SDR to receive ADS-B data from aircraft."
The Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system sees aircraft broadcasting their current locations to anyone who'll listen — and while that's traditional air traffic control or other aircraft, there's nothing to stop anyone with curiosity and a suitable radio receiver from picking up the same signals.
In Mitchell's case, that receiver is a low-cost receive-only RTL-SDR dongle — based on hardware originally designed to pick up TV signals, but now a go-to gadget for cheap software-defined radio projects. The signals from nearby aircraft are decoded by the open source Dump 1090 software, then mapped onto the LED matrices using a Python package Mitchell developed for the purpose.
More information is available in Mitchell's Reddit thread, with source code available on GitHub under an unspecified license.