Article: Why I Have a Flight Tracker in My Home

[jbman]

I have a single Pi3 running docker with ultrafeeder. If you can get the USB part sorted with your synology then this would be a good solution. One config file yml and everything is going with ultrafeeder.

 

[jamesatfish]

Thanks for the write-up, it prompted me to get around to setting a tracker up myself using the hardware suggestions posted in this thread.

Have to find time to get up on the roof and mount the antenna in a better spot, and get a right-angle USB-C power cable so it looks a bit neater, but otherwise happy with how it all turned out.

Edit: tweaked the display a bit to make it a bit more visually interesting.

 

[sudoer]

Have enjoyed tracking the RAAF Roulettes visit to the Easter Show this afternoon, got a pretty decent flyover at home too.

 

[sudoer]

Thanks for the write-up, it prompted me to get around to setting a tracker up myself using the hardware suggestions posted in this thread.

I'd love to hear more about the display and what Pi image/additional software is powering it!

I am considering building something like The Flight Wall Mini. I'm lucky enough to have a nice westerly view of traffic departing 34L / approaching 16R

 

[aaa99]

I'd love to hear more about the display and what Pi image/additional software is powering it!

I am considering building something like The Flight Wall Mini. I'm lucky enough to have a nice westerly view of traffic departing 34L / approaching 16R

It seems like the standard Raspberry Pi display from Waveshare.

I am curious about the software as well, particularly the database used.
Currently, my setup uses the free ADSBDB database to extract aircraft registrations from hexcodes and determine routes from the call signs. While this is extensive, the info is not updated fast enough (Free, cant complain). For example, the Qantas A220 and A321XLR fleets as well as the newer Jetstar fleets are not in there. So, I had to manually add a local lookup table. The same is true for Flight numbers. DAL12 (the recently launched MEL-LAX) service shows up as ATL-SEA

 

[jamesatfish]

It seems like the standard Raspberry Pi display from Waveshare.

I am curious about the software as well, particularly the database used.
Currently, my setup uses the free ADSBDB database to extract aircraft registrations from hexcodes and determine routes from the call signs. While this is extensive, the info is not updated fast enough (Free, cant complain). For example, the Qantas A220 and A321XLR fleets as well as the newer Jetstar fleets are not in there. So, I had to manually add a local lookup table. The same is true for Flight numbers. DAL12 (the recently launched MEL-LAX) service shows up as ATL-SEA

The touch screen is an SPI screen / case kit I picked up on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B083C12N57. It's being driven by an RPi 4B, with the RadarBox ADS-B USB stick recommended earlier in the thread.

The software is something custom I put together. The core components are there to collect data and send to the various online services (dump1090-fa, piaware, fr24feed), the UI layer sits alongside and pulls data from the dump1090-fa database on device.

It uses hexdb.io to retrieve the aircraft info, photos and airport details, and adsbdb.com for the flight route details. Aircraft details are cached locally for 7 days.

It currently misses routes fairly regularly, I'm going to need to find a better solution for that. I suspect I'll look at FlightRadar24's API given I have a paid account (even before the account you get for publishing data).

I'm thinking of throwing it up into a public Git repo if others would find it useful but need to confirm the licence terms for the embedded libraries and the API services before I do.

I'm also working on a tablet-sized display that pulls the local data and integrates that into a pre-flight tool for recreational aviation. Still sorting out the UI concept before I start building.