How to make your own 'Flightradar 24' which displays the position of the plane in real time

The service " Flightradar 24 " which displays the airplane's location information in real time has a high popularity, especially for aviation fans. Understanding the mechanism that "How does Flightradar 24 acquire real-time position information of an airplane?", DmitrySpb 79 of software developer explains that you can create your own original Flightradar 24 system.

Flightradar 24 - how it works? / Habr
https://habr.com/en/post/440596/

Flightradar 24 is a service that can display almost real time location information of an airplane on Google Maps and can check many airplanes flying around the world.

Flightradar 24
https://www.flightradar24.com

The location information is updated every few seconds Flightradar 24 is a service that can be enjoyed just by watching the view but real time position data of the airplane is reproduced from the information received from aviation enthusiasts.

Data sent by enthusiasts is a signal of flight telemetry which is always equipped with a private passenger plane called "ADS - B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast)". The device in the red frame of the following image is ADS - B.

ADS - B sends information on airplane type, coordinates, destination etc using unencrypted 1090 MHz radio signal. The enthusiasts intercept this ADS - B signal and send it to Flightradar 24.

Since the signal is transmitted at 1 MB / s, it only takes 0.00012 seconds to transmit the data.

According to DmitrySpb 79, the RTL-SDR dongle that can intercept the ADS-B signal is from $ 15 (about 1700 yen), and the following antenna equipped kit can be purchased from China with 27 dollars (about 3000 yen).

DmitrySpb 79 said that he is using the Raspberry Pi available from $ 20 (about 2200 yen) to run the program for RTL-SDR to receive the ADS-B signal. The program is also very simple to execute the following code.

sudo bash -c "$ (wget -O - http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)"

When you access Raspberry Pi's IP address, the airplane status is displayed.

On the account page of Flightradar 24, the information received and uploaded will be visualized and displayed as follows.

There is a big reason for aviation fans to acquire flight data of aircraft and send them to Flightradar24. Flightradar 24 offers a premium service of 50 dollars a month (about 5500 yen) as a paid service, but users who sent the flight data can get a premium account for free in return. Thus, Flightradar 24's service is realized by the data provided by air fans.

In addition, Flightradar 24 offers users a free dedicated equipment kit for collecting flight data. Not all applications will be approved by the free kit offering program, but DmitrySpb 79 says that there is a high possibility of receiving support if the user is small.

Dmitry Spb 79, who lives on the 6th floor of the building near the airport and is receiving nearly 1000 airplane data per day, not only sends data to Flightradar 24, but also creates original flight maps .

First, you can run the Raspberry Pi decoder locally by using the program published on the GitHub page below.

GitHub - antirez / dump 1090: Dump 1090 is a simple mode S decoder for RTLSDR devices
https://github.com/antirez/dump1090

All you need is to enter the following three commands ......

git clone https://github.com/antirez/dump1090.git
cd dump 1090 /
make

It is only to activate the decoder.

./dump1090 --interactive --net

When the decoder is activated, the raw data is listed.

Furthermore, it is also possible to create a dedicated Flightradar 24 for yourself by loading the log on the map.

According to DmitrySpb 79, Flightradar 24 checks the flight data, it seems that screening eliminates data information on some passenger aircraft, such as government aircraft and VIP business jet. Being able to create your own Flightradar 24 without receiving "censorship" by Flightradar 24 seems to give great joy to airmanians like Mr. DmitrySpb79.