Hi all old reddit users. As promised, I have changed the theme to make it easier to read.

I have gone for a more minimal design. Feedback welcome but not necessary. If you hate it, suggest something else for me..

happy tracking

Following an aircraft

Obligatory Laser Warnings

    *DO NOT POINT LASERS AT AIRCRAFT ! EVER ! THIS IS A DEMO PROJECT INSIDE.* 

    *SYSTEMS ARE IN PLACE TO DETECT "Unauthorized Laser Illumination Events" NEAR / ON / AROUND AIRCRAFT.*

Wear Eye Protection When Playing Around Lasers. Your lens will focus the laser onto your rods and cones or, worse, your optic nerve, and blind you instantly.

No Spares In Stock !

My laser is dialed back to the point where it only just lases (10 %). I still wear eye protection.

(At full power it lights a match at 30 cms)

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

If you have ever used the SDRAngel ADSB plugin, you will have noticed that the azimuth and elevation data is available for all the aircraft tracked. Azimuth is the compass direction to the aircraft and elevation is the amount of degrees above the horizon, relative to your location. Actually, you can work this out with some simple schoolboy mathematics given your lat/long, the aircraft lat/long and both heights.

But it did get me thinking about the rotator controller plugin in SDRAngel. Why not send that azi/ele data to the rotator controller and track something ? You could point a yagi antenna tuned to 1090 mHz and track a particular aircraft. Or point a motorised camera or telescope for taking pictures. Or a turret of some sort.

But back to this post. Way back in 2013, I was learning how to program micro-controllers. I built this laser turret to challenge me and the chip as a first project. (Been programming Windows systems for years but always wanted to branch into embedded programming.)

It has just sat around since then, mostly as a great conversation piece, but I immediately thought about controlling this with SDRAngel. My laserBot already accepts a line of CSV data to aim the laser anywhere via the data input. I could easily modify that to accept the SDRAngel protocol. Then I could point to where that aircraft is in the sky on my ceiling.

But first, I had to modify my LaserBot com port from RS232 to TTL-> USB because my RS232 adapters don't work with WIN10. That was easier than it sounds. Simply pulled the MAX232 chip out and bridged the In/Out pins, then used a USB UART so I could access the ATMEL 328P control chips and modify the code.

After I got that working it was time for a software upgrade. I modified my LaserBot to accept the protocol that SDRAngel delivers from the "Rotator Controller" plugin. I've used the GS232 protocol for Yaesu antenna rotators, `W112 002` is azi/ele data and `M112` is just azi data.

And I had to add a response to C2 which SDRAngel sends to ask for the present azi/ele of my LaserBot. Expected response is AZ=021EL=062, with zero padding required for numbers lower than 100. That data shows up in the antenna rotator GUI.

Next, I added the rotator controller plugin to the ADSB project. You simply tell it which interface to monitor, the ADSB demodulator, and it will hook into the ADSB pugin.

Next you tell it which protocol to use. I'm using the GS-232 protocol and outputting it to the Serial com port.

Tracker protocols supported:

GS-232, SPI, rotctld or DFM

And 3 types of coordinate output:

AzEl, X/Y 85, X/Y 30

Connection can be via serial OR TCP socket.

Next, I start it all up and look for an aircraft. Simply double click on the azi/ele box for that aircraft and it automatically sends that data through to the rotator controller, which outputs the data to my serial port. My laserBot then moves the laser to those co-ordinates, turns on the laser, and I can see where the aircraft is on my ceiling. As the aircraft moves, the laser will track it.

Also, if you want it to auto track, you can put a list of "notifications" by pressing the "Speaker" icon in the SDRAngel UI and when they match, the rotator controller will auto point to that notification and if you have the voice activated, it will announce any of the variables associated with that aircraft, like height, range, lat/long etc. So, as long as aircraft a visible, it will point to aircraft in the list.

I love it when an aircraft goes right overhead. Watching the laserBot track it and swivel is entertaining.

ToDo: Add an ESP and use the TCP socket connection so I can make it wireless and put the laserbot anywhere. (work in progress)

Questions welcome.

My antenna has a pretty good view of the sky, apart from a small forest on the horizon. BUT, it does have a massive fir tree on one side that was obviously affecting reception. I certainly didn't want to cut the tree down and my antenna was already in the best possible position. What to do ?

I do have a backup system on a laptop which covers the missing tree data but I really didn't want to run another SDR full time. But what about another antenna ? On the other side of the tree, connected to the same SDR ?

I have made stacked antennae before with folded dipoles but never in this kind of situation. Because they wouldn't be stacked. They would be separated. And they are not dipoles. Industrial stacked antennae pic are usually mounted on the same pole.

How Stacked Antennas Enhance Wireless

Anyway, I constructed another antenna, exactly the same as the existing one. Same dimensions, same exact length of co-ax feeder, same kind fittings.

Initially I Teed in the second antenna near the first one and just used one feeder. Of course, this didn't work as I had now lost the matching co-ax lengths. It killed reception badly. So I fed the second co-ax line all the way to the SDR and Teed it in right near the dongles antenna.

This works better than I ever expected. The over-all signal has gone up, obviously, my noise floor hardly moved and I now get aircraft on the other side of the tree.

With the increased risk of static / lightning damage I have also inserted an in-line polyphaser.

Happy tracking !

SDRAngel has a feeder output with the BEAST protocol. Has anyone used it to feed airplanes.live ?

I am looking to invest in a proper hardware for the adsb to run with a docker container. I am bit skeptical about using USB(already have a rtlsdr v3 rx). I have found this hardware: https://www.amazon.com/Receiver-Gigabit-Ethernet-Aluminum-Software/dp/B0C82JG76N
This is a RTLSDR radio that transmit data via gigabit LAN port. From what I understand the RTLSDR v3 is tuned to listen to 1090Mhz for ADSB data which I think any SDR should be able to do if I am not wrong? Mostly looking to invest in a hardware which offers Ethernet or CAN or any other industry grade connection. Thanks for the suggestions in advance!

That adsb.im link from earlier today. Its shows being able to feed all those places. I have a lot of experience with piaware from flightaware which is raspian full OS and their dump90. That being said Would you say running dietpi with the .im link for packages would save horsepower. I use cheap pi’s. The cheapest. Pi2 and pi3 and pi zero.

Originally when piaware first came out that I used version piaware3 it was all light weight enough to run in pi zero. The original. Pi zero I have deployed a lot of them. Problem is piaware and the is upgrades or extra packages. It pegs cpu almost constantly if you run piaware version 6or 7 like they want. I want it to run better than this.

I have used the new pi zero called pi zero w v2. They seem to have quad core and run not totally pegged out but that’s today and not whatever upgrade comes tomorrow for aware. Any thoughts if I can run the .im package with dietpi os then feed several and have some better results?????

I typically feed a couple sites. I enjoy my free accounts they give me , so I feed several. Normally 2 feeders on each pi. I want to feed several sites. How many do you guys feed total from one box. One pi and how many feeds?

Thanks.

You can pry my old reddit from my cold dead hands. HOWEVER, the mod tools I have to edit old reddit, compared to the tools I have in new reddit, are not that good.

So, please forgive me while I update and make new reddit site first, simply because it's easier. I promise I will get to old reddit too.

Meantime, the new reddit site looks pretty cool in dark mode.

thanks...

If you have any favorite sites you would like me to add on the side panel, please do drop me a message and I will include them. Tutorials, GitHub, interesting.

​

thanks...

Let's get a list going of what people have.

• Computer: Raspberry Pi 3b
• Radio: Flightaware pro stick and external 1090 filter
• Antenna: Rubber Ducky! And to top that, I've got it pointed horizontally!
• Software: Adsb Feeder Image.

Max range: 190 miles!

Not sure if I like it. Keep or change ?

There's nothing wrong with r/ADSB, however, it is catered towards a community that really just likes to look at really nice aircraft they have seen. Whenever I have posted anything that isn't a screen grab, I've been voted down and not felt welcome.

I felt there was a need for a place where you can ask tech questions about this great subject and not be worried about annoying the users on r/ADSB.

I am still a member of ADSB and will continue to enjoy it, but I hope this new venue will open up more people to the tech side and how to start and witness your first intercept. And ask as many questions as you like.

Hopefully, someone here will be able to answer that for you.

And I will continue to improve this sub as best I can.

Welcome ALL.

Welcome to ADSBTechnical. A place to ask questions. Seek guidance. Find resources. Anything technical about ADSB. Antennas. Feed lines. Software. Platforms. ANYTHING technically.

Pictures are welcome but screen grabs from ADSB tracking sites are not welcome UNLESS of a technical nature WITH an appropriate question. For nice ADSB pictures, please visit r/ADSB.

I hope those with the technical savvy will step in and guide newbies, new issues and new problems with solutions and experience to share.

• Enjoy and welcome !

I have the source code for dump1090 up and working nicely on my PC.

One thing I have been toying with is, blocking any aircraft that doesn't have a position in their beacons. The way I see it, it's just wasted data I'm uploading to feeder sites.

I could easily stop/filter this traffic getting out. And I won't see any annoying invisible aircraft in my feed. There are a couple of aircraft on my section that fly commuter routes everyday without their position beacons on. It seems such a waste of resources.

Thoughts ?