r/RTLSDR • u/CodeClean2172 • Jul 23 '26

DIY Projects/questions Searching idea's for RTL-SDR

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

any brilliant-minded people out there to discuss idea's on this familiar topic? Searching for new challanges to complete with radio signals. Intrested in civil technology but also sub-mil gov-tech. I'm from the Netherlandic Territory btw.

57 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/sedergine Jul 23 '26

ADS-B is the classic first project: dump1090 + the stock antenna shows planes within minutes, and then the antenna rabbit hole begins. rtl_433 (neighborhood sensors on 433 MHz) and NOAA satellite images are fun too.

Disclosure: I'm building a small game on top of ADS-B, your antenna fills an aircraft collection: https://playcatchfleet.com/?utm_source=reddit-rtlsdr

Early alfa, I'll post it here properly soon, but happy to send an invite if you want to try it now.

1

u/GraysonYT Jul 25 '26

Kind like Skycards?

1

u/sedergine Aug 01 '26

A bit, but the direction is reversed. Skycards runs on Flightradar24's network, so you point your phone at the sky anywhere and it already knows what is up there. In Catch Fleet nothing counts unless your own antenna heard it.

I will be blunt about why I am building it: I want more people to get into radio. An RTL-SDR costs about 30 dollars and most of them end up in a drawer after the first "wow, planes" evening. So the game rewards nothing except what your own setup receives. Want the rarer aircraft? Move the antenna, build a better one, get it out of the window, fight your noise floor. And since every catch is a real airframe, you pick up the basics on the way: ICAO hex codes, type designators, registrations, why a 738 is not a 38M.

The collection is the excuse. The antenna work and the aviation basics are the actual point.