NOTICE: After years of ADSB Exchange being a viable alternative to those that want to feed their ADSB data to a platform that doesn’t censor it in return for money later on, its original founder has gone against those that worked so hard to develop and support the platform and sold the site. It is unclear what the future will hold but please bear this in mind if you’re wanting to feed data.
After becoming interested in planes and aviation after spending so much time on flights in the last few years I explored ways to combine my tech and aviation interests together. With a handful of different Raspberry Pi computers sitting around doing nothing, I decided that picking up an ADS-B Tuner and feeding to ADSB Exchange & co was the next step!
ADSB Exchange is another alternative to the “big guys” that you likely already know about; Flightradar24 and FlightAware. Saying that, ADS-B Exchange actually boasts the largest co-operative of unfiltered flight data in the world. Want to check out military aircraft that Flightradar24 and FlightAware filter out? Then this may be the exchange you want to feed and support.
This guide will be similar to the RetroPie guide that I wrote as it consists of the same steps with a different image being burned.
Table of Contents
Burning the ADSB Exchange Pi Image
- Download the latest image
- Download and install Balena Etcher to burn to SD (Here)
- Open Etcher and select the image you just downloaded
- Select the SD Card “Target” to burn the image to -`Hit “Flash!” and wait for it to complete
Configuration
Now you’ve got your image burned, it’s time to start configuring it for your needs. Make sure to follow these steps very carefully!
Sample 1090 Single SDR adsb-config.txt
LATITUDE=13.366081
LONGITUDE=-121.694665
ALTITUDE=1050ft
USER="buster_adsbx"
DUMP1090=yes
GAIN=49.6
DUMP978=no
Edit the above sample adsb-config.txt with your own information and altitude of the antenna in MSL. Use notepad or a basic text editor. Don’t use a fancy editor or Word for example and do not use magic quotes or change the format! Be sure to also change USER to a unique name for your Pi. Once updated, save adsb-config.txt to the SD card on the /boot folder.
WiFi / Network Setup
The image uses the default Raspbian setup for WiFi connections in the form of a wpa_supplicant.conf file. Before you power on your Pi with the new SD card you need to edit the wpa_supplicant.conf in the /boot folder with your SSID/network name and password. After editing wpa_supplicant.conf with your own details, you can plug everything in and power on your Pi.
country=COUNTRYCODE
update_config=1
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
scan_ssid=1
ssid="NETWORKNAME"
psk="NETWORKPASSWORD"
}
SSH Setup
By default, SSH access is enabled and runs on port 22 (the default SSH port). To log in, you’ll want to use the user pi and password adsb123 but we recommend changing this when you log in using the passwd command. To help out, below are the common commands you’ll want to familiarise yourself with!
Display ADSBx Config
cat /boot/adsb-config.txt
Restart readsb service
sudo systemctl restart readsb
Show readsb status
sudo systemctl status readsb
Start Feeder Services
sudo systemctl start adsbexchange-mlat sudo systemctl start adsbexchange-feed
Restart Feeder Services
sudo systemctl restart adsbexchange-feed sudo systemctl restart adsbexchange-mlat
Show Feeder Services
sudo systemctl status adsbexchange-mlat sudo systemctl status adsbexchange-feed
Important for United States based users!
US-based SDR receivers will want to use 978MHz and you’ll need to set the serials of each SDR one at a time, Plug them in, run the appropriate command, then unplug and run the appropriate command for the other SDR.
Example commands
sudo rtl_eeprom -d 0 -s 1090 sudo rtl_eeprom -d 0 -s 978
Now edit the /boot/adsbx-env file
RECEIVER_OPTIONS="-device 1090 -device-type rtlsdr -ppm 0"
#RECEIVER_OPTIONS="-device-type rtlsdr -ppm 0"Finally, there’s a pretty Grafana dashboard available and to access this you’ll use the username admin and the password adsb123
Head over to their setup guide HERE and as you’ve already burned the image to your SD card, you can go ahead and scroll down to “Initial Configuration” where it will guide you through everything from there.
There are some great dashboards and data available to you and as soon as my extra tuner(s) turn up then I’ll be pushing to this myself (my Pi is sat ready and waiting!) and I hope you guys choose to feed your data to them as it’s a great cause. As a bonus, you get access to the data and API (for non-commercial use) for feeding so if you’re into tinkering and can make use of it.
If you start feeding to them, or you choose not to, let me know in the comments your reasons why and if you’re feeding to anyone else, let me know. I’m always looking for new sources to feed!
