As the 2020 FAA mandate for ADS-B comes upon us, more aircraft are using the ADS-B system. Additionally, weather transmission via towers is a major free source of in-flight weather info. Having recently picked up a new iPad, and subscribing to FireFlight, I decided it was time to add the ability to see ADS-B traffic, and snag weather.
Having done a bit of homework, I knew there were some open source solutions available, so of course that’s the way I was going to go. Heck I even considered repurposing one of my other rPi’s for the job, but meh, better to dedicate a box for it!
With a flight coming up where I wanted the weather, I decided I wanted to get something to use NOW. Amazon same-day-delivery to the rescue! Here’s what I bought:
- Vilros rPi, preloaded MicroSD, case, and a tuneable SDR reciever
- 3A 12V car charger (the pI wants something like 2.3A max, so I wanted to give it more than the minimum)
- Second RTL-SDR receiver (not that I HAD to have this, but I figured 2 receivers wouldn’t hurt)
All in I was @ $120 for the setup. Consider that the closest commercial product runs 3 or 4x more!
So this must be trouble to set up, right? Anything but! Upon recieving the components, I had the system working in ~ 8minutes! The work required is to:
- install heat sinks on rPi IC’s
- install rPi into case
- insert microSD card
- insert USB tuner(s)
- insert power supply USB
- plug in
- connect on the iPad.
Unbelievably simple! This couldn’t be any easier for a “maker” project. In the pic below you can see the antenna I hung in the window, the case and tuner, and the iPad with the Stratux host page open. I experimented with using both receivers, and each receiver solo, and found that using 2 receivers really improved the # of detected 978Mhz signals. Not sure why, but I’ll take it!
-Austin