Awesome ADS-B

Note Just type adsb.cool to go here.

A curated list of awesome ASD-B tools, projects, docker images, resources and other shiny things 📡.

Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) is a surveillance technology and form of Electronic Conspicuity in which an aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation or other sensors and periodically broadcasts it, enabling it to be tracked.

Contents

• Docs and Quickstarts
• Books and Articles
• ADS-B Aggregators
  • Open source orientated
  • Community driven
  • Non-profits
  • Commercial
  • Other
• Software
  • General
  • Feeding
  • Visualisation
  • Browser extensions
  • Apps
  • Social
• Hardware
  • SBC
  • Receivers
  • Filters
  • Antennas
• Follow

Docs and Quickstarts

• ADS-B docker guide - Everything you want to know about ADS-B reception, decoding and sharing.
• ADS-B equipment guide - A excellent ADS-B hardware guide written by the community.
• PiAware ADS-B tutorial - FlightAware's ADS-B setup tutorial.
• ADSB-B transponders guide - A guide explaining the difference between 978 and 1090 MHz transponders.

Books and Articles

• The 1090 Megahertz Riddle - Junzi Sun - A Guide to Decoding Mode S and ADS-B Signals.

ADS-B Aggregators

Note The aggregators below are displayed per category based on the number of feeders on 27-02-2023. If the number of feeders was unavailable, sites were compared based on the number of planes they tracked. Feel free to open a create a pull request if you think the order needs to be updated.

Open source orientated

• adsb.fi - A community-driven flight tracker with hundreds of feeders worldwide that provides open and unfiltered access to worldwide air traffic data.
• ADSB One - A one-stop resource for all aero-related information and a community-driven aggregator for aero-feed data legally dedicated to the public interest.
• ADSB.lol - A completely open-source and community-driven flight tracker that displays and provides ODbL-licensed data via a free API as well as free historical data.

Community driven

• ADSBHub.org - A service for real-time ADS-B data sharing and exchange between plane tracking enthusiasts, plane spotters, radio amateurs and professionals interested in developing ADS-B-related software.
• TheAirTraffic - A community-driven ADS-B aggregator dedicated to keeping the air-tracking data on their site open and unfiltered.
• PlaneSpotters.net - A civil aviation database and aggregator with a large collection of aircraft photos and information.
• Plane.watch - A community hosted flight tracker.
• www.live-military-mode-s.eu - A community driven flight tracker that is focused at tracking military aircraft.
• adsb.chaos-consulting.de - A non-commercial tracker for flights, ships, and radiosondes managed by enthusiasts. Focuses on the contributions of individual feeding stations.

Non-profits

• Opensky Network - The OpenSky Network is a non-profit association based in Switzerland that provides open access to flight tracking control data. It was set up as a research project by several universities and government entities to improve the security, reliability and efficiency of the airspace.

Commercial

• FlightAware¹ - An American multinational technology company that provides real-time, historical, and predictive flight tracking data and products.
• FlightRadar24¹ - A Swedish internet-based service that shows real-time aircraft flight tracking information on a map.
• RadarBox¹ - A Tampa-based global flight tracking and data services company that offers worldwide commercial and general aviation flight tracking.
• ADS-B Exchange - A flight tracking company that offers high fidelity, stable, and secure flight tracking service. It was started by volunteers and flight enthusiasts but was recently acquired by JETNET.
• PlaneFinder.net¹ - A United Kingdom-based real-time flight tracking service shows global flight data like flight numbers, how fast an aircraft moves, elevation, and travel destination.
• AvDelphi - An aviation data and services company that shows airframes, registrations, types, airports and flights, radar and nav points, and owner and flight histories.
• RadarVirtuel - A flight data collector that offers premium features. Its primary focus is collecting information about traffic around smaller airports worldwide.

Other

• Airframes.io - Airframes is an aircraft-related aggregation service that receives ACARS, VDL, HFDL, and SATCOM data from volunteers worldwide. It collaborates closely with ADS-B aggregators and works with ADS-B data internally.
• gcmb.io - ADS-B data from ABSBHub.org published via the MQTT protocol.

Software

General

• readsb - ADS-B decoder swiss knife.
• dump1090 - A simple Mode S decoder for RTLSDR devices.
• flightmon - Simple command-line "GUI" for showing current dump1090/readsb data.
• sdr-enthusiasts/plane-alert-db - A list of exciting aircraft - Governments, Dictators, Military, Historical and just plain odd.
• junzis/pyModeS - A python decoder for Mode S and ADS-B signals.

Feeding

• sdr-enthusiasts/docker-adsb-ultrafeeder - All-in-one ADSB container with readsb, tar1090, graphs1090, autogain, multi-feeder, and mlat-hub built in.
• adsbfi/adsb-fi-scripts - Easy to use feeder install script for feeding to adsb.fi.
• adsblol/feed - Easy to use, container-based MLAT/ADS-B/ACARS/VDL2 multi feed client. Powered by SDR-Enthusiasts images.
• adsb.im - Simple to use ADS-B Feeder Images. Setup a single board computer (such as Raspberry Pi) to receive and share aircraft ADS-B position reports without command line/terminal skills required. Allows sharing data with both open-source and commercial flight tracking websites.

Visualisation

• wiedehopf/tar1090 - A great way to view your ADS-B data.
• Grafana - Open source analytics and monitoring solution for every database.

Apps

• d4rken/adsb-meta-tracker - An android ADS-B Meta Tracker that shows metadata about ADS-B aggregators.

Social

• docker-planefence - A little tool that can be used to log, display and tweet the aircraft that come within range of your receiver (i.e. the fence).
• Jxck-S/plane-notify - Notify if a selected plane has taken off or landed using OpenSky or ADS-B Exchange data.

ADS-B Derived Data

• aircraft-flight-schedules - Open-source datasets featuring global, high-level flight schedules extracted from worldwide aircraft ADS-B position transmissions (2024+ onwards). Covers all flights globally as long as within coverage of the ADSBlol initiative.

Hardware

SBC

• Raspberry Pi - Small single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom.
• Orange Pi - Single-board computers created using OS cost-effective hardware.
• Banana Pi - Single-bard computers created by a Chinese open-source hardware community.

Receivers

• FlightAware ADS-B USB receivers - ADS-B USB receivers made by FlightAware.
• AirNav RadarBox ADS-B USB receivers - ADS-B USB receivers made by RadarBox.
• RTL-SDR DONGLES - A premium RTL-SDR dongle provider focused on maintaining fair retail pricing.

Filters

Warning Some ADS-B USB receivers already contain an onboard filter.

• FlightAware Signal filters - Different signal filters made by FlightAware.

Antennas

• Vinnant antennas - Specialized premium antennas made in Slovakia.
• DPD antennas - High-quality antennas for various radio services produced in the USA.

Follow

TODO: Please create a pull request if you know people in the ADS-B space that are worth following.

Who else should we be following?

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Contributing

Contributions of any kind are welcome 💙! Please check out the contributing guidelines.

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people that contributed!

Footnotes

1. Adheres to the FAA's Aircraft Tail Number Blocking/Unblocking list list. Therefore, the data found on this platform is filtered and may not include all data found on other aggregators. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴