Watching Planes on Linux

[TN.Frank]

Small aircraft use a different freq. then the larger ones. Something like 960MHz or around there, can't really remember off the top of my head but I or you could look it up.

[james92]

Found this today http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html

Edited May 23, 2014 by james92

[cooper]

James, please be aware that when you post a link you should put the closing url tag immediately adjacent to the last character of the URL. Any excess characters including whitespace are included in the URL and result in a non-working link.

That's a pretty cool link right there. It seems to imply that police helicopters transmit their location aswell which isn't what I would've expected them to do.

Edited May 23, 2014 by Cooper

[digital_magi]

These were commercial airliners. I was tracking them both visually overhead and on the dump1090 browser tracker. I looked around and tried to match them up and noticed that several that I could plainly see showed no transponder on the screen.

I'll do some research. It's a super-busy airport, maybe they use multiple frequencies due to congestion or something. The output from the dump script was flowing furiously, just tons of traffic on the channel.

[TN.Frank]

"It was a raw clip from a news helicopter filming a police chase in Kansas City, Missouri." News helicopter, not PD.

[jim539587]

Been enjoying the series on Hak5 - I found out about dump1090 by reading this topic.

I found a fork of dump1090 that I like better than the original.

Software: git clone git://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090.git

Instructions for compiling are the same as for the original in the first post.

Once this is compiled and running, edit config.js in the public_html folder and enter your location for map settings and site settings. Set SiteShow=true and it will show you how far away the plane is. I'm seeing about 75-100 nautical miles out with my indoor setup.

If you select a plane, this also draws a line on the map showing the track.

This program also shows a signal column in the interactive mode, so you can get a relative idea of the signal strength when you switch antennas.

I recommend that you fire up gqrx and locate a station at a known frequency - the local NWS station on 162.xxx mhz is a good candidate. Then set the frequency to match exactly. If the station is centered in gqrx - then no further adjustment is needed. If the station is not in the center, adjust the frequency correction in the input controls until the station is coming in on the right frequency. In my case, I had to set it to 65 to make the frequency display accurate.

Take the value from gqrx and feed it into the --ppm argument for dump1090. I find that this makes a noticeable difference in the number of planes detected.

I've tested a lot of command line options. The current command line I am using is:

./dump1090 --enable-agc --aggressive --interactive --interactive-ttl 300 --net --net-http-port 8080 --ppm 65 --modeac

This turns on both the interactive window and the maps at localhost:8080. It also sets the timeout for the interactive mode to 5 minutes. The maps have a different timeout, so the planes disappear on the map about a minute after loss of signal.

You can also see interesting stuff if you open another terminal and

telnet localhost 30002

or

telnet localhost 30003

[Karit]

Not all planes have an ADS-B (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADS-B) transmitter. Some planes have Mode-S (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_control_radar_beacon_system#Mode_S) which through MLAT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration) can be triangulated buy ATC or FlightRader-24 Boxes (requires GPS based clocks on receiver to get time accurate enough. Nano Seconds. And then need at least four boxes to receive the single and then someone to crunch the numbers). Then below Mode S there is also other modes that don't provide enough to identify the plane. They don't include the ICAO code which uniquely IDs the plane. ADS-B and Mode-S do contain the ICAO code so can identify which plane the beacon came from. Also ADS-B and Mode-S send their beacons about once a second. The other transponders only broadcast when hit by a primary radar and then only send their 4 digit transponder ident squawk code, which can't be mapped to a plane especially with VFR when there is a single code to indicate to indicate a VFR flight.

Also in the US due to congestion GA planes with ADS-B use 978MHz leaving the Airlines to use 1090MHz so basically ADS-B in the US is spread over two frequencies. I am not aware of any other airspaces that split ADS-B over two frequencies.

The Mode S planes are the ones in dump 1090 which show up without a lat/long, heading, speed.

I got dump1090 up and running on a Kali laptop and took it on the road today. Everything seemed to work fine, but not every plane was tracked. I'm not sure why. I parked in easy view of the airspace over a huge international airport and started scanning with the dongle antenna roof-mounted.

At max count I only had 11 aircraft on screen, yet I could easily count many more that in the sky just using my eyes.

I am a beginner at this, so I am sure there is something I am missing. Do all airlines use the same protocol or are there competing systems and this software only decodes one version or something?

Either way it's cool, and fascinating to watch. See a plane in the sky and know just what it is and where it's going, etc.

BTW, thank you for this thread and the helpful tips on dependencies :) Made it a breeze to install on Kali.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Karit

[digital_magi]

Thanks Karit! Very informative. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge and clearing up that little mystery for me. I can see there is much more to learn and explore. Never knew much about aviation digital modes before now, mostly limited to listening to the ATC and voice chatter with a scanner or ham radio.

These cheap SDR receivers have opened up a whole new area of exploration with the digital modes and I am having a lot of fun. Again, thanks for the reply. Cheers!

[TheZakMan]

TN.Frank here is how i fixed the same error you had.

write in terminal

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and then replace all text with this

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 _Kali_ - Official Snapshot i386 LIVE/INSTALL $

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 _Kali_ - Official Snapshot i386 LIVE/INSTALL $

## Security updates
deb http://http.kali.org/ /kali main contrib non-free
deb http://http.kali.org/ /wheezy main contrib non-free
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-dev main contrib non-free
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-dev main/debian-installer
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-dev main contrib non-free
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali main/debian-installer
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali main contrib non-free
deb http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.kali.org/kali-security kali/updates main contrib non-fr$

then ctrl+x
press y
press enter

open terminal and write

sudo apt-get upgrade

press enter

then enter this

sudo apt-get update

press enter

[Manoj]

Dear friends

I have been going through all the posts here to find a way out for my problem. I have downloaded dump1090 from

https://github.com/antirez/dump1090 and trying to compile it. Since I dont have linux I installed Cygwin in Windows XP machine and ran the make command from there. I am getting error messages as given in the earlier posts.

pkg-config not found

lirtlsdr not found etc etc.

I have followed several tricks explained here and some other sites but could not succeed. I am able to run Dump1090 exe file which comes with the package. Any cahnges I have to make when I run it from Cygwin??

Please help ..

Regards

Manoj

[cooper]

Myeah... Not really surprised here...

Cygwin is basically a library that makes Windows Posix-compliant. It's decidedly *NOT* a Linux environment and, as such, has limitations to what it can do for you.

My suggestions to you:

1. For the love of all that is holy *UPGRADE YOUR OS*. Nobody should be on XP anymore.

2. Install a virtual machine such as the free VirtualBox, install any flavor of Linux in there and try to get Dump1090 running that way. Note to not insert the RTLSDR dongle until *AFTER* you've booted Linux in the virtual otherwise it probably won't see the device.

2a. (alternative to 2) Don't use Dump1090 but instead use a Windows program for this. See here.

[Manoj]

Myeah... Not really surprised here...

Cygwin is basically a library that makes Windows Posix-compliant. It's decidedly *NOT* a Linux environment and, as such, has limitations to what it can do for you.

My suggestions to you:

1. For the love of all that is holy *UPGRADE YOUR OS*. Nobody should be on XP anymore.

2. Install a virtual machine such as the free VirtualBox, install any flavor of Linux in there and try to get Dump1090 running that way. Note to not insert the RTLSDR dongle until *AFTER* you've booted Linux in the virtual otherwise it probably won't see the device.

2a. (alternative to 2) Don't use Dump1090 but instead use a Windows program for this. See here.

Dear friend

Thanks for the quick reply but very disappointed as well. Not easy to install Linux on my office machine since all are running in windows. I am sorry for asking silly questions but I have to do this for taking my project forward.

a) Can i compile this using Visual studio in windows environment? I tried this but getting issues because of some unix based header files like pthread.h.

b) Basically I want to save ADS B data to a basestation database but withou using other softwares like Virtual radar. Is there any small program available which do this? (only saving data to databasr)

c) I found a version of Dump1090 in github which suits my needs.

https://github.com/DE8MSH/dump1090-sqlite

Again I cant compile this due to OS isssue. If any body in this group has compiled this and using this please send me the exe files. I will be very moch obliged if some linus users help me in this. I have been running behind this for the last few days.

Thanks & regards

Manoj

[cooper]

Here's the ADSBSharp source code.

This is C# source code for the program that receives the ADSB signal and provides it to whomever wants it via a webservice. It shouldn't be hard to take this and instead of publishing the data to a webservice pump it into a database.

[Manoj]

Thank u very much Mr Cooper.

I will check it out and get back to you

Regards

Manoj

[Sinn3rman]

Ummm, I installed the ADS-B Tracker infusion on my pineapple, however I think im missing something, it says daemon disabled? How do I undisable it?

[Sinn3rman]

Success! 3 planes in sight!!

So with this new found interest, how can i log the data that i get ?

Edited May 2, 2015 by Sinn3rman

[cooper]

According to the code a webservice is spitting out the data from port 47806 so to verify you could telnet to that port and it should start spitting data at you.

Do note that the data is provided to you in real time so you'll probably have to add a timestamp to each record produced yourself. Take a look at the code I linked to. Start with the SimpleTcpServer. Line 147 sends the data to the client.

[soboto]

Hello everyone,

I just installed succesfully dump1090 on the latest ubuntu and after fired up the browser at the localhost:8080

then it came up with a big yellow sign as shown on the picture "the experimental ADDS" thing.

I know very sure it works and running because I saw all flights traffic in the background.

How can I fix this but still using dump1090 ? it is very easy to use with dump1090 than anything else.

Thanks for any help guys.

[barry99705]

Seems to be working for me.

[cbr600]

I was having all the problems listed here regarding compilation. I used the instructions from: http://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/dump1090.html

There's a shell code that I used. I first ignored some steps since I already knew by RTL tools worked but it still gave trouble. Following the instructions worked (in kali 2.0). I do not know if the app works though, only that it compiled :-)