{"id":844,"date":"2019-06-04T17:24:48","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T00:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/?p=844"},"modified":"2019-06-04T17:37:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T00:37:16","slug":"airplane-fun-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/?p=844","title":{"rendered":"Airplane Fun Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"<\/a>A very long time ago I wrote a blog<\/a> about tracking airplanes. I was living in London at the time very near London City airport. That project was a lot of fun, so I hacked together another Pi setup to track airplanes here in the Los Angeles area.<\/p>\n

I decided to install PiAware and provide my tracker feed to FlightAware<\/a>. <\/em>Why? Because if you do, you are given an Enterprise level account (value – $89 USD\/month). I fly a lot and use the FlightAware app on my Android phone all the time. It is so easy to track my inbound airplane when I am waiting for a flight.<\/p>\n

FlightAware has detailed instructions<\/a> on how to build a PiAware setup.<\/p>\n

The below image from FlightAware’s web site<\/a>\u00a0 shows how many other Makers have blazed this trail before me. That is a lot of Raspberry Pi’s folks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For my setup I used the below components:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Raspberry Pi3 B+<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Pi case with cooling fan<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. RTL-SDR UBS dongle<\/a> (This is what receives the radio signals from the antenna)<\/li>\n
  4. An extended range WiFi adapter (USB)<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. A FlightAware optimized antenna<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Putting it all together was a snap. To install the software, follow the detailed instructions on the FlightAware web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Here is what my setup looks like:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Here is the antenna mounted in the attic:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Here is the Pi strapped to a roof joist with tie-wraps:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    The rig works great. Here is a snapshot of the airspace chaos:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    This was a very fun project. The range of my setup is about 150 nautical miles. Not bad for an antenna mounted in the attic.<\/p>\n

    Post a comment if you would like me to write up a detailed “How-To” document on the entire build process.<\/p>\n

    Sopwith<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A very long time ago I wrote a blog about tracking airplanes. I was living in London at the time very near London City airport. That project was a lot of fun, so I hacked together another Pi setup to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-general","category-raspberry-pi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=844"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ismellsmoke.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}