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  • Author Author: fustini
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SDR and SBC: Cheap thrills with radio waves

fustini

I recently gave a presentation on Software Defined Radio (SDR) at my hackerspace in Chicago, Pumping Station: One.  I've attached the slides to this blog post for reference.  After the talk, someone told me they had seen a program that maps out airplanes flying in one's area based on data received via Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) on 1090 MHz.   After a search, I found dump1090 which works with cheap DVB-T USB sticks with certain Realtek chipsets thanks to the rtl-sdr library

 

dump1090 by Salvatore Sanfilippo

https://github.com/antirez/dump1090

a simple Mode S decoder for RTLSDR devices


Here is how I built rtl-sdr on BeagleBone Black which is running Angstrom on eMMC:

opkg update

opkg install libusb-1.0-dev

git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git

 

I have further details of installation process in this GitHub Gist:

https://gist.github.com/pdp7/5503462

 

After installing, test if the USB adapter is recognized:

root@beaglebone:~# rtl_eeprom

Found 1 device(s):

0: Generic RTL2832U OEM

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U

OEM

Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner

 

Here is how I installed dump1090:

git clone git://github.com/antirez/dump1090

cd dump1090/

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/ 

make

 

Next edit the html for the web interface so that your location is displayed on the map:

vi gmap.html

 

To the program:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib/:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}"

./dump1090 --interactive --net

 

You will then see ADS-B data start to fill the screen assuming you are nearby any flights.  I live in Chicago near O'Hare so I see a lot of traffic:

image

 

dump1090 also runs a web server on port 8080 which displays the flights atop Google Maps:

image

 

You can find out more details for each individual flight from websites like http://flightradar24.com/:

image

 

Here is a video of my setup in action:

 

Watching airplanes with Adafruit SDR on BeagleBone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l65sBZ25be4



Cheers,

Drew

http://twitter.com/pdp7

Attachments:
imagenerp-sdr-20140331.pdf
  • in reply to Former Member

    I thought this (Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) was part of collision avoidance, so that all planes know where other planes are.  If accidental collision is more likely than malicious attack, then this would seem to be a good thing.

  • in reply to Former Member

    I agree. I must admit I don't know enough, to know if they delay the co-ordinates or not. Maybe a reason it is not secured is because the benefits of planes knowing the whereabouts of other planes easily (but I've no idea on this, it is just speculation from me that maybe planes monitor these signals), might outweigh the risks. But that can change over time as you say.

  • in reply to shabaz

    shabaz wrote:

    EDIT: just saw a few more, approaching 1am, but these aircraft refused to supply lattitude/longitude - possibly cargo planes I guess.

    I know there are all sorts of good reasons to broadcast stuff in the clear: paranoid governments who have problems with encryption, updating a world-wide system can take decades etc.

    But post 9/11, I can't help thinking that broadcasting your target coordinates may not be such a good idea.  Like all of these things, it's never a problem until it is...

  • in reply to shabaz

    Awesome!  That's good to see the instructions for Debian.  Hah, I had the same problem too with setting it up initially in the middle of the night... I was excited to go to bed for once to see all the flights in the morning image

  • I couldn't wait too long to try this out. I did it on debian, following your instructions, it was very smooth. Just a few changes compared to Angstrom. This was what I typed:

    apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev
git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
cd rtl-sdr
autoreconf -i
./configure
make
make install
ldconfig

     

    <plug in SDR dongle>

     

    reboot
lsusb

     

    Output is:

    Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:2838 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL2838 DVB-T
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

     

    Then:

    rtl_eeprom

     

    Output is:

    Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Generic RTL2832U OEM

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner

Current configuration:
__________________________________________
Vendor ID:              0x0bda
Product ID:             0x2838
Manufacturer:           Realtek
Product:                RTL2841UHIDIR
Serial number:          00000001
Serial number enabled:  yes
IR endpoint enabled:    yes
Remote wakeup enabled:  no

     

    Then:

    git clone git://github.com/antirez/dump1090
cd dump1090
make
vi gmap.html

     

    (Use google maps to find the local position, it is in the URL, and edit them. For example):

    cat gmap.html | grep Center
    CenterLat=51.493;
    CenterLon=-0.494;
            center: new google.maps.LatLng(CenterLat, CenterLon),

     

    Finally to run (I needed to use port 8090, since 8080 is in use by the default web server running on the BBB):

    ./dump1090 --interactive --net --net-http-port 8090

     

    The output was:

    Found 1 device(s):
0: Realtek, RTL2841UHIDIR, SN: 00000001 (currently selected)
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Max available gain is: 49.60
Setting gain to: 49.60
Exact sample rate is: 2000000.052982 Hz
Gain reported by device: 49.60
Hex    Flight   Altitude  Speed   Lat       Lon       Track  Messages Seen .
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

     

    It is midnight here, so I only saw one plane : ) Daytime will be a whole different story I imagine : )

    image

    EDIT: just saw a few more, approaching 1am, but these aircraft refused to supply lattitude/longitude - possibly cargo planes I guess.