Updated ADS-B Flight Tracking setup

Updated ADS-B Flight Tracking setup

A while ago I setup my flight tracking setup, but I was in an apartment, and could never get very good range, you can read the original article here

My New ADS-B Flight Tracking Setup
I just installed my Flight Tracking setup, here are the details Here is a list of the components I bought, along with the price and where I gotthem from. * Raspberry Pi 3 B+ - $30 from Microcenter [https://www.microcenter.com/product/505661/raspberry-pi-3-model-b] * SanDisk Ultra 32GB micr…

Now that I own a home, I have a lot more freedom in mounting the antenna, and I am not surrounded by tall buildings.

Here is my current setup, what components I used and what kind of performance I am getting

First, the components

  • Raspberry Pi 4
  • Official PoE Hat
  • Argon NEO Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Heatsink Case (Thanks to Michael from TinyPilot for getting me into these)
  • SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSDHC UHS-I card
  • FlightAware Pro Stick Plus
  • FlightAware ADS-B Dual 978 MHz + 1090 MHz Band-Pass SMA Filter
  • FlightAware 1090 MHz ADS-B Antenna
  • 15ft LMR-240 N Male to SMA Male 50 Ohm Coax cable - from eBay seller rr90650

I put the Pi in my garage rack, which you can read about here

Unconditioned Texas Garage Lab - 1 year later (Its all fine)
A little over a year ago I mounted a rack in my garage, threw a Cisco Switch inthere, an APC UPS and my Flight Tracking setup, and a second ESXi host. Seebelow for the original: Garage Network Rack with 10G FiberThis details my 12u rack in my detachedgaragewhich has a 10G uplink to my mainnetwo…

I just threw it on top of the UPS, at some point in the future I want to make some kind of custom 1u case for it

At first, I had the antenna on the outside of my garage, it was temporary, just to see what kind of range I would get.

The range was good, but obviously it wasn't as high as the peak of the garage. I looked long and hard into mounting it higher, but I just didn't want to deal with lightning. I live in Houston, which is on the list for one of the cities with the most amount of lightning strikes per year

Eventually though, I needed to get gutters, so it had to come down. I decided to just install it in the ceiling of the garage, which would lose me some range because of the obstructions, but it would be much higher

Its not pretty, but it really doesn't need to be

The range I get is pretty great, at least compared to the range I had before

Along with FlightAware, I am feeding FR24 and ADSBExchange

If you feed FlightAware and FR24, you get free enterprise accounts for both of them

Overall, I think this is a great thing to setup. Its under $200 overall, and its great fun

Give it a shot. Message me if you need any more info, or join the Discord