The sys admin's daily grind – Air traffic control
Plane Spotting
When he sees vapor trails in the skies above the Lower Rhine area, sys admin Charly Kühnast doesn't just dream of faraway places. With a Linux system and a DVB-T stick, he grabs the signals from jets flying overhead and tracks their courses on a map.
Most commercial aircraft have an Automatic Dependent Surveillance--Broadcast system on board; this is known as ADS-B for short. It constantly transmits the heading, altitude, speed, GPS position, and flight number on a frequency of 1,090MHz.
If you want to track the position of the jets yourself, you do not necessarily require an airport tower full of technology. All I needed was a Linux computer and a receiver for digital terrestrial television (a.k.a. a DVB-T stick for less than EUR 20, or about US$ 25); the stick uses the Realtek RTL 2832U chipset in conjunction with an E4000 or R820T tuner. In addition to this, I had two software components waiting on the runway: RTL-SDR and Dump1090.
RTL-SDR [1] supports communication with the DVB-T receiver, and Dump1090 [2] decodes the data obtained in this way using a mini-web server to display a map of the machines in the vicinity. Even if you do find the two components on your Linux system, the version is likely to be outdated. It thus makes sense to build the current versions yourself. The tools required for this are shown in the command in the first line of Listing 1. The following lines then fetch RTL-SDR and compile the RTL-2832U driver.
Listing 1
Installing Components
Drivers on a Collision Course
The next step is to create the /etc/modprobe.d/rtlsdr.conf
file and write the following line:
blacklist dvb_usb_rtl28xxu
This prevents Linux loading the DVB-T driver that I would need to watch TV programs rather than planes. Now a reboot is necessary. The installation of Dump1090 is similarly simple. The following commands
cd ~ git clone git://github.com/MalcolmRobb/dump1090.git cd dump1090/ make
copy and compile the software. When I point my browser at the URL http://127.0.0.1:8080, it now shows me a map in which I can zoom in on the location of my DVB-T receiver. To whet your appetite, I have posted a live demo of the airspace on the web [3]. Figure 1 shows a Ryanair jet landing at the provincial airport in Weeze, Germany. Life's exciting when you're part of the cabin crew.
Infos
- RTL-SDR: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
- Dump1090: https://github.com/antirez/dump1090
- Charly's flight map: http://kuehnast.com/fr/
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.