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 Even if you do find the two components on your Linux system, the version is likely to be outdated.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.
![](/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/issues/2014/169/charly-s-column-air-traffic-control/figure-1/640485-1-eng-US/Figure-1_large.png)
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.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.