Flightradar24 — how does it work?

[OlegXD]

My english is not so good as I want but this topic I can read and understand.
It's a pity, there are not so much receivers in a big part of Russia.
Waiting for english readers and their comments impatiently.
Thank you!

[DmitrySpb79]

True, my friends were flying from Siberia to St.Petersburg, and there is really no Flightradar coverage in the middle part of Russia — if the plane is delayed, you cannot see where actually is it. It looks weird for me — its really cool to be first and cover the uncharted territory. Everybody who works in IT, can spend 50$ for the rlt-sdr and Raspberry Pi, and cover hundreds of square kilometers area with this device. There is no such a feeling «to be first» in Europe — there are hundreds of receivers installed, and adding another one is not adding any real value.

[radiolok]

How significant outgoing traffic is? Assume coverage problem is not only in receiver, but in stable good and cheap internet connection.

[DmitrySpb79]

I didn't check the values myself, my internet is unlimited at home.

According to the old forums (3 years ago) answer:

The data varies by location and amount of traffic received from aircraft.
In a very busy area with good range, the upload maybe 30MB per 24 hours.
Netlimiter is a useful, free utility to measure the actual data volume.

But that time MLAT was not supported, so I am not aware of the current situation, maybe its bigger.

[KvanTTT]

English Habr is too young. I hope the situation will have been improved next year.

[encyclopedist]

There is also very similar system for sea-going vessels, called AIS (automatic identification system), and very similarly operating websites to monitor traffic, such as marinetraffic.com.

[ProRunner]

Where are the tracking devices located in this case? (You can't just put Raspberry Pi in the middle of the ocean.) On the other vessels or on the shore or both?

[DmitrySpb79]

There are AIS decoders for rtl-sdr as well: bitsex.net/sdr/2015/ais-reception-with-rtl-sdr

[encyclopedist]

On the shore, on vessels and on satellites. If you hover over some of the more remote vessels, you'll see "Position received via satellite".

[sebflorent]

Hi, thx a lot for this post: I'm really interested to try it as my raspberry is sleeping right now ^^
Would you have a direct link to buy RTL-SDR V3-based kit? Thanks a lot!

[DmitrySpb79]

I'm not sure that direct links are allowed here.
You can just search for the kit name «RTL-SDR Blog V3 RTL2832 1PPM TCXO HF BiasT SMA Software Defined Radio + Antennas» :)

[sundmoon]

Why are the volunteers passing data to the censoring services, and not try to crowdsource a p2p network, possessing the full picture?