Decoding ADS-B beacons on PocketCHIP

21 Sep 2016

PocketCHIP is perfect for taking out in the field with it’s integrated keyboard, touchscreen and battery, so what better use for it than to decode ADS-B beacons from aircraft as they pass over your head?

Assuming you’ve got as far as connecting to wi-fi and you have a RTL-SDR dongle handy,

Make sure you’ve got up-to-date package index, and run updates for good measure

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Install git and then clone antirez’s repo

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/antirez/dump1090

Move into the directory you just cloned

cd dump1090

Install the dependancies required to build dump1090, then build

sudo apt-get install gcc make librtlsdr0 rtl-sdr librtlsdr-dev pkg-config libusb-dev libusb-1.0–0-dev
make

Test. If you don’t see anything check your antenna connection and then Flightradar24 and make sure there are planes around.

./dump1090 —-help
./dump1090 —-interactive (for terminal output)
./dump1090 —-net (for map output viewable in a web browser)

Once you’re happy you’ve got it working right, get out and ideally up high with as few obstructions to the horizon as possible and do some plane spotting!