I would love to see an open source network of ADS-B collectors form, similar to what's available for the APRS-IS [1] network. The big ADS-B players (Flightaware and FlightRadar24) get their ADS-B feeds from the FAA (5-min delayed) and supplement it with real-time over-the-air collection from volunteers around the world. These companies give away small ethernet-connected collection servers to the volunteers and in exchange, they get the data and keep it proprietary.
It sure would be nice if there was a network to collect and pass around this data for free consumption by whoever wanted to use it.
Indeed, it would be nice. Something like that shouldn't be too difficult to do. People all around the world would send their ASD-B data to a centralized server which would process it all and make it available via a nice, stable API. Something like http://www.openstreetmap.org/.
ADSB# has the ability to stream data to sdrsharp.com, but I don't know what they do with it.
ADS-B won't be awesome in the US for another 5 years, though. My office is at one of the busiest regional airports in the country. Very rarely do I see any aircraft that provide more identifier and altitude using my RTL-SDR and homemade antenna with ADSB#.
Regardless, his statement is true that ADS-B is not sufficient for full coverage in the US right now. I've seen estimates as low as 25% for the proportion of US carrier aircraft currently ADS-B. FlightAware in particular uses far more than just ADS-B.
Can you share how many and how far away?
Are you near an ADS-B ground station (which will rebroadcast all traffic if a single ADS-B squitter/output is near) or only receiving active output from airplanes?
The ones I do see are typically freight carriers (FedEx, etc), or international airlines (Virgin). AFAIK, most of the flights into and out of this airport aren't those types. So, of the air traffic I do see, the majority don't identify with more than identifier and altitude. Lat lon is few and far between.
Very true if 5 years even makes it popular. Most regional carriers and even legacy carriers do not have ADS-B out in them.
The adoption rate in general aviation is dismal. I believe under 5% is what AOPA is saying, my personal experience is 1 guy out of 30 owners I know has installed it. The benefits just aren't there yet.
I'd love to see a post from Flightradar24 talking about their internal tech, about how they deal with updates and requests from around the world which only make sense in real-time. Maybe some series of message-queue based processing (or equivalent, like Storm?) publishing into something in-memory (like Redis?). Combined with the zones approach, means there's a minimal amount of processing on each request. Just a guess, though.
I'd love to see a free & open network of shared ADS-B data, but the hobby seems to be stuck in a proprietary mode. For example, Planeplotter[1] runs its own proprietary network for customers only, which includes enhancements like multilateration-based localization of aircraft that are only using Mode C transponders, without GPS coordinates.
All the aircraft information databases that tie the ICAO hex codes sent in ADS-B data are proprietary, and there's often dumb drama over incompatible versions or updates.
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[ 2266 ms ] story [ 2727 ms ] threadIt sure would be nice if there was a network to collect and pass around this data for free consumption by whoever wanted to use it.
[1] http://aprs2.net/ http://www.aprs-is.net/
ADS-B won't be awesome in the US for another 5 years, though. My office is at one of the busiest regional airports in the country. Very rarely do I see any aircraft that provide more identifier and altitude using my RTL-SDR and homemade antenna with ADSB#.
[1] www.planefinder.net
I'd love to see a free & open network of shared ADS-B data, but the hobby seems to be stuck in a proprietary mode. For example, Planeplotter[1] runs its own proprietary network for customers only, which includes enhancements like multilateration-based localization of aircraft that are only using Mode C transponders, without GPS coordinates.
All the aircraft information databases that tie the ICAO hex codes sent in ADS-B data are proprietary, and there's often dumb drama over incompatible versions or updates.
[1] http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm