Linux Magazine has an article showing how one enthusiast built his own aircraft tracking system for $25 and a few open source Linux Applications.
The recent tragedy of AirAsia Flight 8501 brought the usual crescendo of demands from TV talking heads for continuous monitoring of passenger planes and disbelief that such a system does not exist in this day and age.
One such system is in place on large numbers of aircraft in the EU and US, and deployment is expected to be complete in most fleets by 2020. That system is called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, or ADS-B. It constantly transmits the heading, altitude, speed, GPS position, and flight number on a frequency of 1,090MHz.
Charly Kühnast built a real-time flight mapping systems for these signals from a couple linux packages and a cheap USB digital terrestrial television stick, similar to this one.
If you want to track the position of the jets yourself, you do not necessarily require an airport tower full of technology. All I needed was a Linux computer and a receiver for digital terrestrial television (a.k.a. a DVB-T stick for less than EUR 20, or about US$ 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 supports communication with the DVB-T receiver, and Dump1090 decodes the data obtained in this way using a mini-web server to display a map of the machines (aircraft) in the vicinity.
Charly even has a live demo up and running at This Link which shows aircraft within range of his home receiver, located in the Netherlands Germany. Sometimes there are none, other times there are multiple aircraft, each of which can be clicked in the list to to highlight the plane's position and track, and show links to official flight status pages. You can zoom in and out to see 25 km concentric range circles. I've seen planes as far away as 50 km on Charly's map.
Presumably it would be a simple matter for a linux user to log each such transmission to provide the last position of each plane.
[Ed's note: Corrected Charly's home receiver location.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:47PM
I'm sure this will be very useful when they're flying across the ocean.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:39PM
Well I saw a plane 75 miles away on the demo link, so that would have put the AirAsia flight within the coverage of land based receivers from both shores. (Who knows if AirAsia has this system installed).
Its clearly meant to be a toy. But an interesting one. Perfect work for a Raspberry Pi or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:50PM
If you think it's important to state the location of the receiver, at least get it right.
All you need to do is zoom out.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday January 04 2015, @02:35AM
Germany you say? Checks linked story... Right you are! Type. Type. Type. Click. Fixed!
Thanks for the heads up!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 04 2015, @11:21AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:54PM
If we could just could-based the crowd-sourcing, and the 3-D print it we'd be onto something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @10:18PM
Sure, but how much would it cost to put it in a buoy?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Covalent on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:36PM
I think you're joking, but you have hit the nail right on the head.
It costs a FORTUNE to put it on a buoy.
The reasons are numerous:
1. You need lots of buoys. The oceans is sorta big. Like 70% of the planet big. And since this would need line of sight (more or less) with the plane in order to work, you're going to have about a 15 mile radius (ideal) around each buoy. That would allow each buoy to cover about 700 square miles of ocean. If we JUST wanted to cover the Atlantic (I know...it's so small, right?) we'd have to cover 41 MILLION square miles. That's almost 60,000 buoys, and I'm ignoring the round coverage patterns that leave holes in between which would necessitate even more buoys.
2. How are these buoys powered?
3. How do these buoys transmit their information to land?
4. How are they maintained?
The ONLY reasonable solution to tracking planes over the ocean is using satellites. But I use the term reasonable loosely. You'd need to have a significant fleet of satellites at extraordinary cost (maybe even more than the buoys) in order to do this well.
Long story short, the reason we haven't been tracking planes over the oceans is because the cost of doing so would make flying so expensive that you'd have no planes to track!
Remember what Helen Keller said: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday January 03 2015, @11:48PM
Quote" you're going to have about a 15 mile radius (ideal) around each buoy.
Planes fly at 30+thousand feet. I saw planes at 75km from the guy's test site.
Buoy's make no sense because this ADS-B could be sent to a satellite just as cheaply as received by a buoy and relayed to a satellite.
There are already satellites out there that will track for free. It was posted a few days ago here on SN.
By the way, if you check out the Wiki Page it says "It can also be received by other aircraft to provide situational awareness and allow self separation."
So if other planes were in the area they could hear and record these messages if the plane was equiped.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Sunday January 04 2015, @01:32AM
I forgot about the altitude!
I'm still wondering if the satellites that are going to be receiving these signals are busy doing something else. There are lots of planes out there...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by emg on Sunday January 04 2015, @02:32AM
Yes, they're busy receiving ADS-C from the aircraft and sending it to the ground. Those messages are typically only sent every few minutes because satellite bandwidth is expensive, but that's good enough to get in the right ballpark for a search.
As I understand it, that's how the approximate location of AF447 was found, and it would have told us where MH370 was if something, or someone, hadn't disabled it on the aircraft.
Similarly, most places where people can receive ADS-B on the ground are already within range of an ADS-B receiver which would have been forwarding the location to ATC.
BTW, isn't there already a global (or, at least, widespread) network of amateur ADS-B receivers? I'm sure I've seen websites showing aircraft locations collected that way.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday January 04 2015, @11:38AM
Through the power of bob! The technology behind self-winding watches and formula 1's (illegal) inertial mass dampers (not to be confused with star trek's) should be plenty to power a small radio receiver. A transmitter too, at least intermittently. There are already such buoys dotted all around the ocean, making oceanographic/hydrospheric measurements (measuring temperature, for example, informing the climate change debate), although I'm not sure of the granularity they provide.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @02:30AM
Already done using ADS-B on a global scale. See planefinder.net/ [soylentnews.org], foreflight.com/ [soylentnews.org] or flightradar24.com/ [soylentnews.org]. Problem with ADS-B is that it can be disabled by the pilot. Prime example is MH370 where its ADS-B was recently upgraded to ADS-C and it was disabled or damaged in flight. The demand is for an independent tracking mechanism. Inmarsat and Aireon already offer this capability. It is the airliners that have not accepted it. Worth a quick read of Inmarsat press release http://www.inmarsat.com/news/inmarsat-provide-free-global-airline-tracking-service/ [inmarsat.com].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04 2015, @03:24PM
Why bomb a plane when you can so easily shoot them down... There's an app for that!