Mark Colwell made a post on G+ last night about this, Mark is one of the folks that if he says something you listen. I immediately grabbed some Beta updates and realised no aircraft would be coming past me before bed time, blast. Well its morning O clock now and the first aircraft out of Durban is on its way. In fact it rather shows the holes in airfields shown on mission planner as Durban is not there. Perhaps its time to use aviation overlays. Anyhoo
Why am I so excited about being able to display ADSB data? Well its one step in the detect sense and avoid chain. We can now tell aviation authorities that we can see ADSB equipped aircraft at range and plan our actions accordingly. Maybe one day the GCS will even take avoiding action on our behalf.
Even here in my sleepy corner of Africa high end modern light aircraft come by from time to time at low level and I see them in advance. As more aircraft are fitted or retro fitted with ADSB the sky will appear to fill.
Its cheap to do less than $30, I'm not going to go into extreme detail. There are pages of how to's out there.
First you need the receiver itself
Search for R820T and ADSB for the best near you.
Its then a matter of installing suitable free software and getting it to speak on the right port.
I use mine to both track aircraft and receive NOAA weather satellite images. The weather images are handy if you are operating miles from an internet connection and you are a cheapskate like me and don't have a sat connection.
I digress. The supplied antenna with the dongle will work locally if sited well out to more than 100km but you are better off creating a better one, again instructions all over the web.
This http://www.rtl-sdr.com/adsb-aircraft-radar-with-rtl-sdr/ contains everything you need to get this working and talking on the right port.
Once you can see aircraft on your machine you simply tick a box in planner settings and Roberts your fathers brother.
What a week for APM (ADSB might have been out for a while and I missed it)
Terrain following
Transitioning VTOL code
ADSB
Feels like a leap forward.
Once you get your setup working you might want to send position reports to sites like Flightradar 24 from your fixed site. In that way a better low level picture can be built up worldwide and you can look at tracks on an app that becomes free if you are a contributor. That's what I have been doing until now, but of course it does not work if there is no web.
Mission Planner latest download Site
Comments
This is AWESOME! I have been using an RTL-STL dongle in combination with PlanePlotter and FR24 during my flights, this will make life a lot easier! As has been mentioned, this won't help for planes without ADSB-Out, but more and more planes are getting equipped with it each day. My office is right under the pattern for a Class B airport, and I would say at least half of the planes that come over have ADS-B out. The rest can be tracked (with a 5 minute delay) using something like FR24.
Chris - that is even bigger news! I had been trying to think about a way to get a base station to broadcast ADSB-Out on behalf of a UAV using the GCS, but it sounds like you guys are way ahead! When can we expect to hear more about it?
I think this is a great feature to implement and i believe that eventually the US will catch up with the rest of the world. I also am a Commercial Pilot and a professional UAS Pilot flying in the NAS (Legally under a COA), with that said I agree with Paddles2Paddles. We still need to have eyes towards the skies. This is not a end all to the Detect and avoid issue we have. It will definitely aid in our situation awareness(SW) but it does not solve everything.
Great work and I will be getting this implemented into my system for my own SA.
Thanks
Joe
Well as ever Europe is further ahead on the implementation and that's where I often fly manned and unmanned so I'm all right Jack pull up the ladder. Just about everything I have flown recently has a mode S transponder, that's balloons helicopters and a glider. But I know what you mean. If the US is behind again, well its not really an issue for me.
Before everyone gets way to excited here, I think a clear understanding of ADS-B is required. The ONLY aircraft you will see on here are aircraft equipped with a Mode S transponder in your vicinity. This constitutes most of the airliners but only a very small percentage of general aviation aircraft (small private planes, private jets, etc).
The aircraft that could potentially conflict with an sUAS are those smaller general aviation aircraft. They're the ones that are often in the low altitudes we fly. The percentage of these aircraft so-equipped is very very low. The FAA insists that all must be equipped by 2020. Just like they have to have sUAS regulations by 2015. Do the math.
So anyway, this is awesome. Adding to our situational awareness is great and it is massive cool factor. However, I have to make this point and I can not make it more clear:
THIS DOES NOT AND WILL NOT GIVE YOU A COMPLETE PICTURE OF ALL AIRCRAFT IN THE SKY.
THIS DOES NOT AND WILL NOT GIVE YOU A COMPLETE PICTURE OF ALL AIRCRAFT IN THE SKY.
THIS DOES NOT AND WILL NOT GIVE YOU A COMPLETE PICTURE OF ALL AIRCRAFT IN THE SKY.
THIS DOES NOT AND WILL NOT GIVE YOU A COMPLETE PICTURE OF ALL AIRCRAFT IN THE SKY.
I live between four airports, so adding this to mission planner would be a great tool to have.
Great
It sounds (based on my read of some ICAO docs) like a QRP ADS-B transponder could be implemented (excluding antennae and battery) in the foot print of a QFP-32 and some surface mount components. It's the FCC/FAA/ICAO political & compliance stuff that would get interesting. For the ADS-B-"Out" that Chris mentions, I would think a data packet along the lines of "(aircraft type)UAVHOBB(Callsign)HIXXXXX(Alt, Speed, GPS Poistion Data)" would probably work the best. But then, since the FAA itself has said "ADS-B Out Implementation by 2020," I personally think it would be absolutely hilarious for sUAV hobbyists to voluntarily implement their own ASB-Out before the FAA can even figure out what it is doing.
I'm using this for now and an implementation into MP will be great!!
http://www.flightradar24.com/
Really good stuff.
Coming soon in the next build..........
It can find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ;-)
Deep deep joy Chris! That's huge. AOPA won't be very happy. That said you could create a stand alone box for ultralights and gliders, balloons and let them share the ADSB love at a low cost.
Would the ADSB system just show a generic identifier like Glider, Balloon or UAS?
Very cool.
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