Setup ADS-B Sharing

To set up ADS-B sharing you add our feeder software to your existing system running dump1090 with an RTL-SDR dongle type receiver that is already feeding FlightRadar24 or FlightAware.

Our feed software is called "radar" and these instructions deal with adding radar to your existing system to send us an ADS-B feed.

Working assumptions

Some working assumptions:

  1. Your system is running on a Raspberry Pi (Model 2, 3, 3B or 4) or a PC (Intel Atom, Celeron, NUC, etc.)
  2. Your system is running a reasonably modern Linux based operating system (Debian, Devuan, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi, etc.)
  3. Your ADS-B system uses an SDR radio or RTL dongle and one of:
    • dump1090
    • dump1090-mutability
    • dump1090-fa
    • readsb
  4. Your system has either:
    • the binary (BEAST) protocol available on port 30005; or
    • the raw AVR protocol available on port 30002
  5. You have an Internet connection
  6. You have working DNS
  7. You have 'root' (administrator) access to your system in order to mange it
  8. You are able to compile and install code

The BEAST (binary) protocol is better as this allows us to implement multilateration (MLAT) at some point in the future but the AVR protocol will also work.

Your station info

There are a couple of things we need to arrange in advance:

Station name

We need to give your receiver a "station name". Station names string of 3-15 characters in length which can be a placename (preferred), callsign, nickname, etc.

We have receivers called things like:

  • FERNHILL (place)
  • PENBREY (place)
  • BIRTIES (nickname)

In many cases an approximate location works well as it reminds us where the receiver is located but provides a degree of privacy.

Antenna location

We need the GPS coordinates for your antenna (latitude, longitude) and height in metres above sea level so the central processing software can process messages correctly.

The latitude and longitude of your antenna should be in degrees and decimal degrees to six decimal places, for example 52.212457 -2.187936. You can get your antenna's location using Google Maps.

Sharing Key

Your "Sharing Key" or API key is a 64-bit unique number, represented in hexadecimal, that identifies traffic from your station, for example:

        0x7A3DF151D95F3E9A

The sharing key is a random number that is unique for each receiver and meaningless anyone else.

The setup script asks for your sharing key during installation - please ensure you've got a key from us in advance.

If you want to run multiple receivers then you need a different sharing key for each receiver.

Pass-phrase

Since version 2.x of radar we have use a pass-phase to secure the UDP/IP messages from you to the aggregator.

When we say 'secure' we don't mean encrytion - there's not a lot of point encrypting ADS-B as it is an open broadcat system. We mean adding a digital signature to each message so we can tell if it is damaged, corrupt or forged.

The digital signatures are 64-bit truncated hashes of each message with a hash derived from HMAC-SHA256 of the message and a signing key. The signing key is derived from a pass-phrase which is shared between the sender and the aggregator.

We preferr to use a unique pass-phrase for each station and where you're installing the radar code directly you'll be asked for a pass-phrase.

Some implementations of multi-protocol senders can't ask for or manage the set of of the pass-phrase - in this case the default word 'secret' is used as a fallback.

Quick Setup

The radar project source code and setup instructions are now on Github.

The project is at https://github.com/G8TIC/radar.

The installation/setup guide is at https://github.com/G8TIC/radar/blob/main/INSTALL.md.