FlightPortrait network

Add your antenna.

Planes broadcast their position by radio. With a US$100 receiver at home, you can pick up those signals and add them to this map.

Do you already have a receiver?

Rather not build it? Leave your email for a ready-made kit.

What to buy.

About US$100.

Place the antenna as high as you can, by a window or outside, with open sky around it. That matters more than anything on this list.

Three steps.

  1. In Raspberry Pi Imager, choose your Pi, then Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit), under Raspberry Pi OS (other). In its settings, name it station, set a username and password, add your Wi-Fi and turn on SSH. Write the card, put it in the Pi, plug in the receiver and the power.
  2. Give it a few minutes. From a computer on the same Wi-Fi, open Terminal (Mac) or PowerShell (Windows) and log in with the username and password you set:
    ssh username@station.local
    Then run:
    curl -fsSL https://flightportrait.com/station/install.sh | sh
  3. On your phone, on the same Wi-Fi, open station.local:8654. If it does not load, use the address with numbers the installer printed. Name the station, pin the antenna on the map, pick the networks to feed.

That address is then your station's page.

Your station key

Setup ends with a key. Paste it here to watch your station appear.

Your station key

Already in the lines below. Keep a copy.

Add this to what you run.

In /etc/default/readsb, add to NET_OPTIONS, then restart readsb:

--net-connector feed.flightportrait.com,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out,uuid=YOUR-KEY

For MLAT, run mlat-client as well:

mlat-client --input-type dump1090 --input-connect localhost:30005 --server feed.flightportrait.com:31090 --lat LAT --lon LON --alt ALT --user NAME --uuid YOUR-KEY

Add to ULTRAFEEDER_CONFIG, then recreate the container:

adsb,feed.flightportrait.com,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out,uuid=YOUR-KEY;mlat,feed.flightportrait.com,31090,uuid=YOUR-KEY

dump1090-fa only listens; it cannot connect out. A small readsb beside it carries the line, reading dump1090-fa's Beast port:

readsb --net-only --net-connector localhost:30005,beast_in --net-connector feed.flightportrait.com,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out,uuid=YOUR-KEY

On Debian and Raspberry Pi OS, wiedehopf's readsb install script sets this up; put the two connectors in NET_OPTIONS of /etc/default/readsb with --net-only. PiAware keeps feeding FlightAware unchanged.

For MLAT, run mlat-client as well:

mlat-client --input-type dump1090 --input-connect localhost:30005 --server feed.flightportrait.com:31090 --lat LAT --lon LON --alt ALT --user NAME --uuid YOUR-KEY

FlightPortrait is not on the image's own list yet. Until it is: Expert page, "Ultrafeeder extra args", paste this line and apply:

adsb,feed.flightportrait.com,30004,beast_reduce_plus_out,uuid=YOUR-KEY;mlat,feed.flightportrait.com,31090,uuid=YOUR-KEY

Rather run the Station? Its installer keeps your feeds and key, and asks before stopping anything: install.sh --replace. Set up the Station

Stations are rounded to about 11 km. We store a hash of your key, no IPs. The aggregate is open data, ODbL 1.0. · Feeder terms · Privacy · What we store