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Low flying aircraft alarm

Mission North

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I live in an area that the RAF like to use as their playground. While I am careful to keep the 'Manic Crow' below 400 feet, they don't seem too worried about flying below 500. As a bit of a hacker and a Raspberry Pi enthusiast I decided to have a go at making a portable low flying aircraft alarm.

This afternoon I put together a basic system with Pi and a USB TV dongle. I installed the RTL-SDR drivers and a program called dump1090. This program receives and decodes the ADS-B transmissions from aircraft and is usually used to forward that data to systems such as Planefinder. Many aircraft send their full location and alrtitude data, but the RAF generally only show their altitude. My intention is to modify the dump1090 program to trigger a sound when it receives a transmission which shows altitude below, say, 2000 feet, with a good signal strength.

Just as I was starting to pick through the source code of dump1090, there was an almighty roar just above my head as an Airbus A400m rattled the roof tiles. Glancing across at the monitor at my side, it showed an aicraft with a callsign ASCOT452 and an altitude of 700 feet. My house is at 550 feet above sea level. As the plane descended into the valley its altitude dropped to 450 feet.


I think I just convinced myself to continue with my project.
 
Impressive! I wonder what percentage of civilian aircraft have ADS-B onboard at this time?
 
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I live in an area that the RAF like to use as their playground. While I am careful to keep the 'Manic Crow' below 400 feet, they don't seem too worried about flying below 500. As a bit of a hacker and a Raspberry Pi enthusiast I decided to have a go at making a portable low flying aircraft alarm.

This afternoon I put together a basic system with Pi and a USB TV dongle. I installed the RTL-SDR drivers and a program called dump1090. This program receives and decodes the ADS-B transmissions from aircraft and is usually used to forward that data to systems such as Planefinder. Many aircraft send their full location and alrtitude data, but the RAF generally only show their altitude. My intention is to modify the dump1090 program to trigger a sound when it receives a transmission which shows altitude below, say, 2000 feet, with a good signal strength.

Just as I was starting to pick through the source code of dump1090, there was an almighty roar just above my head as an Airbus A400m rattled the roof tiles. Glancing across at the monitor at my side, it showed an aicraft with a callsign ASCOT452 and an altitude of 700 feet. My house is at 550 feet above sea level. As the plane descended into the valley its altitude dropped to 450 feet.


I think I just convinced myself to continue with my project.
Very, very clever Sir, you are on my short list of impressive people.
Regards,
-d.
 
I live in an area that the RAF like to use as their playground. While I am careful to keep the 'Manic Crow' below 400 feet, they don't seem too worried about flying below 500. As a bit of a hacker and a Raspberry Pi enthusiast I decided to have a go at making a portable low flying aircraft alarm.

This afternoon I put together a basic system with Pi and a USB TV dongle. I installed the RTL-SDR drivers and a program called dump1090. This program receives and decodes the ADS-B transmissions from aircraft and is usually used to forward that data to systems such as Planefinder. Many aircraft send their full location and alrtitude data, but the RAF generally only show their altitude. My intention is to modify the dump1090 program to trigger a sound when it receives a transmission which shows altitude below, say, 2000 feet, with a good signal strength.

Just as I was starting to pick through the source code of dump1090, there was an almighty roar just above my head as an Airbus A400m rattled the roof tiles. Glancing across at the monitor at my side, it showed an aicraft with a callsign ASCOT452 and an altitude of 700 feet. My house is at 550 feet above sea level. As the plane descended into the valley its altitude dropped to 450 feet.


I think I just convinced myself to continue with my project.

Maybe you could sell these to us wot is less able?
Thank you for posting this, very clever sir
 
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Neat idea! I've been trying to figure out how to do this just for early warning, as there are many helicopter flights in my area. Please post code if you're willing to share.
 
Impressive! I wonder what percentage of civilian aircraft have ADS-B onboard at this time?

Lots here from gliders to parachute dumpers to school aircraft and so on. Pretty dumb not to have ADS-B these days.
Have you tried the app Flightradar24, also for iPhone or iPad where you get both ft and kts of the aircraft you follow, as long as they have their transponders on.

Flightradar24.com - Live flight tracker!

Early user and subscriber. It's great. Military aircraft don't show on it much.

Cool would be if "GO" would listen to FligthRadar24.
 
Flightradar24, Planefinder and the like don't normally show military aircraft. And transponders in most military aircraft and many light aircraft only transmit their height, not location. By having a portable receiver it is possible to sound an alert for any aircraft which are both low and close enough to receive.

My first prototype is working quite well, and has been alerting me to a pair of C130s doing some night flying tonight. Next step is to add a piezo beeper and a couple of push switches - and possibly a small display. Then I should be able to reduce the power consumption enough to run it on a battery. I'll try to keep it simple to copy and make the software available for other drone users. Anything that makes our hobby safer.
 
Gliders on this side of the pond use FLARM rather than ADS-B. It requires far less power and is more suitable for aircraft that don't fly in a straight line. You can receive FLARM with the same hardware as ADS-B, but it is on a different frequency (868 MHz rather than 1090 MHz) and is a much weaker signal.
 
Wow, nice work. I'm sure the FAA would be interested in this. You can usually figure out what kind of air traffic will be around you using sectionals. Gliders are usually marked by zones, I'm not sure if they leave the zones though. If you live in a military operations area, you can still fly there but you should be aware of their activities and MT routes.
 
Mt routes with 4 digits are dangerous as they can fly near surface to 1,500 AGL and the flight path varies from 4-16 miles
 
Very nice project. I hope more people use these, it could make the hobby a lot safer.

Rob
 
Cool hack. If I understand correctly with a TV dongle and the right s/w you can catch ADS-B?
Wow, nice work. I'm sure the FAA would be interested in this. You can usually figure out what kind of air traffic will be around you using sectionals. Gliders are usually marked by zones, I'm not sure if they leave the zones though. If you live in a military operations area, you can still fly there but you should be aware of their activities and MT routes.

Glider pilots sometimes do cross country flights which can take many hours to complete and cover hundreds of km. This is more prevalent in Europe, I believe.
 
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Slowly making progress on my little project. This is a Raspberry Pi A+ with an early version of the PaPiRus epaper display and a piezo buzzer. When it sees an aircraft at 2000' or lower it beeps. Don't yet know how long it will run on one charge. The low flying Tucanos don't show altitude, so I will have to detect them by callsign. That's a job for mid week - they don't fly at weekends.

IMG_2284.JPG
 
I use the same method. I am going away for two weeks starting next weekend. Going to do a lot of testing of my sdr tracker while flying. I'm in New Zealand and the area I will be in is low traffic commercialy, but lots of small aircraft that do not get picked up on the sdr tracker.
 
It's still in progress.

I have moved it on to a Raspberry Pi Zero to reduce the size and power consumption. Also changed to better quality TV dongle, though I think that has a higher power consumption - proabably due to having a heater to keep its crystal at a steady temperature.

It now makes a different beep for any aircraft that are on a list based on hex codes - RAF aircraft all start with 43, USAF with AE. The list includes UK air ambulances and police aircraft. So hopefully most of the aircraft that are likely to fly low near me.

I have a few issues with the epaper display not clearing properly, and it is rather expensive. It is good to be able to read it in full sunlight, but an LCD would be simpler and cheaper. The display isn't really necessary anyway, but it is nice to have. I recently found an online version of the US Army aircraft identification guide which could be a good source of line drawings of aircraft to show on the display - and further distract us from flying the drone to safety.

Without the display it would be a simple and cheap to make device with just a Pi Zero, TV dongle, piezo buzzer, micro SD card and battery.

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