Przemek Wasinski Has Automated Plane-Spotting, via an ADS-B-Tracking Motorized Camera

Developer Przemek Wasinski has made plane-spotting an automated affair — by using a low-cost software-defined radio to pick up aircraft transponders and automatically train a camera on their location.

"Aircraft in flight continuously broadcast information about themselves, including their location," Wasinski explains of how the project works. "These radio signals use a technology called ADS-B. My system receives these radio signals using a 1090MHz radio antenna. The signals are then processed by a software called Dump1090, which decodes the radio messages and converts the data into JSON format that can be used by plane_tracker.pu."

Wasinski build is split into two parts. The first is the tracker itself, which picks up the ADS-B transmissions using a low-cost receive-only RTL-SDR software-defined radio dongle, decodes them, and plots the plane's location on a two-dimensional map laid out like a classic radar scope. The second part then takes this location data and puts it back into the real world — by training a Raspberry Pi HQ Camera Module, connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B single-board computer and with a telephoto lens fitted, on the plane's location.

"When an aircraft is close enough Plane Tracker will send its latitude, latitude and altitude to PlaneCam," Wasinski explains. "PlaneCam will then move the camera on the motorized pan-tilt mount to aim at the aircraft and take a picture. The picture taken by the Raspberry Pi Camera will then be analyzed with OpenCV to check whether a plane has been captured, after this the picture and image recognition results will be sent back to PlaneTracker."

More information on the project is available in Wasinski's Reddit post, with source code for the Plane Tracker and Plane Cam parts in their respective repositories under an unspecified license.