Wayne Campbell's Rust ADS-B Project Pops a TUI Aircraft ADS-B Radar Viewer in His Car
Running on a Raspberry Pi with a low-cost RTL-SDR dongle, this car can pick out nearby aircraft in a neat text-only radar view.
Wayne Campbell, creator of the text-mode ADS-B aircraft radar utility rsadsb, has put together a guide for turning a car into a mobile aircraft radar station — using a Raspberry Pi and a compact touchscreen display.
"Do you have aircraft flying above your car, or just want to see all the aircraft around your area as you sit in the passenger seat or [are you] just really nerdy and want to use the Rust language and a Raspberry Pi in your car," Campbell writes. "This project will leave you with a Raspberry Pi touchscreen that uses our radar and dump1090_rs applications to do just that!"
The build, brought to our attention by RTL-SDR.com, centers around Campbell's Rust-based ADS-B utility collection rsadsb. Using this and a compatible software-defined radio (SDR), it's possible to receive the Automatic Dependent Surveillance — Broadcast (ADS-B) signals transmitted by aircraft and map them in real time to an overhead view, rendered lovingly in a text-mode user interface (TUI) for use at the terminal.
Campbell's in-car iteration of the project sees the software running on a Raspberry Pi single-board computer — "I have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Rev 1.2," Campbell notes, "but any version should work" — with a GlobalSat BU-353-S4 USB GPS, a vehicle antenna mount, a 3.5" touchscreen display, and a low-cost receive-only RTL-SDR software-defined radio dongle.
"The RTL-SDR software defined radio allows us to capture the airplanes' emitted signal," Campbell explains. "Using the radar --gpsd option and a gpsd daemon, we automatically get the lat[itude] and lon[gitude] position."
The Raspberry Pi initially boots a graphical user environment, then loads the st terminal emulator for rendering the text-mode user interface. Control is handled by the touch screen: Blocks at the side allow for the radar view to be zoomed in and out, as well as reset to standard view, with a tap.
Full instructions are available on Campbell's blog, while pre-compiled binaries are available to download for ease of installation; those who prefer to build from source can find the code on GitHub under the MIT and GNU General Public License 2 for adsb_deku and dump1090_rs respectively.