adsb-decode

A complete ADS-B aircraft tracking system — from raw 1090 MHz radio signals to identified aircraft on a live map. Built from scratch in Rust.

269
Tests
3
Rust Crates
3,642
Airports
100%
Cross-Validated

Every aircraft broadcasts its identity, position, altitude, and velocity on 1090 MHz. These signals are unencrypted and receivable by anyone with a $25 USB radio dongle. This system captures those raw radio signals and decodes them into live aircraft intelligence — no third-party decoder, no black box libraries. Every bit is parsed, validated, and decoded from the ICAO specification.

The system started as a Python reference decoder to prove the protocol math, then was rewritten in Rust for production. Both implementations were cross-validated frame-by-frame on a 296-frame capture — 100% field-level match, verified on every commit in CI.

Technology

Rust Axum TimescaleDB PostgreSQL 16 Leaflet.js CesiumJS RTL-SDR GitHub Actions CI Caddy

Full source code, protocol documentation, and build instructions on GitHub.

Built by Blue Octopus Technology

We build data systems that turn messy inputs into clear intelligence — radio signals into aircraft maps, scattered business data into actionable dashboards, manual processes into automated pipelines.

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