Set Up a Receiver
Contribute aircraft data to the tracking network. All you need is a USB radio dongle and something to plug it into.
What You Need
RTL-SDR Blog V4
USB software-defined radio with 1090 MHz antenna. The standard ADS-B receiver.
~$35
Raspberry Pi 4/5
Dedicated, low-power, always-on. Plug in the dongle and forget about it. Pre-built binaries available.
~$35-80
Any Linux Box
x86_64 or ARM. An old laptop, mini PC, or NUC works great. Just needs a USB port and line-of-sight to the sky.
Whatever you have
Tip: Antenna placement matters more than hardware quality. A $35 dongle on the roof will outperform a $200 setup in a basement. Higher = farther range. Expect 100-200 nautical miles with decent antenna placement.
Setup Steps
1
Register Your Receiver
Visit the registration page to create a receiver entry and get your API key. Each receiver gets a unique UUID for authentication and tracking.
2
Download the Feeder Binary
Pre-built binaries for all major architectures are published with every release:
# Raspberry Pi 4/5 (64-bit)
curl -sL https://github.com/blueOctopusAI/adsb-decode/releases/latest/download/adsb-feeder-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz | tar xz
# Raspberry Pi 3 (32-bit)
curl -sL https://github.com/blueOctopusAI/adsb-decode/releases/latest/download/adsb-feeder-armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz | tar xz
# x86_64 Linux
curl -sL https://github.com/blueOctopusAI/adsb-decode/releases/latest/download/adsb-feeder-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz | tar xz
3
Plug In and Start
Connect the RTL-SDR dongle to USB, make sure rtl_adsb is installed (sudo apt install rtl-sdr), and start the feeder:
chmod +x adsb-feeder
./adsb-feeder --server https://adsb.blueoctopustechnology.com --api-key YOUR_API_KEY
Aircraft will appear on the live map within seconds.
4
Verify
Check the receivers dashboard to see your station online. It shows frame count, uptime, active aircraft count, and last heartbeat time.
Run as a Service
To keep the feeder running after logout, set it up as a systemd service:
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/adsb-feeder.service <<EOF
[Unit]
Description=adsb-decode feeder
After=network.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/adsb-feeder/adsb-feeder --server https://adsb.blueoctopustechnology.com --api-key YOUR_API_KEY
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
User=pi
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF
sudo systemctl enable --now adsb-feeder
Build from Source
If you prefer to build from source:
git clone https://github.com/blueOctopusAI/adsb-decode.git
cd adsb-decode/rust
cargo build --release -p adsb-feeder
# Binary at target/release/adsb-feeder
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