Other Money Pit Projects

[Smilingreen]

I am sure most of you have other hobbies besides IP cameras and BI. I do. From weather stations to Amateur Radio to my newest hobby: ADS-B signal receiving.

ADS-B is the signal all airplanes transmit so other planes know who and where they are and also ground stations know the same thing. I have setup my first receiving station using a RTL_SDR receiver and a RPI version 4, along with a telescoping antenna that is magnetically connected to the bottom of an upside down coffee can, sitting next to my office window. People who live close to an airport probably never think about it, but us who live in more rural areas often wonder who's airplane is that, that keeps buzzing in circles over my farm, every day of the week?

Are they trying to take pictures? Is it the local real-estate county tax people snooping around, seeing if I have built anything new, so they can up my property taxes and levy fines? Have I done something stupid that I don't remember and the cops are staking my place out to do a raid? Is it the new 87,000 strong IRS Army getting to raid my place and break into my personal safe and confiscate all my dollar bills I don't run through the bank or my credit card? Now, I can tell who it is, what airport the took off from, their flight path, how many circles have they done and how far and what elevation they are at, along with their tail number and who actually owns the plane or helicopter.

There is all kinds of filter you can turn on or off, if you want to just track a type of airplane or helicopter. You can just look at Military only, aircraft. There are so many options. When you get to looking at the tracked database, you realize there is a lot of air traffic that flies over your home every day, every hour, 365 days a week.

Another interesting type of flight to watch is the Feds. Last week, 2 government jets flew back to DC from Ireland......funny, the airport the took off from is very close to Trumps Golf Properties in Ireland. What were the Feds doing there? Did they raid his properties in Ireland, also? What kind of federal boondoggle trip was this that the tax payers had to pay for?

 

[Mike A.]

I used FlightAware (?) Flightradar (something like that) a little when we had the FBI surveillance planes flying overhead here all the time some years back. Kind of interesting to watch and just to know that they were there. Courts finally stopped that I think.



Yours looks like it does a lot more. Do you feed larger systems like that sort of in the same way that say people do with their weather stations?

 

[tigerwillow1]

I assume you're tuned into how the climate activists and 1% are being shamed on social media for the seemingly excessive and needless use of their private jets, apparently enabled by the huge network of people monitoring ADS-B. Since the climate wackos and 1% are the ones with the political power, perhaps down the road it will become illegal to receive and/or share the ADS-B information.

 

[Smilingreen]

I used FlightAware (?) Flightradar (something like that) a little when had the FBI surveillance planes flying overhead here all the time some years back. Kind of interesting to watch and just to know that they were there. Courts finally stopped that I think.

View attachment 136656

Yours looks like it does a lot more. Do you feed larger systems like that sort of in the same way that say people do with their weather stations?

Yeah, I can feed several different sites. Right now, I am feeding only ADS-B Exchange. Once I am sure I have all of the minor kinks out of my configurations, I will send my data stream to other sites. ADS-Exchange has a public map where you can see planes woldwide, including military drones, etc. I have been watching the Military Strato Tanker Planes, from Florida flying up to eastern TN and spending hours and hours doing training loops, fly-overs and touch-n-go's.

You can play with their web interface here, and see what is flying around your area or anywhere in the world. All of your filter selections are on the right hand side.

ADS-B Exchange - track aircraft live

ADS-B Exchange - track aircraft live - aircraft flight history

globe.adsbexchange.com

 

[Smilingreen]

I assume you're tuned into how the climate activists and 1% are being shamed on social media for the seemingly excessive and needless use of their private jets, apparently enabled by the huge network of people monitoring ADS-B. Since the climate wackos and 1% are the ones with the political power, perhaps down the road it will become illegal to receive and/or share the ADS-B information.

Well, when that happens, my receiver was lost at sea in a freak boating accident........

 

[Smilingreen]

I am going to change out my indoor telescoping antenna, stuck to a coffee can to an outside mounted half-wave Microwave antenna tuned to the 1090MHZ ADS-B band. That should increase my receive range from less than 100 miles currently to 200-350 miles reception range. I'll probably mount my RPI in a small weather-tite cabinet at the base of the antenna tower and feed it inside via a CAT6 cable to one of my POE+ switches. There is a new POE+ hat that has come out for the Raspberry PI that should power the PI and the RTL-SDR stick from my POE+ switch.

 

[Smilingreen]

I used FlightAware (?) Flightradar (something like that) a little when we had the FBI surveillance planes flying overhead here all the time some years back. Kind of interesting to watch and just to know that they were there. Courts finally stopped that I think.

View attachment 136656

Yours looks like it does a lot more. Do you feed larger systems like that sort of in the same way that say people do with their weather stations?

Not very many pictures of your Bogey. That is an awful big plane to be circling around that many times....unless there was only 2 or 3 people on it and the rest of the plane was filled with receivers and jammers.........Wonder why the windows in the back are all blocked out??

 

[Mike A.]

Not very many pictures of your Bogey. That is an awful big plane to be circling around that many times....unless there was only 2 or 3 people on it and the rest of the plane was filled with receivers and jammers.........Wonder why the windows in the back are all blocked out??

Yeah, they had all kinds of equipment on them and they'd be up there circling pretty much 24x7. Land and another would take its place. Went on for a long time. Weren't looking for me but one of the regular flight paths was right over my house. Which was what made me look to begin after getting tired of hearing the damn things droning overhead all the time. Bunch of information out there on these flights, e.g:

See Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching From Above

America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities — but usually take the weekends off.

www.buzzfeednews.com

 

[David L]

One day the wife and I looked up on an extremely clear day and we saw about a half dozen planes circling, it was super weird, they were higher than commercial aircraft which we see all the time leaving their vapor trails. For us to see these aircrafts meant they were quite large, they all had extremely long wingspans, glider style? Mapping planes? Surveillance planes?

No, we were not dropping any acid, That Day

 

[Smilingreen]

One day the wife and I looked up on an extremely clear day and we saw about a half dozen planes circling, it was super weird, they were higher than commercial aircraft which we see all the time leaving their vapor trails. For us to see these aircrafts meant they were quite large, they all had extremely long wingspans, glider style? Mapping planes? Surveillance planes?

No, we were not dropping any acid, That Day

They are currently testing the next version of surveillance drone right this very moment: The ZULU82. It is currently in test flights over the Yuma Test Range. Soon to be coming to a city near you......check out the altitude it is flying at and who owns it.........

 

[garycrist]

Look up some of the pictures Zulu82 is drawing. Skyglass is a neat tracking program too.

 

[Mike A.]

What does your setup cost in ballpark numbers? RPi4 + $?

 

[tigerwillow1]

Orwell called it, in spades.

 

[Smilingreen]

Yeah, they had all kinds of equipment on them and they'd be up there circling pretty much 24x7. Land and another would take its place. Went on for a long time. Weren't looking for me but one of the regular flight paths was right over my house. Which was what made me look to begin after getting tired of hearing the damn things droning overhead all the time. Bunch of information out there on these flights, e.g:

See Maps Showing Where FBI Planes Are Watching From Above

America is being watched from above. Government surveillance planes routinely circle over most major cities — but usually take the weekends off.

www.buzzfeednews.com

Interesting, if you expand that map, it shows up they were constantly flying the Canadian/US border up in the New England states, but virtually zero flights along the US/Mexico Border. Are they afraid the Canucks are gonna smuggle Poutine across the border?

 

[Smilingreen]

What does your setup cost in ballpark numbers? RPi4 + $?

I bought the RPI 4B when they first released them back in ....2018? It think I paid around $65 or so for it. I also have a RPI 3B+ I have had for several years and it was around $35. I am running my Davis Weather Station And CumulusMX on it.

Right now, there is a worldwide scarcity of any PI 3 or 4 series, due to the chip problem. You can find them on E-Bay and such, but they are charging about 5-10 times what they should be selling for right now. The RTL-SDR, I think I paid about $20 for it back a few years ago with the Antenna. I believe they may be more available than the PI's are right now. Everything I needed for this was in my gadget junk drawer in my desk.

 

[Smilingreen]

Look up some of the pictures Zulu82 is drawing. Skyglass is a neat tracking program too.

Skyglass is kind of cool, being 3D and all, but they charge you to see the data, they are getting for free, from everyone feeding them. I don't visualize well in 3D. I am a 2D type of guy. from CAD to GPS mapping data. I turn off all the bling on my GPS map in my car. The map is always situated North. I don't need a cute car picture and a fat arrow pointing to what direction I am going.

 

[Mike A.]

I bought the RPI 4B when they first released them back in ....2018? It think I paid around $65 or so for it. I also have a RPI 3B+ I have had for several years and it was around $35. I am running my Davis Weather Station And CumulusMX on it.

Right now, there is a worldwide scarcity of any PI 3 or 4 series, due to the chip problem. You can find them on E-Bay and such, but they are charging about 5-10 times what they should be selling for right now. The RTL-SDR, I think I paid about $20 for it back a few years ago with the Antenna. I believe they may be more available than the PI's are right now. Everything I needed for this was in my gadget junk drawer in my desk.

Have a couple of the 3B+ sitting around here not doing anything at the moment. Probably should just sell them but that's a lot less than I expected for the rest. Maybe look into doing that with one of them.

 

[Smilingreen]

Have a couple of the 3B+ sitting around here not doing anything at the moment. Probably should just sell them but that's a lot less than I expected for the rest. Maybe look into doing that with one of them.

You can get a headless OS for it called tar1090. The 3B+ should run it fine, just use the wall wart for powering the PI. The RTL-SDR is a bit power hungry and unless you have the latest PI POE+ hat, the original POE hat doesn't supply enough juice to run both.

GitHub - wiedehopf/tar1090: Provides an improved webinterface for use with ADS-B decoders readsb / dump1090-fa

Provides an improved webinterface for use with ADS-B decoders readsb / dump1090-fa - wiedehopf/tar1090

github.com

 

[Mike A.]

Interesting, if you expand that map, it shows up they were constantly flying the Canadian/US border up in the New England states, but virtually zero flights along the US/Mexico Border. Are they afraid the Canucks are gonna smuggle Poutine across the border?

Not sure where that all stands now. Kind of lost interest in tracking it as much after they stopped buzzing my house. I was just happy to have the things gone. Beyond the continual annoying noise it really does feel kind of strange to know that you've got somebody up there watching all the time. I recall that the courts shut down the biggest part of what was deemed more general mass surveillance. I think the publicity and that was what stopped it here. Then they still were doing some more directed stuff with the same planes which I think they still do. Then I seem to remember that they were found to be using private contractors to get around the restrictions again at one point. Have to look around and see what happened with it. Probably outdated now and like you said using drones and other better ways now.

 

[Smilingreen]

Not sure where that all stands now. Kind of lost interest in tracking it as much after they stopped buzzing my house. I was just happy to have the things gone. Beyond the continual annoying noise it really does feel kind of strange to know that you've got somebody up there watching all the time. I recall that the courts shut down the biggest part of what was deemed more general mass surveillance. I think the publicity and that was what stopped it here. Then they still were doing some more directed stuff with the same planes which I think they still do. Then I seem to remember that they were found to be using private contractors to get around the restrictions again at one point. Have to look around and see what happened with it. Probably outdated now and like you said using drones and other better ways now.

Yep, the ZULU82 is solar powered, flies at altitudes of over 13 miles above the earth and incorporates high optical zoom spy cameras. You will never see them or hear them, unless you are tracking them. Chances are, the feds will just turn off the ADS-B signal, since they are flying much higher than even high altitude commercial traffic flies at. Our tax dollars, hard at work...for spying on us. As of today, it has been flying for 60 days continuous without landing for any maintenance.