When your family or friends are on an airplane, there should be far less worry than if they were traveling by car. But loved ones are still worried and ask each other unanswered questions, for example, "how are they there" or "where are they now." Moreover, the answer to the latter worries most of all, especially if an inscription about a flight delay appears on the board of the arrival airport. A web service will partly help to satisfy the legitimate curiosity of those left on earth. Flightradar24(www.flightradar24.com), which will find the airliner you are interested in in the air ocean and track its flight.
Web service Flightradar24, created in 2007 by the Swedish company Travel Network, allows you to track the exact location of passenger aircraft and display it in real time on Google maps. This service attracted particular attention during the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland in April 2010, when many major media outlets (including CNN and BBC) took advantage of the site Flightradar24 to describe the current situation in the skies over Europe. For tracking and obtaining information about aircraft Flightradar24 Uses ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) technology. Most modern aircraft are equipped with special transponders (transceivers), thanks to which they receive accurate coordinates during the entire flight through the GPS system, and at the same time transmit their position along with other parameters, including speed, altitude, course, etc. Flightradar24 has hundreds of ADS-B receivers installed around the world that receive information from aircraft and send it to a web service server. In addition, the US Federal Aviation Administration provides Flightradar24 their data on air traffic (however, according to the existing rules, they are received with a 5-minute delay).
Use the web service Flightradar24 very simple. The main menu is located on the left side of the page, and the rest (most) of the screen is occupied by the Google map, on which icons of flying planes are displayed. When you click on any of them, the menu place is occupied by a tab with data about a specific flight: airline name, flight number, airports of departure and arrival, model of the liner, its photo, altitude and speed of flight, geographical coordinates, etc. For example, Airline: Aeroflot, Flight: SU2332, From: Moscow, Sheremetyrvo (SVO), To: Dusseldorf (DUS), Aircraft: Airbus A320-214, Altitude: 34000 ft (10363 m), Speed: 448 kt (828 rm / h, 514 mph), Pos: 56.2397 / 31.5543. In addition, a colored line on the map shows the route of the liner. The color of the track changes with the flight altitude from white (below 100 meters) to burgundy (13 thousand meters). For convenient viewing, you can change the scale of the map, use satellite images of the terrain, etc. To find a specific flight on the map, you should enter its number in the search box of the main menu.
How many aircraft are currently in the service coverage area Flightradar24, easy to find in the Planes tab. It also contains information about flight numbers, types of aircraft, their registration numbers, etc. On the Settings tab, you can change the brightness of the map display, the size of aircraft icons (Small - small, Medium - medium, Large - large, Auto - automatic) and the color of these icons (Yellow - yellow, Blue - cyan, Gray - gray ). It is also suggested to enable and customize the info label for each liner icon. So, in the first line of the label, either the callsign (Callsign) or the registration number of the aircraft (Registration) is indicated. The second and third lines display a choice of one of the following parameters: aircraft type and registration number, speed and flight level, departure and arrival airport codes, aircraft type, registration number, flight level, speed. The settings on the Filter tab allow you to display aircraft icons only for a selected criterion, for example, flight number, departure / arrival airport, altitude, liner type, etc. Mobile applications Flightradar24 available for iPhone / iPad, Android gadgets and Windows backgrounds.
It is said that traveling by plane is much safer than traveling by car. Perhaps this is true, at least, if planes collide with each other in the sky, then this happens very rarely. However, a specialized Internet service that looks at the maps may have less confidence in the safety of air travel. This original resource clearly demonstrates how many civilian airliners are in the sky at the moment and where they are flying.
It shows the direction of flight, speed, altitude, local time, temperature overboard and a bunch of other parameters, however, most of which are available only in the premium version. But the most important thing is that all this is displayed in real time.
Zooming in on the map with the mouse wheel, you will see that the planes are moving, literally flying over the ground. To view information about a specific flight, you need to click on the airplane figurine with the mouse. In this case, on the left side of the web page will immediately appear dashboard with various information, such as: points of departure and destination, their local time, type and registration number of the liner, distance traveled, altitude and flight speed, current latitude and longitude and some other information.
In the upper right corner of the web page there is a button in the form of a gear, by clicking on which you can call up the settings panel, which allows you to set the units of measurement that are more familiar to you, for example, replace miles kilometers ... There you can also set many other display parameters, in particular, change the type of map. Several modes are supported: Land, Satellite, Road map, Hybrid and light and dark Radar.
Users with the plugin installed Google earth moreover, they can still switch to 3D—mode... There are also various additional information about weather, clouds, ocean currents and more, but to access them you would have to subscribe. By the way, its cost is only € 1.99 per month, provided that you issue it for a year in advance. A small restriction is imposed on the free use of the service: you can only watch the movement of airplanes 30 minutes to continue monitoring, you will have to reload the page.
Probably everyone who at least once met or saw off relatives or friends on a plane used the free Flightradar24 service. This is a very convenient way to track the position of an aircraft in real time.
As shown by a survey of acquaintances, very few people know that this service is supported only by enthusiasts who send data to the server. Even fewer know that anyone can join the project.
Let's fill this gap. We will continue how it works under the cut.
Iron
The very first question is where the data comes from.Each civilian aircraft is equipped with a special transmitter, the so-called ADS-B transponder:
(photo from Garmin website)
This device sends special messages at a frequency of 1090 MHz, containing the main flight parameters, the type of aircraft, its coordinates, destination, etc.
The signal on the spectrum looks something like this:
And what is most important for us, it is not difficult to decode this data, an RTL-SDR receiver with a cost of about $ 8 connected to a computer is enough. Actually, the idea is probably already clear - if we collect data from many receivers, we get a picture, something like this:
But that's not all. Some planes transmit data packets, but they lack GPS coordinates. If you receive data simultaneously from many receivers, the coordinates of which are known, then by analyzing the delays at different receivers, you can find out the position of the aircraft. This technology is called multilateration (MLAT), you can read more about it on the website.
And finally, the last question is how the data is received. The answer is simple, anyone can host the receiver, the price of the issue ranges from $ 0 to $ 50. For example, this is how the Flightaware receiver map looks like:
As you can see, the coverage of the Russian part is poor, so some have a good chance to be the first.
To receive data you need:
Raspberry Pi2 / 3 with internet connected (price from $ 20)
- RTL-SDR-dongle (price from $ 10)
- at least the simplest antenna of 2 pieces of wire 6.8 cm long each (1/4 dipole at 1090 MHz)
It is also desirable to have a place with a more or less open view of at least part of the sky. gigahertz signals are absorbed by obstacles such as houses or trees.
I already had both the Raspberry Pi and the RTL-SDR, so I didn't have to buy anything. But anyone can try to get a ready-made receiver for free - and Flightradar and Flightaware send kits for free to users from those areas where coverage is currently insufficient. You can send a request via the link (Flightradar or Flightaware), of course, it is advisable to try for those who live in a fairly remote area.
I used a kit from RTL-SDR V3, which together with antenna and mini tripod cost $ 27 with free shipping from China:
By the way, as a second bonus, Flightradar24 and Flightaware provide everyone sending data to the server unlimited access to premium account and all server functions (separately, such access costs about $ 50 / month). So if someone is interested in aviation and wants to have extended access to such an account, installing an RTLSDR receiver is a very cheap alternative.
Testing
Installation is extremely simple, on the Raspberry Pi you just need to connect the receiver and run one command:Sudo bash -c "$ (wget -O - http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)"
The script will request the necessary data (coordinates and type of receiver, e-mail address), then the software will work automatically, user attention is no longer required. In parallel, you can activate a premium account (for FR24 at the link https://www.flightradar24.com/premium/signup?account=free) and immediately use all its features (flight tracks, etc.).
You can go to the Raspberry Pi IP address page and see the current status:
Much more information can be seen on the Flightradar24 account page:
I live on the 6th floor relatively close to the airport, so the number of planes monitored per day was more than 1000, even with a simple antenna on the windowsill. Interestingly, even with such an antenna, the maximum range to the received aircraft was 215 miles. Antenna options can be found on ebay by searching ads-b antenna.
Alternative
A bonus for those who had the patience to read to here. Some readers may have a question: is it possible to do without third-party services like Flightradar? Of course, you can run the decoder on the Raspberry Pi directly. You can download the sources at github.com/antirez/dump1090.It is enough to type 3 commands on the Raspberry Pi:
Git clone https://github.com/antirez/dump1090.git cd dump1090 / make
Then the decoder can be started with the command:
./dump1090 --interactive --net
The decoder starts working, and we see "raw data" - a list of visible "boards":
Now you can go to the browser on the Raspberry Pi and admire your own, local Flightradar, the picture may look something like this:
Why might this be necessary? Firstly, just out of interest, and secondly, Flightradar24, unfortunately, filters some of the data and shows Not all aircraft (for example, military, government, or business jets may not be displayed). Having launched our own local service, we see everything "as is", without any censorship. But, of course, the amount of data is limited by our local location and antenna quality, and MLAT technology will not be available either. Dump1090 is available in source, so those who wish can even create their own version of Flightradar, with blackjack and other bells and whistles.
conclusions
As you can see, everything is not so complicated, but at the same time it is quite interesting and inexpensive. To understand the order of prices: 10 years ago, the Airnav RadarBox receiver cost about $ 1000, now the RTL-SDR, which does the same thing, can be taken for $ 10.In my case, the receiver was launched only for testing, there is no practical sense to keep it constantly on, the coverage density of the European part already reaches 100%. For residents of the Russian hinterland, on the contrary, this can be quite interesting - there is an opportunity to both do a useful job for air travelers all over the world, expanding the coverage area, and to get access to the Premium account of the aforementioned sites.
Happy experiments to everyone.
Hello again everyone. Surely many of us use the services of various airlines. We make business trips, visit our relatives, friends, friends and acquaintances fly to us. Indeed, by plane you can get to your destination faster than any other means of transport.
Suppose your family members from another part of our Motherland are to fly to you. How to track an airplane flight in real time? The service, which we will talk about today, will help us with this.
This is a service - Flightradar24... Thanks to him, you will find out which flights depart and arrive at your airport, trace the path of any plane, find out its speed, route, distance, departure and landing time.
Let's get to know him better. Go to the main page of the service at https://www.flightradar24.com
The service automatically detects your location and you can choose your airport. The aircraft that are flying over your territory will also be indicated. Choosing any plane, you will find out detailed information about it, flight, etc. Which one? See below. Using the mouse wheel, you can zoom in and out of the terrain. Thus, the aircraft can be tracked anywhere in the world.
So, we choose our airport.
Before us will open information about arriving, departing flights.
Above, the local time of the airport, weather, wind strength will be indicated.
Arrivals (Arrival)- the nearest flights, which will be accepted by the Irkutsk Airport, are indicated. Here you will find out the time of arrival, the flight number, where from, the name of the airline, the make of the aircraft, its registration number and its status.
Departures- this tab will display flights departing from this airport.
On ground- here will be shown the vessels that have landed on the ground.
For the convenience of working with the service, make a language. This will help you more or less figure out what's what.
Go to the tab " Arrival". According to the current time, the next flight arrives from Ulaanbaatar. But for some reason, it cannot be tracked where it is at the moment. But we can take a flight from Khabarovsk. In the Status column he has Estimated) arrival time 22:33. And next to it is a black arrow. We click on it and show the flight, data about it.
To close the data for this airport, click the cross in the upper right corner.
On the left we see 3 blocks with information.
1 - flight status. Here are the route of the flight, time of departure, arrival; total distance traveled and remaining distance.
2 - details of the aircraft. This block displays aircraft data. Model, registration number, serial number, age. Some data is hidden under the lock icon. This means that the data is available in the paid version. You can learn more about tariff plans on this page - https://www.flightradar24.com/premium
3 - flight data. Indicated are longitude, latitude, speed (in knots), altitude in feet.
There are 2 buttons just below.
Number 4 in the screenshot - when you click on it, the scale is reduced and the full path of the aircraft is shown: from the place of departure to the place of arrival.
To return to the previous mode, press the button again. Nearby, to the right of it, there is a button that directs our attention to the plane. All ships move around the map in real time.
The most interesting feature of this service is that you can watch the liner in 3D. To switch to this mode, press the " 3 D"(See screenshot 3). The mode will load and you will see the aircraft in 3D. You can watch it in real time: where and how it flies.
Using the left mouse button, you can rotate the viewing angle from different sides. If you press the right button and, without releasing it, move the mouse itself up and down, you can change the scale of the aircraft. You can even feel like a pilot of this vessel by switching to the pilot view by clicking on the corresponding icon in the right panel. In this case, the camera does not change the angle of view. To determine the location of the liner, there is a map that will tell you exactly where the aircraft is flying.
To exit 3D mode, simply click the cross in the upper right corner.
If you like the service, you can use the application for various devices. To select the required application, go to the menu item " Programs»And select the required application.
Thanks to this service, you can always track the plane in real time and arrive at the airport on time to meet your friends, acquaintances and relatives.
And that's all for today. Have a great weekend and good luck!
Anyone who can rule a woman can cope with the state.
