Turning a Local ADS-B Feed Into an Easy to Read Dashboard

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  Have you ever wondered where the plane or helicopter overhead is coming from, where it is going or who operates it? I found myself logging into my SkyAware monitor several times a week to look up that information. The problem was that it only showed what was overhead at that moment and logging in took a minute or two each time. I knew there had to be a better way to see this information quickly and to keep a historical record of all the aircraft traffic I had observed. One of the fun side effects of running a local ADS-B receiver with dump1090-fa on a Pi with an RTL-SDR dongle, is that you end up with a constant stream of aircraft telemetry sitting on your Pi. aircraft.json updates every second or two with hex codes, positions, altitudes, speeds and it's all there waiting to be analyzed and not just sent to Flightaware. Recently, I learned about JetClock which is a slick, commercial desk clock that shows you the aircraft passing overhead with airline, route, photos and all kinds ...
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Your Own Portable POTA Callsign Database

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Have you ever wanted to search the FCC database outside the shack on a POTA or at Field Day? It's easy when you have cell coverage, but what if you are in the middle of nowhere? Or what if you want to see all the amateurs around you, search by last name or even who have a callsign like yours?

K3NG's has come up with a powerful command line tool called HamDB that let's you have the entire FCC database available locally on your Raspberry Pi.  One thing I thought was missing was an easy to use UI, so I have put something together called HamDB GUI.

With it you can search by call, name, zip code or callsign wildcard, right in your web browser.





It's easy to get installed and up and running. All you need is a Raspberry Pi 3B or better and a 32GB SD card.

If you are looking to power you Raspberry Pi in the field there are a number of <$10 converters like this one on Amazon that will allow you to run the Pi off 12 volts easily. 

First you'll need to setup your Pi.

1.Preparing the Raspberry Pi SD card

a. Put your SD card in your reader and plug this into your computer’s usb port.
b. Download and install Raspberry Pi card management software.

Go to https://www.raspberrypi.org/software/ and download and install Raspberry Pi Imager.
Follow the illustrations below to install the base lite image on your SD card:










Pick your computer model.

















Name your system, the default instructions below reference the computer being named as “raspberrypi” with a user of “pi” and a password of “raspberry”. So it is easiest to use that name and password, and then enter your wifi network name and password.

Then scroll down and select your time zone. Then continue on like the pictures below.














2. Connect the hardware and SD card.

Insert the SD card into your Raspberry Pi, connect your CAT interface (USB cable) and (optional) connect your ethernet cable. Wifi is not recommended because it can introduce issues but we have it set up with your network on the previous step if you’d like to try it.

3. Connect via SSH to your Raspberry Pi

Wait a minute or two for the Raspberry Pi to boot up and then connect to it with the steps below in Putty.




If you have a "Putty Security Alert" window click "yes".

A black window will open. On the line "login as:" put "pi" On the line "pi@raspberrypi.local's password:" put "raspberry" (Warning, it is normal that nothing is displayed on the password line, in fact your password is hidden for discretion).

You should then see this: 


4. Software Installation

At the pi@raspberry prompt enter (type this command as one line – it is best if you copy/paste it).

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/n3bkv/hamdb-gui/main/Ham_DB_Gui.sh | bash

Then at the next prompt type (to make it executable):

chmod +x Ham_DB_Gui.sh

then run the installer and make sure you select the option to download the FCC database.  This is take a little time so allow about 15-30 for the install to finish.

./Ham_DB_Gui.sh

After the installation completes, just go to http://raspberrypi.local and you'll see the system webpage. Initial lookups will be slow while the system indexes the FCC data.  After an hour or so, they should be much faster.  At 2:30AM daily, the system will download updates for you so you'll always have the latest call information.

73 and happy POTAing.



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