A Portable RTL-SDR Based ADS-B Receiver with Display and 3D Printed Enclosure
Over on Hackaday.io user nathan.matsuda has written about his RTL-SDR based hand held ADS-B aircraft receiver with display and 3D printed enclosure.
His initial idea was to create a flexible and open portable SDR device, however keeping the device open and built for general use meant increased complexity which quickly slowed his progress. Instead [Nathan] decided to focus on just ADS-B for his portable device as living near an airport he’d been interested in aircraft tracking since his first SDR arrived.
The device consists of a Raspberry Zero, RTL-SDR, 3.5″ IPS LCD and a battery pack for portability. For software he uses dump1090 with some custom code for the map plotting. Together with a 3D printed case and some buttons, the result is a very professional looking portable aircraft tracking device.
Hopefully Nathan will continue updating his project page so that others may replicate it on their own.
I would like to see someone make something like this that is an ADSB and has maybe another RTL-SDR for listening in the radio at the same time. Maybe two Pi zeros? Or even, now with more RAM in Pi4, maybe even two virtual machines at the same time? Maybe I should make this? 😛
this is a very exacting implementation of a great idea. i’m going to copy it!