Raspberry Pi Project

Installing ModeSDeco2 ADS-B / A / C / S Decoding Software

One of the many uses of a RTL-SDR tv tuner stick is the cabaility of receiving high frequency ranges like those used on aircraft to track position, speed, etc. One software that turns your dongle into a virtual radar screen is dump1090. I covered a how to on this HERE. There is (in my opinion) a better one I stumbled upon...modesdeco2. This guide will show you how to install it.

Make sure you have the driver installed for your dongle...if not see the RTL-SDR driver installion guide

First download a copy of ModeSDeco2 here and extract the file.

tar xvzf modesdeco2_rpi_20150321.tgz

You can then run the program with parameters to set location and set gain

./modesdeco2 --location 47.5:-52.8 --web 8080 --rbs --gain 48.0

You set the lat and long to just 1 decimal place, the web 8080 tells the program what port to use, and the gain 48 tells the program how much gain to use for the rtl-sdr dongle. You can also use ""-- agc"" to let the program detect and change the gain values.

Open up a web browser and go enter in the ip address of the machine running the software as well as the port number you set in the command line (ie: 192.168.1.10:8080)

There you will find a multi page site showing history and current flights and if you click on the map menu you can view the aircraft and its tracks and info via a google map page. It will look similiar to the following.