An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

(blog.ktz.me)

94 points | by alexktz 4 hours ago

9 comments

  • amatecha 3 hours ago
    Looks pretty cool, though kinda "cheating" by pulling from adsb.fi - though I think you'd need something a lot more powerful than an ESP32 to receive and decode ADS-B ;)
    • sephamorr 3 hours ago
      I would actually expect the math to decode ads-b traffic is substantially less complex than, for example, a TLS connection.
      • greggsy 2 hours ago
        It is trivial to decode, but don’t forget that tls is extensively optimised on most networking stacks.
    • bigiain 3 hours ago
      Using ADS-B and calling it a "radar" feels wrong to me.

      (But is is a cool project)

      • daemonologist 3 hours ago
        Agreed, and even SSR always felt like cheating imo. I wanna see someone build a primary radar on an esp 32.
        • bigiain 23 minutes ago
          Gotta admit that's what I clicked through hoping for.

          I've seen a few projects that use SDR to detect doppler shifts of reflections of broadcast FM radio station off planes as "passive radar". But that doesn't get much in the way of direction info, just approach velocity. I've pondered building something that uses that and correlates it with an ADS-B receiver, to see it it can detect aircraft that are not transmitting ADS-B. But that'd get me on another "list" if I published it I suspect...

          This is not the project I remember, but it's the same idea and technique: https://github.com/Max-Manning/passiveRadar

    • punnerud 3 hours ago
      Actually possible to receive and decode ADS-B on ESP32, but MLAT is failing (tried hard but not found a trick yet).

      Biggest problem isn’t that it’s not powerful enough, but the USB port bandwidth don’t match most SDR.

      Using some clever tricks you can receive parts of the message on a slower USB and be able to decode ADS-B

      • 1e1a 2 hours ago
        Why do you need to send the samples over USB?
    • greggsy 3 hours ago
      You could fit a pi zero and rtl in an enclosure not much larger than the one they’ve printed.
  • ustad 35 minutes ago
    “Finally, the firmware now supports authenticated OTA updates, so future builds can be installed through the browser instead of connecting the board over USB.”

    What does that mean?

    • alexchamberlain 29 minutes ago
      OTA = over the air. ie online updates you’d expect of a more polished product
  • boguscoder 1 hour ago
    Perhaps I didn’t read it thoroughly enough but it seems that lat/long of the “radar” are expected to be entered by user, I think using wifi positioning could be of great assist and could be done from mcu itself without involving web portal, though maybe portal already does it (didn’t get to see it)
  • freitasm 3 hours ago
    Well, a radar-like display, then. But not a radar.
  • NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago
    radar *display*

    making esp32-based radar emitter would've been cool, tho

  • NNimaandi 1 hour ago
    Its an amazing work
  • sneak 1 hour ago
    ADS-B is not radar, despite ATC calling these sorts of things “secondary radar”.
  • nicechianti 2 hours ago
    [dead]