If you've ever been curious about airplanes, then you are in the right place. Today's PiAware build will let you personally collect data on the exact whereabouts of airplanes up to 400 kilometers away from you, updating up to four times a minute. Be it passenger planes, cargo aircraft, single processors, helicopters, and even on occasion military planes, you're going to know their exact details and their flight history.

Hey, Game Tim here at Core Electronics and today we are tracking airplanes all thanks to the Raspberry Pi and the FlightAware Pro Stick. Works worldwide, runs at low power, and receives real-time minute to minute data directly from airplanes high up in the sky. With PiAware, we can tap into the information transmitted by ADS-B transponders installed on almost all aircraft as they fly overhead. This Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast is a technology that enables aircraft to determine their position by a satellite and then transmit it effectively.

All aircraft are legally required to do this, resulting in an enormous amount of signals. This information, which gets shouted out into the magnetic spectrum, can be received by airport ground stations. This is effectively how airports keep track of aircraft around them. With FlightAware, you build and run your own ground station, tapping into these ADS-B signals. You will have full access to the world airplane location data and even better, a whole bunch more features for free at Enterprise level account.

In return for contributing to the larger picture with your PiAware node, you will even be able to access historical data on what all the plans have done. It is incredible and FlightAware, as of 2023, has over 35,000 unique nodes around the globe, so a lot of people are jumping in to help. Big shout out goes to FlightAware HQ based in Houston, Texas for making all of this possible.

They are some proper clever clogs on the table before me. Is everything you need for today's electronic recipe: FlightAware Pro USB stick, a 1090 megahertz SMA antenna, and Raspberry Pi single board computer. You're also going to need a microSD card 16 gigabytes or larger, a Pi power supply, a micro HDMI to HDMI cord, an ethernet cord, and a desktop computer which has a mouse and keyboard.

Start by jumping onto your desktop and inserting that microSD card into it. Open up the Raspberry Pi flasher program installation link found in the description below and flash your system with the most recent BioWare image. The download link for this is in the description as well. Unzip that file and select it as the operating system inside Imager, then select your microSD as the storage and click right. With that flash fully baked in, insert that microSD card into the Raspberry Pi.

Now take your FlightAware stick and screw it into the antenna connectors with your fingers. Once seated properly, it will not screw in any further. With that complete, insert the FlightAware dongle into a USB port of the pi. Make sure that this antenna connection is fully seated by screwing it in. Then add HDMI out to a monitor, connect your Pi to a network (today I'm using an ethernet cable, you could do this through Wi-Fi - check the full article but this method is much easier).

Then power up the Raspberry Pi system by plugging in a USBC connector and rejoice - we have completed the Pi aware hardware setup. As soon as you power the pi, you're going to be welcomed by the pie aware flash screen on your monitor and then it's going to display a very similar page to this. The only important piece to write down is the IP address which your router has provided to the Pi aware system. This is the number here - yours will probably be different. With that number found, we no longer require the HDMI connection.

To our system regarding antenna mounting, the most optimal installations are outside and high up, like on a roof. Doing so will then provide an effective range of over 400 kilometers. ADS-B signals do not like to travel through buildings, so make sure to set it up outside.

Jump into the FlightAware account making website by clicking on the link down in the description. Fill out the form and create a new account. You will need to confirm it by verifying your email too. Now type and enter the IP address of your pios station, enter the URL of your browser. We have now accessed the central BioWare website for our system on screen.

Now is our checklist. The goal here is to turn these four colored tiles green. The 1090 radio column is going to turn green automatically once it receives some data from an airplane. That took my system here less than one minute. The next step is to click on the button that states “claim this feeder” to associate it with your FlightAware account. Doing so should take you straight to a success page which looks like this. Once you see that, know that you're very close to completing the entire setup.

Now click on that website link found inside the “view your ADS-B statistics” section. This will take you straight to your personal data website. Here you can check out all your personally gathered data and more from any internet connected device.

The final step is to fix the mlat setting so it turns green as well. MLAT stands for multi-laturation. The MLAT system calculates the position of the aircraft. For our system to work well with MLAT, we need to provide it with an accurate GPS location. Press the Cog symbol found in our personal website to start this process. Fill out this setting menu appropriately for your location. Note that you will need to click and drag the pin symbol to move it. With that complete, your pios status webpage will look.

Like this, after five minutes MLAT will turn green as well. With that, all software settings for your PiAware are sorted. So, let us check what we can identify using our iOS system here. The very first plane that my system identified was a Piper PA-31 Navajo with tail markings VHXGW and it was on the flight AE866. This particular plane is going from Tamworth to Newcastle.

Just check out all this historical and trip data I can glean using FlightAware. I even have a photograph of the exact airplane. It's amazing we can even expand our view to include everyone else's data using the freely accessible FlightAware map and can clearly see that there is a huge amount of airplanes flying around our world at any instant.

We can hit up our personal Skyware map. This is a web portal for viewing flights on a map that only your receiver is picking up. You can see some pretty proper amazing things with FlightAware. For instance, the next time you're on a commercial airplane and you feel some weird flight pass being taken, check your airplane's history in FlightAware. You might just be part of some Sky art without even knowing it.

Furthermore, if you're in a situation where you own an airplane, FlightAware can help you immensely. From tax management purposes, replacing or supporting your flight logs, providing history flight activities and supplementing pre-buy inspections, this system can do it for you. FlightAware is also a really great place to check out some very cool pictures of air plants. Just check out their photo galleries which I've linked down below.

Growing up, I had mates who could tell me exactly what the plane was in the sky just by the noise. Happy to say that I can now tell them exactly what airplane exists Over the Horizon and that's that. Stay cozy.