
Analyzing Flightradar24’s internal API structure. - Cykey
http://blog.cykey.ca/post/88174516880/analyzing-flightradar24s-internal-api-structure
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chrissnell
I would love to see an open source network of ADS-B collectors form, similar
to what's available for the APRS-IS [1] network. The big ADS-B players
(Flightaware and FlightRadar24) get their ADS-B feeds from the FAA (5-min
delayed) and supplement it with real-time over-the-air collection from
volunteers around the world. These companies give away small ethernet-
connected collection servers to the volunteers and in exchange, they get the
data and keep it proprietary.

It sure would be nice if there was a network to collect and pass around this
data for free consumption by whoever wanted to use it.

[1] [http://aprs2.net/](http://aprs2.net/) [http://www.aprs-
is.net/](http://www.aprs-is.net/)

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RobotCaleb
ADSB# has the ability to stream data to sdrsharp.com, but I don't know what
they do with it.

ADS-B won't be awesome in the US for another 5 years, though. My office is at
one of the busiest regional airports in the country. Very rarely do I see any
aircraft that provide more identifier and altitude using my RTL-SDR and
homemade antenna with ADSB#.

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keenerd
Your antenna is probably bad. I live in the middle of nowhere USA and get
planes all the time. (Using rtl_adsb.)

~~~
RobotCaleb
The ones I do see are typically freight carriers (FedEx, etc), or
international airlines (Virgin). AFAIK, most of the flights into and out of
this airport aren't those types. So, of the air traffic I do see, the majority
don't identify with more than identifier and altitude. Lat lon is few and far
between.

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jjwiseman
I wrote a small wrapper javascript library around the planefinder.net API:
[https://www.npmjs.org/package/planefinder](https://www.npmjs.org/package/planefinder)

I'd love to see a free & open network of shared ADS-B data, but the hobby
seems to be stuck in a proprietary mode. For example, Planeplotter[1] runs its
own proprietary network for customers only, which includes enhancements like
multilateration-based localization of aircraft that are only using Mode C
transponders, without GPS coordinates.

All the aircraft information databases that tie the ICAO hex codes sent in
ADS-B data are proprietary, and there's often dumb drama over incompatible
versions or updates.

[1]
[http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm](http://www.coaa.co.uk/planeplotter.htm)

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kevinbowman
I'd love to see a post from Flightradar24 talking about their internal tech,
about how they deal with updates and requests from around the world which only
make sense in real-time. Maybe some series of message-queue based processing
(or equivalent, like Storm?) publishing into something in-memory (like
Redis?). Combined with the zones approach, means there's a minimal amount of
processing on each request. Just a guess, though.

