
Real-time SFO plane location - mooreds
http://www.airportviewer.com/airport/KSFO
======
route3
Pretty cool. For those wondering the source of the data, it is likely
ASDE-X/ASSC streaming in from the FAA's STDDS SWIM feed[0]. The terminal and
ground data is especially cool and not as common as the usual flight tracking
you see of en-route aircraft.

I'm using the STDDS feed to build a rough "go-around detector" in AWS for
approaching aircraft by monitoring each approaching aircraft glide slope and
dispatching a SNS notification "if currAlt > prevAlt".

If anyone has any questions about this stuff feel free to reach out, my email
is in my profile. The easy part (IMHO) is slurping in the data which only
requires a couple small EC2's and RDS, ~$125/mo. The hard part is often the
presentation and making demos like these fun and shareable.

[0]
[https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/stdds/](https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/swim/stdds/)

~~~
rconti
Typically FlightAware shows planes on the ground as well. Can you elaborate on
what the difference here is?

~~~
route3
I don't think I've seen FlightAware showing aircraft tracks on the ground.

They do show taxi times for arriving/departing aircraft and I wonder if they
are stitching that data together using the STDDS feed.

To give you an example, for an arriving aircraft you would get an alert of
"wheels down", which is as literal as it sounds: a timestamped event when the
aircraft made contact with the ground. In addition to ground position events
(allowing the tracking you see here), you would also receive an alert when the
aircraft left the tracked movement surface, i.e. transitioned to the gate/ramp
area and no longer on an active airport surface.

(Pretty sure I have that correct, it's been awhile since I got back to my
STDDS-powered projects. If anybody familiar with STDDS wants to chime in,
please do!)

For the curious, all these "alerts" are JMS messages with XML payloads. Pretty
much non-stop stream of data, incredibly fun if you're a developer+av geek.
For FlightAware-style tracking without using any ADS-B you'll want to
subscribe to the SFDPS feed. You'll get position updates every 60 sec for all
airborne flights in the US, which last week amounted to ~40GB in my Postgres
DB. You can request higher resolution reporting which is every 12s.

~~~
sfhikingfan
FA doesn't always show ground data (they must do some sort of filtering), but
it is available via ADS-B. If you visit sites like www.adsbexchange.com or
look at a receiver's raw data, you'll see ground data.

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jjwiseman
One thing to note is the presence of ground vehicles (e.g. "OPS7"). Using my
RTL-SDR dongle, I can pick up trucks driving around LAX, 20 miles away,
because the airport is creating synthetic ADS-B targets for them and
broadcasting packets as though they were any other aircraft--with appropriate
flags sent so you can tell 1. it's a ground vehicle, and 2. it's a synthetic
target, not a direct response from an ADS-B transponder.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If ground vehicles don’t have their own ADS-B transmitter, what method do they
use to announce their GPS positioning data to whatever is transforming that
into ADS-B data?

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canada_dry
And for the real aviation geeks, bring up the KSFO live tower audio here:
[http://d.liveatc.net/ksfo_twr2](http://d.liveatc.net/ksfo_twr2)

(via:
[https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=ksfo](https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=ksfo))

~~~
rhcom2
That's awesome. Any idea why there are different audio streams in the L/R
channels?

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0xffff2
The linked stream is the Tower/Ground stream. Tower is on the left channel,
Ground is on the right.

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bonyt
You can pick this stuff up with a cheap RTL-SDR - it’s the ADS-B transponder
on the planes. I believe services like FlightAware use this to track planes
too.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveill...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance_%E2%80%93_broadcast)

[https://github.com/antirez/dump1090](https://github.com/antirez/dump1090)

[http://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-
pi/dump1090.html](http://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/dump1090.html)

[https://flightaware.com/live/map](https://flightaware.com/live/map)

~~~
reaperducer
At one time, one of the apps (FlightRadar24, maybe?) would send you a free
radio receiver, as long as you hooked it up to the internet so they could get
the data, too; and you lived in an area that wasn't well covered.

~~~
JshWright
You have to supply your own hardware, but Flightaware provides a Raspberry Pi
image that does that (you get a free subscription if you send them ADS-B
data).

[https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/](https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/)

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gmurphy
One of my favorite personal projects was to do this with an ADS-B receiver,
Raspberry Pi, Android App, and a laser projector to show overhead flights on
my ceiling:

[https://twitter.com/gmurphy/status/891863458005655553](https://twitter.com/gmurphy/status/891863458005655553)

It made practicing forgiveness for loud airplane noises much easier :)

~~~
redindian75
really awesome... do u have a blog/writeup for how u did it?

~~~
klinquist
[https://www.flightradar24.com/build-your-
own](https://www.flightradar24.com/build-your-own) to get the data... the
visualization... I'd love to see a write-up as well!

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whorleater
This isn't surveillance in the "security camera open to the web", but actually
just plane positioning.

~~~
mooreds
Thanks, I updated the title.

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joezydeco
Just for comparison, here's someone that has stitched the ADS-B information
with Prepar3D (used to train air traffic controllers) and a bunch of other
glueware and turned it into a live YouTube feed of LAX:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQK0iR5iBU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQK0iR5iBU)

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mgraham7
These pages each show data from on-airport surveillance systems Airport
Surface detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) or Airport Surface Surveillance
Capability (ASSC) which show aircraft and vehicles on the airport surface and
within a few miles of the airport. It does include ADS-B but unfortunately not
all US carriers are equipped yet.

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kalev
What's the difference with
[https://www.flightradar24.com/37.62,-122.38/15](https://www.flightradar24.com/37.62,-122.38/15)
?

~~~
mgraham7
There are several differences if you watch closely. First you will see a more
complete picture of the aircraft movement on the surface. Second you will
noticed the flightradar attempts to predict where aircraft are going while the
airportviewer only reports where the aircraft says it is.

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mooreds
FYI, there are also 36 other airports viewable from this app:
[http://www.airportviewer.com/](http://www.airportviewer.com/)

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ronaru
[http://webtrak5.bksv.com/](http://webtrak5.bksv.com/) <\- multiple airports
with both near realtime and historical data, flight paths, etc.

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skykooler
Cool! I wonder whether this could use some sort of extrapolation so the planes
move smoothly between updates?

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bhaile
Others listed are faster but here is another one.
[http://volans.airportnetwork.com/JS3D/VolansPublicSFO.html](http://volans.airportnetwork.com/JS3D/VolansPublicSFO.html)

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code4tee
Just looks like ADS-B Data. Neat but hardly new. Lots of sites out there
already. For a few bucks you can build your own receiver and collect/visualize
the data.

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klinquist
FlightRadar24.com is a much better interface and shows all the planes... in
the world.

I have an ADS-B receiver and I transmit my data to both FR24 and FlightAware.

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JepZ
While the the title suggests something different, it looks pretty cool anyway,
but someone should really look into adding some animations ;-)

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vermontdevil
Didn't know Oakland airport is directly across the bay!

~~~
wastedhours
With Norwegian flying London - Oakland, and the link up with the BART making
it potentially even faster to get to Embarcadero, it's a really great option
over SFO!

~~~
rconti
Yup; You can get nonstop from Oakland to Reykjavik (KEF) and also Stockholm
(ARN) I believe. No doubt Norwegian also flies OAK to somewhere in Norway.

~~~
vgf
They even have a cute little lounge there for the premium passengers nowadays
(shared with BA; a couple of flights a week to London Gatwick).

