Hosting an ADS-B feeder has intrigued me for some time but only did so in September 2025. My first feeder was a Raspberry Pi with an RTL-SDR v4 dongle running FlightRadar24‘s image. My original setup received ADS-B messages from no farther than 80 nautical miles away so I added a FlightAware dual-band signal filter which increased the range to 130 nautical miles. Not great and substantially less than other feeders.
Online research suggested that an ADSB-specific SDR dongle for 1090MHz (the ADS-B frequency) should increase the reception range, so I purchased an Airplanes.Live filtered SDR with Pre-Amp. Technically, all I should need to do is swap dongles and be on my to improved reception. Technically.
Unfortunately, swapping dongles resulted in no ADS-B messages received. After repeated support emails, the vendor suggested that FlightRadar24’s image used an outdated and unsupported version of dump1090-mutability which may not support the new dongle. He suggested using more recent software, either built from scratch or from the FlightAware-supported image.
Building a FlightAware Feeder
I decided to use the pre-configured FlightAware image rather than attempting to built from a base Raspian image: online searches return way-too-many, often contradictory results. Perhaps in the future I’ll attempt a custom build, but today am unmotivated to do so.
Likely to simplify for non-technical newbies, the FlightAware image is remarkably easy to install, confirming my decision to use it.
Step 1: Set Up Your Raspberry Pi
FlightAware provides detailed instructions for newbies and tech novices to create their ADS-B ground station – i.e., Raspberry Pi choices, micro SD card sizes, supported SDR dongles, available 1090MHz-tuned antennas – but less interesting to me since I already have the hardware.
So, let’s set up our Raspberry Pi:
- Download the PiAware image from the FlightAware site.
- Image the Micro SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager.
- Optional: To SSH into your Raspberry Pi, add the empty file
sshto the root directory. For *nix systems, re-mount the card, change to/and execute the commandtouch ssh. And ignore me if you have no idea what SSH is.
- Optional: To SSH into your Raspberry Pi, add the empty file
- Setup the Raspberry Pi by inserting the SD card, plugging in the SDR dongle and network cable.
- Boot PiAware by plugging in to the power cable.
- Wait to allow PiAware to boot completely.
Though more recent Raspberry Pi models support WiFi, wired networking appears more stable: my initial feeder would not reconnect after dropping its WiFi connection. Don’t know why, my WiFi is very stable, didn’t research, and, for now, am sticking with wired networking.
Step 2: Claim Your Feeder
Claiming associates your PiAware feeder with your FlightAware account. If you have not already done so, I recommend creating your FlightAware account and logging in before claiming.
You’ll use a web browser to navigate by IP address to the PiAware. Today, almost all networks use DNS to assign IP addresses, so you’ll need to access your home router to find the address assigned. Search for hostname piaware to find the IP address and enter it into your browser, such as http://192.168.1.145. If again you have no idea what I’m talking about, ask your teenager.
After entering in the PiAware IP address, you should see the following screen:
Click the link Claim this feeder to associate it with your FlightAware account which automatically redirects to FlightAware and associates the PiAware with your account. The Success! text indicates that FlightAware successfully associated the PiAware to your account. Congratulations!
Upon returning to the local PiAware page, you’ll no longer be given the option to claim the feeder because, another sign of a successful claim.
Step 3: View Aircrafts
Navigate to http://[piaware_ip_address]/skyaware to see the planes for which your PiAware has received ADS-B messages. Warning: it’s very addictive!
Add FlightRadar24 Feeder
FlightRadar24 has made it brain-dead simple to add its feeder to an existing PiAware device. To do so requires console access via an attached keyboard/monitor or SSH’ing to the device. I prefer the SSH approach. The default credentials required to log in are user pi, password flightaware.
I SSH’ed from my Apple Mini into my Piaware and followed the instructions here. Simply execute the command sudo bash -c "$(wget -O - https://repo-feed.flightradar24.com/install_fr24_rpi.sh)" and sit back and wait as the script does its magic: download, install, config, the works.
Similar to FlightAware’s claiming, you associate the newly-installed FlightRadar24 feeder with your FlightRadar24 account. A wizard walks you through the steps, registering you as a new or existing feeder, configuring MLAT, gathering whatever information it needs. It’s fairly self-explanatory, just do what is asked for.
For some reason, the FlightRadar24 feeder was not initially enabled. To be safe, I recommend executing the commands sudo systemctl enable fr24feed and sudo systemctl start fr24feed.
Wait five minutes or so to check your FlightRadar24 account to confirm your feeder stats shows your status as Online.
Results
The new Airplanes.Live SDR dongle with the filter receives ADS-B messages from over 200 nautical miles. Without the filter, the maximum reach was worse than the RTL-SDR v4 without the filter, receiving messages from only 50-60 nautical miles. Go figure.
My FlightRadar24 and FlightAware score are rising daily as my monthly average range continues to increase. All around a success.
Additional Optional Tasks
- Update Piaware Image. The PiAware image may be out-of-date. To upgrade all components to latest, greatest, log/SSH into the console and execute the command
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. - Change PiAware Hostname. You can assign a different network name to the PiAware device with the command
sudo hostname <new-hostname>. This may be helpful if you are running multiple PiAware devices or have a large home network. - Assign Static IP Address. To ensure I can consistently access my PiAware without checking DNS, I assign a static IP address via my router’s DNS service. It is possible to assign the static address on the PiAware device but you run the risk of DNS leasing the IP address to another device.
- Update NTP Servers. By default, the PiAware image – and all Raspian images – use generic, non locale-specific NTP services, which may cause problems with MLAT. To ensure country-specific NTP servers – in my case, US – I edited the file
/etc/ntpsec/ntp.confto use US-based pools:0.us.pool.ntp.org,1.us.pool.ntp.org, etc. Restart NTPsudo systemctl restart ntpto make the updated configuration take affect.
