ADSB.im
Simple to use ADSB Feeder Images
(not
just) for common Single Board Computers
Supported Hardware
Supported Single Board Computers (SBCs)
Most importantly: you need a decent power supply. No, not a USB charger. An actual power supply designed for a single board computer. For most RPi3 class boards you can get away with a 5V/2.5A powersupply. For anything more powerful I recommend a 5V/4A power supply.
Boards that are actively tested and should work:
Most importantly: you need a decent power supply. No, not a USB charger. An actual power supply designed for a single board computer. For most RPi3 class boards you can get away with a 5V/2.5A powersupply. For anything more powerful I recommend a 5V/4A power supply.
Boards that are actively tested and should work:
- Raspberry Pi4 or Pi5 (the Pi5 certainly is overkill, a Pi4 with 2G RAM will do just fine)
- OrangePi Zero 3 (currently my favorite when it comes to price / performance)
- Raspberry Pi Zero 2, 3a/b (note that a Raspberry Pi Zero W will NOT work; also, we are investigating some MLAT instability with Pi3 models, so potentially not the best choice)
- Libre Computing Le Potato
- Orange Pi 3LTS (no wifi support), 4LTS, 5, and 5plus (these are all known to work, but not tested regularly)
Supported Software Defined Radios (SDRs)
- Airspy Mini (expensive, but by far the best supported SDR for ADS-B/1090MHz)
- Rtl-Sdr.com v3 and v4 dongle
- FlightAware pro stick (includes 1090MHz filter and a low noise amplifier)
- RadarBox green stick (includes 1090MHz filter and a low noise amplifier)
- AdsbExchange blue stick (includes 1090MHz filter and a low noise amplifier)
- RadarBox red stick (includes 978MHz filter and a low noise amplifier -- for UAT978)
- Nooelec NESDR Smart
- Most other RTL2838 based USB sticks should work
- SDRplay RSP1a and RSP1b - other models might work as well
Antennas
- You'll get by far the best results with an outdoor antenna mounted as high as possible (for good visibility to the horizon)
- Matthias Wirth's wiki has a great summary of some of the antenna options
Filters and LNAs (low noise amplifiers)
- some of the recommended SDRs above already include filter and LNA
- especially when investing in the Airspy Mini and a good outdoor antenna, a filtered LNA is a very useful addition. Again, great info on Matthias' wiki
SD cards (well, technically µSD cards)
- While the software fits on an 8GB card, it's generally better to go for a larger card as that extends the useful life of the card. Flash cells have a limited amount of write cycles and a larger card will balance the writes across more cells. The software stack tries to reduce unnecessary writes, but we still see especially 8GB cards die fairly regularly.
- Ideally you want a class 10 card from a name brand. ScanDisk Ultra have been known to be reliable
- Many other brands also have decent cards - but shy away from anything where the price is too good to be true
- Personally, for most of my feeders I use 64GB SanDisk Extreme cards - others have been very happy with the SanDisk Industrial and Samsung High Endurance cards.
Sample hardware setups that are known to work well.
We haven't seen an ADS-B image from your IP address connect to our server. If you have booted your single board computer with the ADSB.im image and still get this message, please take a look at the troubleshooting section in our FAQ.