Track Aircraft With ADSBee, an Open Source ADS‑B Receiver

# What ADS‑B is and why hobbyists care Automatic Dependent Surveillance—Broadcast (ADS‑B) is an unencrypted protocol aircraft use to broadcast position and other telemetry. The transmissions are on 1090 MHz using Mode S pulse‑position modulation. In the U.S., a minority of aircraft use 978 MHz UAT for ADS‑B traffic. Because ADS‑B is open, hobbyists and researchers have built receivers, community ground stations, and data aggregators such as airplanes.live, FlightAware, and FlightRadar24.

# The problem ADSBee addresses Typical community ADS‑B ground stations use an SDR dongle plus a Raspberry Pi running software like dump1090. That combination works but is relatively bulky, power‑hungry, and not ideal for embedding inside small drones or battery‑powered devices. Commercial receivers that avoid SDRs often rely on expensive FPGAs and can cost $350 or more.

# What ADSBee does differently ADSBee replaces the SDR + host approach with a compact board that implements a demodulator on the RP2040 microcontroller using its PIO peripherals. That allows commercial‑grade ADS‑B decoding without an FPGA or external compute device. The board's power draw is about 1 W and it has a small footprint suitable for embedded projects.

# Interfaces and connectivity ADSBee can deliver decoded aircraft data over USB, UART, and Wi‑Fi. Ethernet support is available via an accessory board. That makes it easy to feed data to tablets, online databases, or autopilot computers on drones.

# Dual‑band support and hardware evolution

# Open source philosophy and community role ADSBee's schematic and firmware are open source. The project's maintainers have used community testing to find and fix bugs quickly and to add features such as configuration commands and position‑filtering improvements. The open approach contrasts with proprietary commercial receivers whose closed firmware can be slower to evolve.

# Accessories and next steps Accessory boards for ADSBee are nicknamed "pants" by the community. Planned and in‑production pants include a PoE pant for Ethernet plus power, a GNSS pant to add receiver GNSS positioning, and a battery pant for portable operation without USB power. Additional ADSBee‑powered hardware is under development.

# Where ADSBee fits ADSBee is designed for makers, researchers, and integrators who want a compact, low‑power, openly documented ADS‑B receiver to integrate into drones, mobile ground stations, or embedded systems. It's an alternative to SDR+Pi ground stations and expensive FPGA‑based commercial receivers, offering a balance of capability, size, and openness.