Build your own ADS-B receiver

To get started, you will need to order a few parts that are available all over the world, but vendors and availability may vary by country.

Your receiver will run Flightradar24's Pi24 client to track flights within 200-400 miles and will automatically share data with Flightradar24. You can track flights directly off your Pi24 device or via Flightradar24.com

Free Flightradar24 Business Plan subscription (a USD 499.99/year value) for all data sharers.

Download Pi24

What to get

Raspberry Pi

Pi24 supports Raspberry Pi model 3b+ or newer.

Power supply for RPI

A power supply of 5.1V and 3A is recommended.

8 GB MicroSD card

8GB is the minimum requirement. You can use a larger as well.

ADS-B USB dongle with antenna

Buy any RTL2832/R820T2 based dongle that is available to you locally.

BUNDLE ADS-B USB Dongle + external Antenna (1090 MHz)

Buy here

1090MHz ADS-B Antenna

Buy here

MicroSD Card Reader

Casing for Raspberry Pi

Ethernet cable

RJ45 network cable (Cat 5/6/7).

Installation instructions

  1. Download Pi24 Image (MD5)
  2. Download Etcher and install it.
  3. Open Etcher
    1. Click on “flash from file”, navigate to your download directory where you downloaded the Pi24 image, and select it.
    2. Click on “select target”, choose your SD card, and click “select”.
    3. Click “flash", wait for the process to complete, and then eject the SD card.
  1. (Optional)
    1. If you want to configure wifi directly on the Pi, plug the SD card back into your computer and navigate to it. There you will find a file named “wpa_supplicant.conf.template”. Rename it to “wpa_supplicant.conf” first, then open it and enter your router name in ssid and the password in psk, within the quotes. Save the changes to the file and eject the SD card.
    2. If you already have a sharing key, you will find a file called fr24key.txt (for UAT the file is fr24uat-key.txt), enter your sharing key there (just the key in plain text, nothing else), save, and eject the SD card. If you do this step, you will automatically get your previous radar ID back and you don’t need to follow the activation procedure below in this case.
  2. Insert the SD card into the slot at the bottom of your Raspberry Pi.
  3. Plug in your ADS-B dongle with the antenna cable.
  4. Next, plug in all the other cables (Ethernet, Power) into your Pi24.
  5. On your computer, or LAN connected smartphone/tablet, click on the following link and our system will automatically detect your Pi24 and ask you to register it.

That is all you have to do, once your receiver is active you will receive an email from us with instructions on how you can access your free Flightradar24 Business subscription

  1. Please note the default credentials for SSH access to Raspberry Pi
    Username: pi
    Password: raspberry
  2. You can load the Raspberry Pi configuration menu by typing 'raspi-config'. Here you are able to set up your Rpi according to your needs.
  3. Pi24 image is based on Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

FAQ

Sign up for a free BASIC account using the same email address with which you registered your feed and it will be automatically upgraded to business as soon as data starts arriving.
Yes, up to 3! If you have more locations, you can either register them under another email address and then contact [email protected] to merge it to your primary email address or ask support to provide you additional sharing key(s) under the same email address.
Yes, you can use other images but for those you would need to download and install FR24 data sharing application. Refer to Share your data section for details..
If you have installed any other image than Pi24 then your receiver won't show up on this page. You would be required to download and install FR24 data sharing application. For details refer to Raspberry Pi section.
Yes, enter your radar ID in the Radar filter to view just the aircraft you're tracking on the live Flightradar24 map.