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Choosing an ADS B Receiver
Blipscope works out of the box with the cloud Flight Data and Updates feed (OpenSky), so you don't need any of this to get started. But if you want the smoothest, most accurate radar — about once-a-second updates with no daily limit, working even when OpenSky is down — you can run your own ADS-B receiver and point Blipscope at it. This page is the shopping guide for building that receiver yourself.
🛰️ Already have a receiver running (dump1090-fa, readsb, PiAware, tar1090, or an ADS-B Exchange feeder image)? Skip the shopping and head straight to Network and Setup to point Blipscope at it.
A home ADS-B receiver is just three parts:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| SDR USB dongle | A software-defined radio that tunes the 1090 MHz band aircraft broadcast on. |
| 1090 MHz antenna | Picks up the signal. The single biggest factor for range. |
| Decoder software on a Raspberry Pi | Turns the radio signal into aircraft positions and serves them on your network. Any Pi 2 or newer — even a Pi Zero 2 W — is plenty; the decoder is light. |
The dongle and antenna are what you buy; the software is free.
- A Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5 dongle, plus
- A Nooelec 1090 MHz ADS-B antenna.
Both ends are SMA, so they screw straight together with no adapter, and the pair comes in well under the price of an all-in-one kit. This is the combo to get for most people.
In an RF-noisy spot you can add a 1090 MHz band-pass filter later — but try without one first; you may not need it.
- A FlightAware Pro Stick Plus has a 1090 MHz filter and amplifier built in, so it shrugs off nearby noise. Pair it with the same SMA antenna above (no adapter needed).
It's frequently out of stock, so don't wait on it if the Nooelec combo is available.
⚠️ Avoid the RTL-SDR Blog V4 kit — its tuner chip was discontinued, so remaining stock sells at inflated prices. The RTL-SDR Blog V3 (still in production) is a fine dongle if you already own one, but you'd still need to add a 1090 MHz antenna.
📡 Antenna height and sky view beat everything else. A cheap antenna in an attic or an upstairs window will out-range an expensive one sitting on your desk. Get the antenna as high and as unobstructed as you reasonably can before spending more on hardware.
Since sky view matters most, you'll usually want the antenna at a window while the Pi lives somewhere convenient. The instinct is to buy an antenna with a long cable — but at 1090 MHz that's the wrong move.
⚠️ Long coax kills your signal. The thin coax on mag-mount/window antennas (RG174) loses roughly ~1 dB per metre at 1090 MHz. A 5 m run can throw away ~5 dB — wiping out the gain you got from the better location. You'd be moving the antenna to a good spot and then leaking the signal back out in the cable.
The fix: move the radio to the antenna, not the antenna to the radio. Keep the RF cable short and extend on the USB side instead.
| Approach | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Long antenna coax to the window, Pi/dongle far away | ❌ Lossy — defeats the purpose |
| Short antenna + a USB extension so the dongle sits at the window | ✅ Best. USB loss is negligible vs. coax (use a powered/active cable beyond ~5 m) |
| Long coax only if you add a filtered LNA (e.g. Nooelec SAWbird+ / LaNA) at the antenna | ✅ Works — amplify before the cable loss; for outdoor/high runs |
A short built-in cable (≈2–3 m, like the FlightAware indoor antenna's) is a fine middle ground — long enough to reach a nearby window, short enough that the loss is small. Beyond that, reach for a USB extension rather than a longer antenna cable.
Flash the PiAware SD-card image to your Pi. It bundles dump1090-fa, which serves exactly the feed Blipscope reads, and it earns you a free FlightAware account for feeding (which also bumps your OpenSky-style perks if you feed there too).
Once it's running, open the receiver's map in a browser at http://<pi-ip>:8080/ to confirm it's seeing aircraft.
Other decoders Blipscope can read from, if you prefer them: readsb, tar1090, or an ADS-B Exchange feeder image.
Point Blipscope at your receiver from the config page — set Data source to My own ADS-B receiver and enter its address. PiAware / dump1090-fa serve on port 8080, so use http://<pi-ip>:8080. Full steps are on Network and Setup.
- Network and Setup — pointing Blipscope at your receiver
- Flight Data and Updates — how the local feed compares to OpenSky
- Configuration Reference — the Data source and Receiver URL settings