I had an extra Raspberry Pi 3B laying around not being utilized for anything and was struggling to figure out a use for it. I have recently become fascinated with aviation, so I thought I would try to do something relating to that. I stumbled upon PiAware and was amazed at how easy the setup seemed to be. I quickly downloaded and flashed PiAware and had the OS up and running within 5 minutes. I ordered a FlightAware Pro Stick Plus ADS-B receiver and a cheap onelinkmore 1090 Mhz antenna and had to wait 2 days to receive them, which is today.

The setup really could not have been easier. I simply powered down my Raspberry Pi, plugged the Pro Stick Plus into one of the USB ports, connected the antenna to that, and plugged my Raspberry Pi back in. Within minutes I was tracking flights! It is later in the night, so I don’t think I am getting the best representation of data just yet.

My current setup is my antenna attached to a soup can, AKA the cantenna as I have seen it referred to in forums. This is just sitting in my office window for time being. I will see how well it performs tomorrow during the day when I see the most aircraft activity. As for now, I am just excited to be up and running!

SkyAware Map
Sample output of my SkyAware map.

I may play around with some different placements of my antenna to see if I can get any better reception. I have limited space, so I will have to make do with what I have. As for my first impression, I am really impressed! For just about $50 I have my very own flight tracking station set up, and giving back to FlightAware and the community by feeding FlightAware my information!

You can check out my up-to-date statistics on FlightAware here.