This app (originally developed by @Gruijter and author of whole concept - THANK YOU ! ) turns your Homey into an aircraft radar and tracker and you have basically two options :
a) Rely on ADS-B providers without having your own data feeder
b) Rely on ADS-B providers having your own data feeder
At this moment, two provides are supported :
- Open Sky Network - both options a] and b]
- ADS-B Exchange - paid subscription (starting at 10$/month)
You can add two device types :
- radar - eg. you are interested what is in the sky above you
- tracker - eg. you would like to track particular flight only
For the 1st option, https://opensky-network.org/, might be possibly the best solution.
- OpenSky REST API — The OpenSky Network API 1.4.0 documentation
- OpenSky registered users get 4000 API credits per day. For higher request loads please contact OpenSky.
- Active contributing OpenSky users get a total of 8000 API credits per day. An active user is a user which has an ADS-B receiver that is at least 30% online (measured over the current month).
ADS-B feeder is not for you ?
Don’t be afraid to build one, it’s easy and cheap :
- find some RPI3 or CM4 (I took one from HP23 because I upgraded due to the ram constraints years ago)
- have SdCard
- get right DVB-T module with antenna (eg. QS9010 ADS-B USB RTL-SDR 1090MHz - ensure that the chipset support 1090MHz for regions like EU (in US they use 978 MHz). Recommendation - choose one with magnetic stand for antenna
(Nice article with some info : ADS-B Part 2 - Hardware | Bohumír Zámečník) - follow feeder installation guides
- I started with PIAWARE - PiAware - build your own ADS-B ground station for integration with FlightAware - FlightAware - reward you with ENTERPRISE license
- added OpenSky Dump1090 OpenSky Feeder (Raspberry Pi-based) - on top of it - reward you with 8000 credits / day
- added FlightRadar24 on top of it - they reward you with business subscription plan (Share your ADS-B data - Real-time flight tracker | Flightradar24)
Now I’m feeding OpenSky, FlightAware and FlightRadar with the same setup.
Each of them has it’s specifics, different interfaces, statistics, advantages and disadvantages etc.
This is for example from OpenSky :
https://opensky-network.org/receiver-profile?s=-1408205003
Some local PIAWARE stats :
Currently only those two providers will be supported, in case of any error (eg. I don’t have ADS-B Exchange paid subscription), please provide me with debug logs, otherwise I can’t help you.
In the future, I might be looking on additional (FlightAware/FlightRadar24), but depends if there will be even any interest and there is also alternative here for FR24.