An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

3 comments

• amatecha 57 minutes ago
  Looks pretty cool, though kinda "cheating" by pulling from adsb.fi - though I think you'd need something a lot more powerful than an ESP32 to receive and decode ADS-B ;)
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  • sephamorr 45 minutes ago
    I would actually expect the math to decode ads-b traffic is substantially less complex than, for example, a TLS connection.
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    • greggsy 8 minutes ago
      It is trivial to decode, but don’t forget that tls is extensively optimised on most networking stacks.
  • punnerud 21 minutes ago
    Actually possible to receive and decode ADS-B on ESP32, but MLAT is failing (tried hard but not found a trick yet).

    Biggest problem isn’t that it’s not powerful enough, but the USB port bandwidth don’t match most SDR.

    Using some clever tricks you can receive parts of the message on a slower USB and be able to decode ADS-B
  • greggsy 10 minutes ago
    You could fit a pi zero and rtl in an enclosure not much larger than the one they’ve printed.
  • bigiain 35 minutes ago
    Using ADS-B and calling it a "radar" feels wrong to me.

    (But is is a cool project)

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    • daemonologist 11 minutes ago
      Agreed, and even SSR always felt like cheating imo. I wanna see someone build a primary radar on an esp 32.
• freitasm 37 minutes ago
  Well, a radar-like display, then. But not a radar.
• NooneAtAll3 32 minutes ago
  radar *display*

  making esp32-based radar emitter would've been cool, tho