Show HN: ADSBee, an open source dual band embedded ADS-B receiver for anything

Show HN: ADSBee, an open source dual band embedded ADS-B receiver for anything(pantsforbirds.com)

8 points by CoolNamesAllTkn 242 days ago | 3 comments

I grew frustrated with closed source ADS-B receivers a few years ago, and wanted to build a true low cost embedded ADS-B receiver from scratch for low power applications. I ended up developing a custom radio frontend that uses RP2040 PIO for Mode S preamble detection and demodulation, and also released the first open soruce implementation of UAT decoding on an RF MCU from TI (which works somewhat beyond the publicly stated specs for the chip). Today, ADSBee is a fully featured dual-band ADS-B receiver, with Mode S, ADSB, UAT ADSB, UAT TIS-B / FIS-B, a ton of configurable reporting protocols, WiFi / USB / Ethernet, and a web server. Beta testers have been using ADSBee to feed everything from online data aggregators to drone autopilot systems and tablets running Electronic Flight Bag apps like ForeFlight.

I'd love to hear what people think about the project, or answer any questions. I've been posting regular updates to the blog on my website, it's been a very fun journey taking an open source hardware project from an idea to a business that makes and ships real things: https://pantsforbirds.com/blog/

toomuchtodo 242 days ago |

Brilliant, I love it, thanks for sharing. Is there a way to centrally manage a fleet of them for shipping data to an endpoint for online aggregators? Can it report its location via GPS?

Edit: Thank you!

CoolNamesAllTkn 242 days ago | |

Currently, customers that run a fleet of ADSBees set them up to feed their own endpoint, which can be very easy to set up using open source software. For instance, we have https://globe.whereplane.xyz/, which is fed by a handful of ADSBees around the world. The code for this aggregator is a single docker compose file, which can be found here: https://github.com/CoolNamesAllTaken/whereplane-xyz

ADSBees can be fully configured over their network connection, including flashing new firmware, so if you put them onto some sort of VLAN network you could update and configure each device pretty easily. They use a network console accessible via USB or WebSocket for configuration and firmware updates.

CoolNamesAllTkn 242 days ago | |

Re: the GPS question, there are plans to add GPS support, and we have hardware set up for easy integration of a GPS receiver, since it's a common ask from people who are looking for an electronic flight bag device. It's on the to-do list!

I spent a bunch of time getting the timestamps on the custom receiver to be sub-microsecond accurate (https://pantsforbirds.com/adsbee-1090-july-2025-update/), so the receiver is capable of feeding multilateration (MLAT) networks which decode position based on time of flight of received packets. Combining that feature with live GPS updates would allow creation of an MLAT network with moveable base stations, which would be pretty cool.