Cheap & Easy Orange Pi + SDR for Flightradar24 Feed

The Orange Pi is a $15 single board PC similar to the Raspberry Pi.

You can get one at aliexpress.com here

This project can be easily built with any Raspberry Pi too

Flightradar24 is a fun app that lets users feed local aircraft data in realtime. You also get access to premium features for feeding data.

Step 1: Get an SDR Dongle

You can get an SDR dongle with antenna from Ebay, Amazon or aliexpress for $10-$20

Step 2: Get Your Linux

Head over to www.orangepi.org and get the appropriate image for your Orange Pi.

I went with Raspian so the rest of this guide will be similar to configuring a normal Raspberry Pi

While downloading head over to www.flightradar24.com and create an account and get your sharing key.

Step 3: Installation

Format a micro SD card to fat and burn the image to the card.

Put the SD card in your Orange Pi and connect an HDMI monitor, the SDR dongle, USB keyboard & mouse, cat5 cable and power it up by plugging in the USB power cord.

You'll be greeted with a login prompt

User is root

Password is orangepi

Once logged in open a terminal and type raspi-config

Make the following changes: boot to command line and enable SSH Server.

Select Finish and reboot.

Find your Orange Pi's IP address on your local network

Login using SSH from another PC

ssh [e-mail] 

password is orangepi

*I highly advise changing the root password adding a sudo user...

Get the update & install it

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

*this is a painfully long update...

Next install the Flightradar 24 feeding software

gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 40C430F5 

gpg --armor --export 40C430F5 | sudo apt-key add - 

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add the following to your sources.list

deb  <a href="http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com" rel="nofollow"> http://repo.feed.flightradar24.com </a>  flightradar24 raspberrypi-stable 

Ctrl+x > y and enter to save

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install fr24feed

Run the sign-up wizard

fr24feed --signup

You can use http://mygeoposition.com to find your latitude, longitude and elevation

Once complete run

sudo service fr24feed restart

You should soon be feeding to FR24!

Mount your antenna in the best location you can. Preferably outdoors, or indoors near a window as high as possible.