GitHub - nicespoon/retro-adsb-radar: Aircraft radar display with retro styling. Visualises real-time aircraft positions and information from an ADS-B feed.

Aircraft radar display built with Python and Pygame. Visualises real-time aircraft positions and metadata from a tar1090 server, with a retro interface.

Features

Real-time radar visualisation of aircraft within a configurable radius
Military aircraft detection with configurable hex code prefixes and blinking effect
Configurable font sizes and display settings
Tabular display of aircraft data (callsign, altitude, speed, distance, track)
Live ATC audio streaming from a specified URL
Retro colour palette and font
Default configuration is compatible with the Hagibis Mini PC USB-C Hub

Quick Start

Hardware Setup

Connect your ADS-B USB dongle (e.g. RTL-SDR) to a Raspberry Pi or similar single-board computer.
Attach a suitable 1090 MHz antenna to the dongle.
Ensure the dongle is running software that provides ADS-B data in JSON format, such as tar1090.
Connect your Raspberry Pi to your display, such as the Hagibis Mini PC USB-C Hub, with an HDMI cable.

Software Setup

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/nicespoon/retro-adsb-radar.git
cd retro-adsb-radar

Create and activate a virtual environment:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Install dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Make a copy of the example configuration and edit to suit your setup:

cp config.ini.example config.ini
nano config.ini

See below for configuration details.

Run the Radar UI

After configuring config.ini, start the radar application:

To quit, press Q or ESC in the radar window. If ATC audio streaming is enabled by setting a ATC_STREAM_URL, press A to toggle audio on/off.

Configuration

The application is configured via config.ini.

[General]
FETCH_INTERVAL = 10                # Data fetch interval (seconds)
MIL_PREFIX_LIST = 7CF              # Comma-separated list of military aircraft hex prefixes (e.g. 7CF,AE,43C)
TAR1090_URL = http://localhost/tar1090/data/aircraft.json  # tar1090 data source URL
BLINK_MILITARY = true              # Toggle blinking effect for military aircraft (true/false)

[Audio]
ATC_STREAM_URL =                   # URL of live ATC audio stream (leave blank to disable)
AUTO_START = false                 # Start ATC stream automatically (true/false)

[Location]
LAT = -31.9522                     # Radar centre latitude
LON = 115.8614                     # Radar centre longitude
AREA_NAME = PERTH                  # Displayed area name
RADIUS_NM = 60                     # Radar range (nautical miles)

[Display]
SCREEN_WIDTH = 960                 # Window width (pixels)
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 640                # Window height (pixels)
FPS = 6                            # Frames per second
MAX_TABLE_ROWS = 10                # Maximum number of aircraft to show in the table
FONT_PATH = fonts/TerminusTTF-4.49.3.ttf  # Path to TTF font
BACKGROUND_PATH =                  # Path to background image (leave blank for black background)
TRAIL_MIN_LENGTH = 8               # Minimum length of aircraft trail
TRAIL_MAX_LENGTH = 25              # Maximum length of aircraft trail
TRAIL_MAX_SPEED = 500              # Speed (knots) at which trail reaches maximum length
HEADER_FONT_SIZE = 32              # Font size for the header text
RADAR_FONT_SIZE = 28               # Font size for radar labels and callsigns
TABLE_FONT_SIZE = 28               # Font size for the data table
INSTRUCTION_FONT_SIZE = 28         # Font size for instruction text

Pygame SDL Dependency Check and Troubleshooting

Pygame relies on several SDL subsystems, including:

Video subsystem (libsdl2)
Font rendering (libsdl2-ttf)
Image loading (libsdl2-image)

The availability of these modules is checked at startup. If dependencies are installed on your system, the output will be:

Checking Pygame module support...
Video: Supported
Font: Supported
Image: Supported

If modules are missing, the output will look like this:

Checking Pygame module support...
Video: Not available - install libsdl2-2.0-0
Font: Not available - install libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0
Image: Not available - install libsdl2-image-2.0-0

How to Fix Missing Dependencies

If you see errors indicating missing dependencies, you can install the required system packages using the following command:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libsdl2-2.0-0 libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0 libsdl2-image-2.0-0

License

The project code is licensed under the MIT License (see LICENSE).
Fonts used in this project are licensed under the SIL Open Font License Version 1.1. See font license files in the fonts directory for details.