Retro ADS-B Radar ✈

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 either from a local stream URL or via remote MQTT mute control
• 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:

python3 main.py

To quit, press Q or ESC in the radar window. If ATC audio is enabled either by setting ATC_STREAM_URL or by configuring MQTT audio control, 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)

# MQTT Configuration (Uncomment to enable remote mute control)
# MQTT_BROKER = "192.168.1.100"    # MQTT broker host; when set with topics, MQTT mode is used instead of ATC_STREAM_URL
# MQTT_PORT = 1883                 # MQTT broker port
# MQTT_USER = ""                   # Optional MQTT username
# MQTT_PASSWORD = ""               # Optional MQTT password
# COMMAND_TOPIC = "home/rpi-volume/rtl_airband/mute/set"   # Topic used to publish mute commands
# STATE_TOPIC = "home/rpi-volume/rtl_airband/mute/state"   # Topic subscribed to for current mute state

[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

If MQTT_BROKER, COMMAND_TOPIC, and STATE_TOPIC are set, the radar uses MQTT audio control and ignores ATC_STREAM_URL. The UI shows A: ATC [SYNC] until the current mute state arrives on STATE_TOPIC, then updates to ON or OFF automatically.

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.