Home Ground Station - ADS-B on PC

Thought this would come up quickly on a search, but apparently is not as common as I thought:

My flight department at work has a giant flat screen TV behind the front desk that we display SkyVector upon. I thought it would be great to also provide ADS-B traffic on that display that emulates our tablets in the cockpit.

So then I figured we would just get a subscription to ForeFlight and add a simple ground based ADS-B receiver on a pole outside the building....

But then I made the leap that perhaps we should just buy a Stratus 2 (or equivalent) for the flight department and then just plug it into the PC for the times we are not using it to fly (dual use).

So - is there a plug and play architecture that allows ForeFlight (or equivalent) sectional chart based flight planning software on a PC and also allows input from an ADS-B receiver?

Does anyone have a PC based "ground station" at home using some of their airborne equipment?

Thanks for the anticipated input.

Maybe you could become a feed to FlightAware?

https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build

Yes, I see that option but I don't believe they offer FAA "format" sectionals. We need to show a sectional chart, not a "map".

I am running PIAware. It was very simple to set up, prob $70 in parts. Even though you're feeding data to flightaware, the system has a web browser that you can hit locally that will show a scope and details of aircraft being tracked.

I think it's position data for your feeder node only though. Which might be enough?

Sectional

Also check this: Sectional Overlay in PIAware

It seems that the FlightAware and similar products are focusing on the air traffic itself so kind of ignore most of the details "pilots" want to see - Navaids, waypoints, etc.

In our case, we need to display the world as pilots see it - a sectional, with the ADS-B traffic as a secondary feature.

In other words, I need a 90 inch iPAD on the wall running ForeFlight and Stratus. It seems like this would be easy to duplicate with a PC and monitor

EDIT: Chuck - thanks... that's getting closer.

Try using Airplay on the Ipad and send it to the TV that has an apple tv box connecte4d to it.

This setup will allow you to display the Ipad screen on the TV

You could get an Apple TV and mirror an iPad onto the TV, if the app gives you everything you want.

Edit: Doh, beaten to the punch!

Why not purchase an IFly 720 with the VFR sectionals and use the Ping Buddy that they offer. That will Wifi to your IFly or use the USB cable connection and use the 120 v power supply for the 720. . Would assume That will work the same way as it does in my aircraft. Your only issue may be that the elevation of the Ping buddy may not be high enough to get the ground based transmitters from ATC unless you're on top of their location. ?? With that you get traffic and Wx . The Ping buddy also receives UAT as well as ES aircraft signals. Total investment $500. +/_ or less if you buy a used 720.

Toobuilder said:

Yes, I see that option but I don't believe they offer FAA "format" sectionals. We need to show a sectional chart, not a "map".

Click to expand...

The PC web view has a sectional -

http://flightaware.com/live/

Might be my default, but you can select the "Base Layer" as a FAA Sectional from the menu.

And the free (if you become a feed) Enterprise view claims this option - Maps - Full Screen Without Ads

https://flightaware.com/commercial/premium/

If your big screen TV will work as a second screen to your PC this should be trivial.

How about www.fr24.com ? I love it, and built a raspberry pie with a cheap SDR Tunfor abt 50 bucks total. I feed adsb data to flightradar24 and use my computer to watch traffic.and weather. I also have an alert setup for our club airplane...when it takes off, it alerts me and I can track it. If you feed stat to fr24 that's all given to you for free.

Took me a while to find it but Gil is right about the option to display sectionals.

Top right of the *map*, you should see a little button like thing - you have to mouse over the map to see it. Click that and it will let you change the base layer map.

az_gila said:

The PC web view has a sectional ...

Click to expand...

Ok, now were talking... I had no idea FA showed the sectional. I think this will work. It would be cool if Sky Vector offered a traffic overlay, but we really don't do flight planning on this display anyway.

Much thanks, everybody.

+1 for getting a PIaware set up and becoming a feeder. If you have an always-on internet connection, hooking up a PIAware feeder to flightaware gets you an Enterprise level account that gets you unlimited flight alerts and a vastly increased "my airports" list. You also get access to "position only" flights that are not reported on the free flightaware site, including VFR flights that are not "in the system."

Putting together a PIAware is relatively simple and inexpensive. I think I spent less than $70 on it including antennas and cabling.

Nobody has suggested this yet but here's another option: FltPlanGo running on Windows 10. It's free, and has all of the current sectionals. Can also display live weather (from the internet) as an overlay, if ground reception of UAT is poor. Connects to common WiFi ADS-B receivers like Stratux without issue.