The Beluga Project

Spring Boot Angular web application that displays one or multiple, local ADS-B feeders along with additional information on a map interface in the browser.

Currently you can use this application out of the box with Flightradar24, tar1090, AirSquitter or VirtualRadarServer (Rebroadcast Server only) feeders. Other ADS-B feeders can be added aswell.

It is possible to run the application only with data from the OpenSky-Network, if you have an account there. Besides you can use data from Airplanes.live. So you need no local feeders to try out the app.

Additional information about the aircraft are added through a PostgreSQL database with content from OpenSky-Network, Mictronics, OurAirports, Virtual Radar Server standing-data. Mictronics data is used with Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0.

The ISS (International Space Station) is displayed by default with information from the "Where the ISS at?" API.

The Beluga Project uses aircraft icons from this repository by RexKramer1. 3D models from this repository are used.

Motivation

We started our ADS-B experience with an AirSquitter receiver. We got good results but because of the antenna position the range was limited to only a half circle around our house. So we added another receiver (Raspberry Pi) with a separate antenna to cover the second half of the circle. This works great. Unfortunately we found no application which can show the aircraft from both receivers in one map. So we decided to create a new one - The Beluga Project.

Features

View the application on your desktop or mobile (for the android app see folder "android_app")
Display aircraft and airports on a 2D map in the browser
- Aircraft from your local ADS-B feeders (like tar1090, AirSquitter, fr24feeder, vrs)
- Aircraft from OpenSky-Network (update interval is 5 seconds)
- Aircraft from Airplanes.live (update interval is 5 seconds)
- The ISS (International Space Station)
- Airport information from OurAirports
Display selected aircraft on a 3D map (Cesium Ion, account registration is required to use this feature)
- Show animated aircraft model and flight path
- Show Google photogrammetry or OSM 3D buildings
- Cockpit mode (with or without cockpit model), Follow-Plane mode
- High Quality mode, HDR, clouds
See additional information about tracked aircraft like model and type, country of registration, operator callsign and more
Track flight progress with route information (origin, destination)
Display aircraft picture from planespotters.net
Show range data of your feeders on the map
Show weather information (current, forecast, clouds) from Rainviewer
Filter option for military planes
Choose one of several map styles (2D/3D map, for some of the 2D maps an API key from Geoapify is required)
Display aircraft in a sortable table
Display a list of photos for selected aircraft in your webbrowser (by generated Search-URL)
Show server logfiles
Photographers / Spotters can see the „Point of Minimum Distance“ (POMD) for selected aircraft and get ETA, remaining time, remaining distance, distance to aircraft at POMD and view direction at POMD. The yellow point (see image below) shows the „POMD“. The black point is your current position (or antenna position by default). Calculations are based on current track and speed of selected aircraft and are updated permanently.

Note: At the moment The Beluga Project is meant to be used in a local network. It is not recommended to publish it on the web due to security and performance reasons.

Screenshots

Web view

Web View

Mobile view

App View

General structure of the project

Backend

Frontend

Our Setup

The application runs on a Raspberry Pi 4B in the local network. We can access the map in the browser on desktop computers (Windows and Linux) and on mobile devices. For our mobile devices we use the mobile app.

App View

Installation/Update

Execute the following command on your Raspberry Pi (or any debian-based system). We recommend using a Pi >=4B with 64 bit OS version.

$ sudo bash -c "$(wget -nv -O - https://github.com/amnesica/BelugaProject/raw/master/install.sh)"

Important: If you already have a version < 4.0.0 of the Beluga Project installed, first execute the following commands and then use the install script with the link below.

$ cd BelugaProject
$ sudo ./run.sh docker-rm
$ cd .. && sudo rm -r BelugaProject BelugaProject.zip

If you get any error messages have take a look into TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

Update standing data

BelugaProject comes with standing data (aircraft data, airport data, flightroute data) which may be outdated meanwhile. So you should update them with command

$ sudo ./run.sh update-db

This will take some time. On an RaspberryPi 4B update database takes about 10 minutes.

amnesica / BelugaProject

readme