Local ADS-B receiver support
Run an ADS-B receiver at home and Mach 2 reads it over your own network, merging what your antenna hears into the Overhead Scanner, second by second.
Your antenna, on your display.
Many owners already run a receiver: PiAware, dump1090, tar1090 or readsb on a Raspberry Pi, with an antenna in the attic or on the roof. Point the tracker at it and what your antenna hears merges into the Overhead Scanner.
It adds to the cloud feed; it does not replace it.
Second by second.
Position, altitude, speed and heading update as fast as aircraft broadcast them, with no round trip through anyone’s network.
Aircraft only your roof hears.
Light aircraft and low flyers close to home that wide networks miss. If your antenna hears it, your display can show it.
You keep the polish.
Route and airline labels still come from the route engine built in-house, merged with your local telemetry.
A receiver you probably already have.
Nothing to solder. If your phone can open your receiver’s map in a browser, your Mach 2 can read it too.
Any receiver serving the standard aircraft feed. PiAware, dump1090, tar1090 or readsb, on the same home network at a private address. Public internet addresses are rejected.
Or the ADS-B Kit. A complete tracker with its own receiver in the box, on a waitlist for now. See the ADS-B Kit →
How to turn it on
- Sign in to your owner portal. Go to settings.flighttrackerled.com from any device.
- Open your device. The same page as coverage and brightness.
- Switch on Local ADS-B. It ships switched off.
- Paste your receiver's address. The one you use in your browser, with its full path, like http://10.0.0.221/skyaware/.
- Watch the health card. It shows whether the receiver is reachable, how many aircraft are in view and how fresh the data is.
If the tracker cannot reach your receiver
Your router may be isolating them from each other. The most common cause. Many routers and security apps quarantine new devices. If the receiver loads on your phone but not the tracker, allow or trust the tracker in your router or security app.
Use the exact address that works in your browser. Copy it from the address bar, path and all. A bare IP will not reach a page under a path.
Keep them on the same network. Guest networks, IoT networks and other subnets usually block the connection by design.
Give the health card a moment. It needs a first result from the receiver before it can report.
Provider-independent by design.
Direction, not a promise with a date.
Provider-independent overhead data. With a receiver, positions come off your antenna, so third-party rate limits, outages and coverage gaps stop applying to your overhead traffic.
Working without the internet. The receiver-to-display path never leaves your network: the foundation for a display that keeps showing traffic when your connection drops.
Feeding the community. The ADS-B Kit is built in partnership with the airplanes.live community network, and a planned opt-in will let your kit feed it.
Richer detail. Signal strength and antenna range could power future scenes, like a “furthest catch” record.
What your antenna hears stays yours.
Built to add detail without turning your roof into someone else’s data source.
Nothing your antenna hears is uploaded unless you opt in. Aircraft are drawn on the box itself. By default only a small health summary (reachable, aircraft in view, data age) goes up for the portal card. A separate route-sharing setting, off by default, can report route observations to improve lookups.
The tracker talks to your receiver directly, over your own network. Nothing is proxied through the internet, and a public receiver address is rejected.
Only an address you type in is saved, with your other device settings. Anything the box finds on its own stays local. Treat the address as configuration, not a secret.
It is off unless you turn it on. Without it, nothing extra runs on your network.