rtl_adsb(1)

✨ rtl_adsb — a whole manual page, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to rtl_adsb(1), a User Commands page, and honestly? it's a banger. buckle up 💖

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💫 NAME 💫

rtl_adsb — a simple ADS-B decoder. that's it. that's the name. short, sweet, iconic. 👑

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

so the whole vibe here is: you take a re-purposed DVB-T receiver, glow it up into a software defined radio, and then it receives and decodes ADS-B data. that's the whole gig. it was written by Kyle Keen and incorporated into the osmocom rtl-sdr project. king behavior fr fr. 🫶

now, Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, aka ADS-B, is the tea: it's position and other status data transmitted by aircraft in support of air traffic control, all so we can improve safety of flight. planes just be yapping their coordinates into the sky. we love to see it. ✈️✨

there is so much software available for the RTL2832. most of the user-level packages rely on the librtlsdr library, which comes as part of the rtl-sdr codebase. and that codebase contains both the library itself and a bunch of command line tools like rtl_test, rtl_sdr, rtl_tcp, and rtl_fm. these command line tools use the library to test for the existence of RTL2832 devices and to perform basic data transfer functions to and from the device. multitasking queens. 💅

and because most of the RTL2832 devices are connected using USB, the librtlsdr library depends on the libusb library to communicate with the device. the dependency chain is giving chosen family. 🦋

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🎀 USAGE 🎀

so with a suitable antenna for receiving the 1090 MHz signal attached to the rtl-sdr supported device, this program will output the data decoded from that signal. that's the entire ritual. antenna on, signal in, data out. periodt. 📡

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⭐ SYNOPSIS ⭐

rtl_adsb [-R] [-g gain] [-p ppm] [output file]

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

one bullet per flag, no skipping, we don't do that here. 😌

• -d device_index — pick your device. default: 0. (yes bestie, zero-indexed, as the universe intended.)
• -V verbove output — verbose output. default: off. and yes, the original page really does spell it "verbove" — iconic typo, we keep the lore. 😭
• -S — show short frames. default: off.
• -Q quality — the sanity-check dial, and it goes like this: 0: no sanity checks, 0.5: half bit, 1: one bit (this is the default), 2: two bits. it's giving a slider from "live your truth" to "strictly business". 🔥
• -e allowed_errors — how many errors we're willing to forgive. default: 5. generous of her honestly. 🫶
• -g tuner_gain — tuner gain. default: automatic.
• -p ppm_error — ppm error. default: 0.
• tfilename — the output file, bestie.
  • (a '-' dumps samples to stdout)
  • (omitting the filename also uses stdout)

ok lowkey important: -R shows up in the SYNOPSIS but is not listed in OPTIONS. we're just reporting the facts, not inventing lore. 💀

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🌸 EXAMPLES 🌸

Streaming with netcat: 🌐

rtl_adsb | netcat -lp 8080

while true; do rtl_adsb | nc -lp 8080; done

look at that while true; do ... done loop. she never gives up. main character energy, no cap. 🔁

Streaming with socat: 🦋

rtl_adsb | socat -u - TCP4:sdrsharp.com:47806

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

RTL-SDR wiki documentation: http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr

Other rtl-sdr programs:

rtl_eeprom(1), rtl_fm(1), rtl_sdr(1), rtl_tcp(1), rtl_test(1)

the whole squad, assembled. 💖

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🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

This manual page was written by Maitland Bottoms for the Debian project (but may be used by others). sharing is caring, bestie. 🎀

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright (c) 2013 A. Maitland Bottoms <bottoms@debian.org>

and now, the legal text, verbatim, because we do not paraphrase licensing, ever:

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

no warranty, bestie. we said what we said. 😭

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and that's the whole page!! this one shipped as RTL-SDR version 0.5.0, so shoutout to the source and the version for making this little manual exist. go decode some planes, you absolute legend. 🛬✨💖