Feeding FlightRadar24
If you wish to feed FlightRadar24, follow the steps below.
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If you wish to feed FlightRadar24, follow the steps below.
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Was this helpful?
is a global flight tracking service that provides real-time information about thousands of aircraft around the world. Their service is currently available online and their mobile app is quite good. In order to access the features of the mobile app, you'll need to feed your ADS-B data to them for a free business plan.
fr24
is a FlightRadar24 client program to securely transmit ADS-B and Mode S data to the commercial entity FlightRadar24.
We've created a docker image that contains fr24
and all of its required prerequisites and libraries.
fr24
?You'll need your fr24key from your existing feeder.
To get your fr24key, log onto your feeder and issue the command:
You can also find it in the data sharing section on the fr24 website if you have an account with the email address that was used when creating the key.
fr24
?If you're already feeding FlightRadar24 and you've followed the steps in the previous command, you can skip this section.
First-time users should obtain a FlightRadar24 sharing key (a fr24key). To get one, you can run through the sign-up process. This will ask a series of questions allowing you to sign up with FlightRadar24 and get a fr24key. Use the same email address as for your fr24 account if you already have one or plan on creating one.
Run the command:
This will start up a container. After installing a bunch of software (which may take a while depending on the speed of your machine and internet connection), it will take you through the sign-up process. Most of the answers don't matter as during normal operation the configuration will be set with environment variables. I would suggest answering as follows:
Step 1.1 - Enter your email address (username@domain.tld)
: Enter your FlightRadar24 account email address
Step 1.2 - If you used to feed FR24 with ADS-B data before, enter your sharing key.
: Leave blank and press enter
Step 1.3 - Would you like to participate in MLAT calculations?
: Answer no
Would you like to continue using these settings?
: Answer yes
Step 4.1 - Receiver selection (in order to run MLAT please use DVB-T stick with dump1090 utility bundled with fr24feed)... Enter your receiver type (1-7)
: Answer 4
.
Enter your connection type
: Answer 1
.
host
: Answer: 127.0.0.1
port
: Answer: 30005
Step 5
: Answer: no
twice.
At the end of the sign-up process, you'll be presented with:
Copy the sharing key you are given, and add the following line to your .env
file:
Replace YOURSHARINGKEY
with the sharing key from the output of the manual sign-up process.
For example:
Copy the UAT sharing key you are given, and add the following line to your .env
file:
Replace YOURSHARINGKEYUAT
with the sharing key from the output of the sign-up process.
fr24
containerOpen the docker-compose.yml
file that was created when deploying ultrafeeder
.
Append the following lines to the end of the file (inside the services:
section):
To explain what's going on in this addition:
We're creating a container called fr24
, from the image ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-flightradar24:latest
.
We're passing several environment variables to the container:
BEASTHOST=ultrafeeder
to inform the feeder to get its ADSB data from the container ultrafeeder
network.
FR24KEY
will use the FR24_SHARING_KEY
variable from your .env
file.
We're using tmpfs
for volumes that have regular I/O. Any files stored in a tmpfs
mount are temporarily stored outside the container's writable layer. This helps to reduce:
The size of the container, by not writing changes to the underlying container; and
SD Card or SSD wear
Once the file has been updated, issue the command docker compose up -d
in the application directory to apply the changes and bring up the fr24
container. You should see the following output:
We can view the logs for the environment with the command docker compose logs
, or continually "tail" them with docker compose logs -f
. At this stage, the logs will be fairly unexciting and look like this:
Once running, you can visit http://docker.host.ip.addr:8754
to access the fr24
web interface. You can also log onto FlightRadar24's website and click on the your profile button, and then "My data sharing" link to see your statistics.
Note that there is a limit of 3 feeders per FR24 account. ADSB and UAT (see below) each count as 1 feeder. If you have more than 3 feeders, you will need to contact to request an additional Feeder Key. Make sure to send them your account email-address, latitude, longitude, altitude, and if the key is for an ADSB or UAT feeder.
Get a separate sharing key for UAT as described :
If you want to look at more options and examples for the fr24
container, you can find the repository