Feeding Radar1090 UK

If you wish to feed Radar1090 UK, follow the steps below.

[Radar1090 UK] (https://www.1090mhz.uk/) is an aggregator based in the UK. They are mostly interested in getting data feeds from the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and its direct neighboring countries, so if you are located in their operating area, feel free to start feeding them.

The docker image ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radar1090 contains the required feeder software and all required prerequisites and libraries. This needs to run in conjunction with ultrafeeder, tar1090, or another RAW provider.

Setting up Your Station

Obtaining an Radar1090 UK Feeder Key

First-time users should obtain a Radar1090 UK Feeder key. To request one, email info@1090mhz.uk with the following information:

  • Your UUID:

  • A station name (3-12 characters):

  • Your antenna location (Latitude, Longitude) and height:

Update .env file with Radar1090 UK Feeder Key

Inside your application directory (/opt/adsb), edit the .env file using your favorite text editor. Beginners may find the editor nano easy to use:

nano /opt/adsb/.env

This file holds all of the commonly used variables (such as our latitude, longitude and altitude). We're going to add our radar1090 Feeder Key to this file. Add the following line to the file:

RADAR1090_KEY=YOURFEEDERKEY

  • Replace YOURFEEDERKEY with the key you received in response to your email.

For example:

RADAR1090_KEY=0x7A3DF151D95F3E9A

Deploying feeder container

Open 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).

  radar1090:
    image: ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radar1090:latest
    container_name: radar1090
    hostname: radar1090
    restart: always
    environment:
      - TZ=${FEEDER_TZ}
      - RADAR1090_KEY=${RADAR1090_KEY}
      - VERBOSE=false
      - BEASTHOST=ultrafeeder
    tmpfs:
      - /run:exec,size=256M
      - /tmp:size=128M
      - /var/log:size=32M

To explain what's going on in this addition:

  • We're creating a container called radar1090, from the image ghcr.io/sdr-enthusiasts/docker-radar1090.

  • We're passing several environment variables to the container:

    • TZ contains the timezone of your container host to sync time with the server that you added to .env previously

    • RADAR1090_KEY contains the key that you added to .env as per the instructions above

    • BEASTHOST indicates where to get the RAW data from

    • RV_SERVER is the address of the radar1090 server where your data will be sent. Please do not change this unless you're specifically instructed to

    • VERBOSE can be TRUE (meaning: show lots of information in the docker logs) or FALSE (show only errors in the docker logs)

  • The mounted volumes make sure that the container will use the same timezone as your host system

Refresh running containers

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 radar1090 container. You should see the following output:

 ✔ Container ultrafeeder  Running
 ✔ Container piaware      Running
 ✔ Container fr24         Running
 ✔ Container adsbhub      Running
 ✔ Container radar1090    Started

We can view the logs for the environment with the command docker logs radar1090, or continually "tail" them with docker logs -f radar1090. The logs will be fairly unexciting and look like this:

[2025-06-18 23:09:08.790][radar1090-log] starting as a service...
[2025-06-18 23:09:08.914][radar1090] INFO: Waiting for BEASTHOST (ultrafeeder) to come online
[2025-06-18 23:09:10.067][radar1090] INFO: BEASTHOST (ultrafeeder) is now online
[2025-06-18 23:09:10.076][radar1090] invoking: stdbuf -oL /usr/sbin/radar -k 0x7A3DF151D95F3E9A   -l ultrafeeder -f
[2025-06-18 23:14:25.839][radar1090-log] ------------------------
[2025-06-18 23:14:25.840][radar1090-log] Traffic statistics over the previous 300 seconds:
[2025-06-18 23:14:25.841][radar1090-log] - Total packets received from ultrafeeder: 20608
[2025-06-18 23:14:25.842][radar1090-log] - Duplicate packets discarded: 13960
[2025-06-18 23:14:25.843][radar1090-log] - Average bandwidth used (excluding overhead): 3435 bytes/sec

Once running, you can visit https://www.1090mhz.uk/mystatus.php?key=YOURKEYHERE (replace "YOURKEYHERE" with the key that you acquired in the previous step) to view the data you are feeding to radar1090. For example: https://www.1090mhz.uk/mystatus.php?key=0x7A3DF151D95F3E9A.

Troubleshooting

Most log messages are self-explanatory and have suggestions on how to trouble-shoot your issue. Please contact info@1090mhz.uk for more help.

Advanced

If you want to look at more options and examples for the radar1090 container, you can find the repository here

More information and support

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