Tag Archives: flight traffic control

Mobile Flight Control Tower | how to build a mobile flight traffic control tower using linux raspberry pi and a usb dvb-t tv tuner

Although I love the internet, I still want my tech to operate without it. Going forward with this theme I want a mobile Flight Control Tower, as I’m a plane enthusiast and admire these machines and their operations.

Using a Raspberry PI as my platform, the options are limitless. There are internet / app based options for getting flight data feeds like flight radar 24 but as you know, i want to control my tech!

First things first, how on earth are we going to accomplish this?What hardware will be use? How much will it cost? Lets start with our shopping list .

TOTAL: $80.83

This a very cheap project which is a lot of fun. 


Lets get started with the howto….

So after you have built the OS on the raspberry pi (Raspbian), ssh onto the machine and execute the following.

Now you will need to edit the following file and enter the following parameters.

and paste.

Now to install the dump1090 application which actually displays the planes on a map.

All done, lets start the application

This will start the application with networking.

Bring up your web browser and point it to http://ipofraspberry:8080/

So now our project is complete, you can see all the planes flying around! But this project is a mobile control tower which means we’ll need a way to view the planes on the go, so i thought I would use a wifi card acting a wireless Access point.

This way, if your in the car and you want to see whats flying ahead, you can just connect with your phone or laptop and take a look.


Access Point Setup

Edit the DHCP server config

Uncomment the following three lines

Scroll down to the bottom of the configuration file and enter the following.

Edit the following file



Then edit the interfaces files, have the wifi section looking like this


Lets setup the Access point, enter the following.


You will notice I connected the driver out.. As far as I know its not needed. You can locate yours if you like and put it in


Then edit and change


To this

Then edit this

From this

To this

Edit this

vim /etc/sysctl.conf

Uncomment this


Enter the following iptables rules, into the command line

Then save the rules permanently 

Restart the raspberry so that all the changes take affect.

Once restarted navigate to

This is because the WiFi NIC has been given a different IP.