• orbital detector
  • Creating the database
    • Prep the database
    • Load a basestation.sqb
    • Ingest PlanePlotter logs
  • Visualizations
    • log2kml
    • Tippecanoe
    • Gorilla REPL worksheet
  • License

Code for finding, analyzing and visualizing police aircraft over Los Angeles.

This code assumes you have postgres and postgis installed.

$ createdb orbital
$ cat create-tables.sql | psql orbital

Put a basestation.sqb, from whatever source, in the current directory, then run the following:

$ pgloader basestation.load

Once you've downloaded a copy of the [FAA aircraft registry](registration database), expand the archive and copy the MASTER.txt file to the current directory. You can then load the FAA registry into your postgres database with the following:

$ pgloader faa.load

You can load PlanePlotter "receiver logs" AKA "Mode-S logs" AKA "RTL logs" into the database. You can load gzipped or uncompressed logs (log files typically get ~98% compression).

There is one annoying detail: You need to change the line endings in the log files from Windows (CRLF) to Unix (LF). Here's an example of doing that:

$ echo *.log | \
  xargs -t -n 1 -P 4 -I {} \
  sh -c "cat {} | tr -d '\r' | time gzip -9cv > {}.gz"

Then to load the logs in the database:

$ lein run -m com.lemondronor.orbital-detector.reports \
  postgresql://localhost:5432/orbital logs/RTL*.gz

Reports are put into the reports table, which has the following schema:

By default, at most one ping per aircraft per second is saved. You can use --time-window-secs to do something different: --time-window-secs 0 will keep every ping, --time-window-secs 10 will keep only one ping per aircraft per 10 seconds.

By default, all pings are saved, including positionless (mode A/C) pings. If you only want to save pings that have positions, use --with-position-only.

You can create KML tracks of aircraft with log2kml.

$ lein run -m com.lemondronor.orbital-detector.log2kml \
  --icaos AE094B,A68A37 \
  --extended-data aircraft.csv \
  RTL15030200.log.gz RTL15030300.log.gz > log.kml

It can handle gzipped or uncompressed logs.

You can use the --icaos flag to specify a comma-delimited list of the ICAO codes of the aircraft you're interested in.

The --extended-data flag can be used to provide extra information about aircraft. It should be the path to a CSV-exported version of a file that has the same structure as this spreadsheet.

You can use tippecanoe to create highly detailed, zoomable maps.

There is a Gorilla REPL worksheet to get you started with miscellaneous exploration and analysis.

You can preview it in the Gorilla REPL viewer, or you can run it yourself:

$ lein gorilla
Gorilla-REPL: 0.3.4
Started nREPL server on port 61968
Running at http://127.0.0.1:61970/worksheet.html .
Ctrl C to exit.

Go to the specified URL, then type CTRL-g CTRL-l and load the worksheet called stats.cljw.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiseman

Distributed under the MIT License.