Any aviation enthusiasts out there? This one is for you!
I recently bought an ADS-B USB Dongle, and built some docker containers to receive data from nearby aircraft, feed it to Flightradar24 (they give you a busines subscription for free for uploading data!), and also get some key information displayed on a Home Assistant Lovelace Dashboard 
Here is the overall data flow:
Here are the docker containers that I used:
Readsb to read data from the ADS-B dongle
Flightradar24 uploader to upload data to FR24
tar1090 image for an improved WebUI as well as an enhanced aircraft.json output
Follow the instructions on their respective pages to get these containers up and running in your docker environment. (If you are new to docker - Home Automation Guy’s youtube video is a great way to get started with docker!) You don’t have to run home assistant in a Docker container, this will work just as well if you’re running HASSOS. You just need to run readsb, tar1090 and the FR24 feeder in a docker environment. Why not set up a simple docker environment on a spare Raspberry Pi?
Make sure you set the TAR1090_ENABLE_AC_DB environment variable to true in tar1090, so you get the enhanced aircraft.json output!
Once your readsb, tar1090 and fr24 containers are up and running, you should be seeing aircraft close by! Now it’s time to pull some data into Home Assistant to monitor how we’re doing.
First off, configure your REST sensors by adding the following code to your configuration.yaml:
sensor:
- platform: rest
name: FR24 Aircraft
resource: http://192.168.1.4:8078/data/aircraft.json #change to your ip address
value_template: "{{ value_json.messages }}"
method: GET
scan_interval: 15
json_attributes:
- now
- aircraft
- platform: rest
name: FR24 Status
resource: http://192.168.1.4:8754/monitor.json #change to your ip address
value_template: "{{ value_json.messages }}"
method: GET
scan_interval: 15
json_attributes:
- feed_alias
- feed_num_ac_tracked
- feed_status
- rx_connected
Now you should have two new sensors in your HA called sensor.fr24_aircraft and sensor.fr24_status.
You can then create a couple of Lovelace cards. I use custom button card and mini graph card, install those first if you dont have them.
type: custom:button-card
icon: mdi:airplane
entity: sensor.fr24_status
tap_action:
action: url
url_path: app://com.flightradar24free
name: |
[[[ return states['sensor.fr24_status'].attributes.feed_alias ]]]
styles:
card:
- border-radius: 5%
- padding: 4%
- color: black
- font-size: 14px
- text-shadow: 0px 0px 0px black
- text-transform: capitalize
grid:
- grid-template-areas: '"i num" "n n" "feed feed" "rx rx" "graph graph"'
- grid-template-columns: 1fr 1fr
- grid-template-rows: 1fr min-content min-content min-content min-content
name:
- font-weight: bold
- font-size: 20px
- color: black
- align-self: middle
- justify-self: start
- padding-bottom: 4px
img_cell:
- justify-content: start
- align-items: start
- margin: none
icon:
- width: 30%
- margin-top: 0%
- margin-left: 5%
custom_fields:
num:
- align-self: start
- justify-self: end
- margin-top: 10%
- font-size: 20px
feed:
- padding-bottom: 2px
- align-self: middle
- justify-self: start
- '--text-colour-sensor': >-
[[[ if (entity.attributes.feed_status != 'Connected') return "red";
]]]
rx:
- padding-bottom: 2px
- align-self: middle
- justify-self: start
- '--text-color-sensor': '[[[ if (entity.attributes.rx_connected != 1) return "red"; ]]]'
custom_fields:
num: |
[[[
return`${states['sensor.fr24_aircraft'].attributes.aircraft.length} Aircraft Tracked`
]]]
feed: |
[[[
return`FR24 Feed: <span style="color: var(--text-colour-sensor);">${entity.attributes.feed_status}`
]]]
rx: |
[[[
if (entity.attributes.rx_connected == 1)
return`Receiver Dongle: <span style="color: var(--text-color-sensor);">Connected`
return`Receiver Dongle: <span style="color: var(--text-color-sensor);">Disconnected`
]]]
graph:
card:
type: custom:mini-graph-card
entities:
- entity: sensor.fr24_status
attribute: feed_num_ac_tracked
show_state: false
hours_to_show: 24
points_per_hour: 60
show:
icon: false
name: false
state: false
labels: true
And to monitor aircraft (using a markdown card, formatted into a table):
type: markdown
content: >-
| Flight | Aircraft | Registration | Altitude | Airspeed |
|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|
|{% for aircraft in state_attr('sensor.fr24_aircraft', 'aircraft') %}
| {% if (aircraft.flight) is undefined %} Unavailable {% else %} {{
aircraft.flight }} {% endif %} | {% if (aircraft.t) is undefined %}
Unavailable {% else %} {{ aircraft.t }} {% endif %} | {% if (aircraft.r) is
undefined %} Unavailable {% else %} {{ aircraft.r }} {% endif %} | {% if
(aircraft.alt_baro) is undefined %} Unavailable {% else %}
{{aircraft.alt_baro }} ft {% endif %} | {% if (aircraft.tas) is undefined %}
Unavailable {% else %} {{aircraft.tas }} kts {% endif %} |
|{% endfor %}
Happy monitoring!