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Acknowledgments

SkyTracker stands on the shoulders of an extraordinary open source community. The ADS-B and satellite reception ecosystem has been built by hobbyists, researchers, and engineers over more than a decade. This project would not exist without their work.

ADS-B Reception & Decoding

readsb

  • Project: github.com/wiedehopf/readsb
  • Author: wiedehopf
  • License: GPL-2.0
  • Usage: SkyTracker runs readsb as a standalone process to decode Mode S / ADS-B signals from 1090 MHz. The agent reads its JSON output over HTTP. readsb is the core of all aircraft reception on the device.
  • History: readsb descends from Mutability's fork of dump1090 by Malcolm Robb, itself based on the original dump1090 by Salvatore Sanfilippo (antirez). The community has iterated on this decoder for over a decade.

tar1090-db

  • Project: github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090-db
  • Author: wiedehopf
  • License: GPL-3.0
  • Usage: Aircraft enrichment database — ICAO hex to type, registration, operator, and LADD/PIA flags. SkyTracker downloads this CSV and auto-updates weekly. The device does not modify or redistribute the database; it fetches it at runtime from the upstream source.

adsbdb

  • Project: adsbdb.com
  • Usage: Flight route lookup API used to resolve callsign to origin/destination when the platform SWIM feed is unavailable.

Satellite Reception & Decoding

SatDump

  • Project: github.com/SatDump/SatDump
  • License: GPL-3.0
  • Usage: SkyTracker launches SatDump as a standalone process to decode weather satellite imagery (METEOR-M LRPT, NOAA APT). The agent manages SatDump's lifecycle and reads its decoded output files.

rtl_tcp / librtlsdr

  • Project: github.com/osmocom/rtl-sdr
  • License: GPL-2.0
  • Usage: rtl_tcp provides a TCP interface to RTL-SDR dongles. SkyTracker uses it as an intermediary between the SDR hardware and SatDump to work around gain-setting issues on RTL-SDR Blog V4 devices.

CelesTrak

  • Project: celestrak.org
  • Maintainer: Dr. T.S. Kelso
  • Usage: Two-Line Element (TLE) sets for satellite orbit prediction. The agent periodically fetches updated TLEs to compute pass predictions.

GPS

gpsd

  • Project: gpsd.gitlab.io/gpsd
  • License: BSD-2-Clause
  • Usage: Reads NMEA data from USB GPS dongles to determine station position.

Go Dependencies

Package License Purpose
chi MIT HTTP router for the local web server
gorilla/websocket BSD-2-Clause WebSocket broadcast to display UI
go-satellite MIT SGP4/SDP4 orbital propagation for pass prediction
modernc.org/sqlite BSD-3-Clause Pure-Go SQLite for offline sighting queue
tinygo.org/x/bluetooth BSD-2-Clause Bluetooth LE for device setup
yaml.v3 MIT/Apache-2.0 Configuration file parsing

RTL-SDR Hardware Ecosystem

SkyTracker is designed to work with RTL-SDR dongles — inexpensive software-defined radio receivers originally intended for DVB-T television. The RTL-SDR community repurposed these devices for ADS-B reception, weather satellite decoding, and countless other radio applications. We are grateful to the RTL-SDR Blog team and the broader SDR community for making this hardware accessible and well-documented.

A note on GPL and process boundaries

SkyTracker runs readsb, SatDump, and rtl_tcp as separate standalone processes and communicates with them over HTTP, TCP, or the filesystem. The SkyTracker agent does not link against, modify, or redistribute any GPL-licensed code. The agent's MIT license applies only to the SkyTracker agent and display UI source code in this repository.

If we have missed crediting your project or if any license information is incorrect, please open an issue and we will fix it promptly.