PiLNK is a free, open-source aviation dashboard that runs on a Raspberry Pi. It combines live ADS-B aircraft tracking with VHF ATC audio reception, aircraft watchlists, emergency squawk detection, and a community network where PiLNK nodes share their data with each other in real time.
The whole project is built by aviation enthusiasts, for aviation enthusiasts — pilots, controllers, plane spotters, and Raspberry Pi tinkerers who wanted something better than the existing commercial options.
Those are commercial flight-tracking services that aggregate data from thousands of feeders worldwide and present it on a website. They're great for what they do.
PiLNK is different in three big ways:
It's a complete dashboard you run yourself — combining ADS-B, live ATC audio, watchlists, emergency alerts, history, and a community in one place on your own hardware.
It's free and open source — no subscriptions, no paywalls, no ads, no data harvesting.
It's built for hands-on enthusiasts — people who want their own node, not just a website to look at. PiLNK gives you ownership of your data and your setup.
PiLNK itself is free and open source. Your only costs are the hardware: a Raspberry Pi, an RTL-SDR USB dongle, and an antenna. There are no subscriptions, no premium tiers, and no ads.
Total hardware cost typically runs around US$80–150 depending on what Pi model and antenna you choose.
The Pi is small, low-power (runs 24/7 for cents per day), affordable, well supported, and has the USB and processing capability to handle ADS-B reception and audio decoding comfortably. It's the natural fit for an always-on aviation appliance you can tuck near a window with an antenna.
The essentials:
A Raspberry Pi. A Pi 4 (4GB or 8GB) or Pi 5 — both work. Pi 5 with NVMe is the smoothest experience; Pi 4 with SD card works perfectly.
Storage. A microSD card or NVMe drive, 32GB or larger.
An RTL-SDR USB dongle. This is what receives the radio signals. The Nooelec NESDR Smart v5 is a popular choice but most RTL2832U-based dongles will work.
An antenna. A 1090 MHz antenna for ADS-B reception. Even basic dipoles work surprisingly well; better antennas mean better range. For ATC audio, a separate VHF antenna improves quality.
A power supply for the Pi (the official Pi power supply is recommended — undersized power causes weird intermittent issues).
The short version:
1. Flash Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm 64-bit) to your SD card or NVMe using the Raspberry Pi Imager.
2. Boot the Pi and connect it to your network.
3. Run the PiLNK installer with a single curl command from the install page.
The installer handles everything: dump1090, the PiLNK service, dependencies, and dashboard. Most people are tracking aircraft within 15 minutes of starting.
Not at all. PiLNK is built by aviation people for aviation people, but it's designed to be useful and interesting whether you're a licensed pilot, an aviation enthusiast, a plane spotter, a Raspberry Pi tinkerer, or simply curious about the aircraft flying overhead.
The dashboard explains aviation concepts in plain language, and the ARIA AI assistant is built in for when you have questions.
Almost none. If you can flash an SD card with Raspberry Pi Imager and copy-paste a command into a terminal, you can install PiLNK. Once it's running, everything happens in your web browser.
ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) is a radio system aircraft use to constantly broadcast their position, altitude, speed, and identity. Almost all modern aircraft are equipped with it.
PiLNK receives those broadcasts with an RTL-SDR dongle, decodes them, and shows the aircraft on a live map — exactly as ATC sees them.
Yes. PiLNK includes a VHF radio receiver that lets you tune to local ATC frequencies and listen to live communications. You can switch between frequencies, save favourites, and listen directly through the web dashboard.
Coverage depends on your antenna, terrain, and how close you are to the airport. A clear line of sight to the tower helps a lot.
These are aviation emergency codes:
7500 — Unlawful interference (hijack)
7600 — Radio communication failure
7700 — General emergency
PiLNK detects these in real time and triggers a visible alert on the dashboard. They are extremely rare — most pilots will never use them in their entire career — but when they do happen, you'll know within seconds.
The watchlist lets you flag specific aircraft you want to be alerted about. Add them by callsign, hex code, or registration. When a watched aircraft appears on your node — or anywhere on the PiLNK network — you get a notification.
Useful for tracking specific airline flights, military aircraft, or that particular jet you've always wanted to see.
ARIA is the PiLNK AI assistant. You can ask it questions about aircraft, airports, weather, callsigns, aviation regulations, and how to use PiLNK itself.
It's designed to be a knowledgeable aviation companion built into the dashboard — not a generic chatbot.
Yes. The dashboard maintains a 24-hour rolling history of aircraft trails for every flight your node has tracked, so you can review what flew past during the day.
A PiLNK node is any Pi running PiLNK. Each node is identified by a unique 8-character PiLNK code and shares its tracked aircraft with the network in real time.
That means when you visit pilnk.io, you can see what aircraft other nodes around the world are receiving, browse them by region, and watch the global picture in real time.
You can run PiLNK in private/local-only mode if you prefer — your Pi dashboard works fully on its own. Joining the network is optional but it's where a lot of the magic happens (seeing global activity, watchlist alerts triggered by other nodes, the leaderboards, the community).
The forum at pilnk.io is the community hub. It's where you go for installation help, feature discussion, sharing interesting captures, asking questions, and meeting other PiLNK users. The maintainers and experienced users are active there.
Yes. The Network page on pilnk.io shows every active PiLNK node on a map, with the aircraft each one is currently tracking. Click any node to see its details and current traffic.
PiLNK does not collect personal information beyond what you choose to provide when you register an account (email, callsign, location for your node).
The data shared with the community network is aircraft data — what's flying overhead — not personal data. Your Pi runs locally on your own network, and you control what gets shared.
Partially. The local Pi dashboard works fully offline — you can still receive and track aircraft and listen to ATC audio.
The community features (network map, watchlist sync, the public site at pilnk.io) require internet. PiLNK is designed to be useful in both modes.
Yes, PiLNK is fully open source on GitHub. Contributions are welcome — bug reports, feature ideas, code, documentation, and community participation all help the project grow.
The community forum is the best place to start a conversation if you want to contribute.
PiLNK is built on dump1090 for ADS-B decoding, rtl_fm for VHF audio, Python/Flask for the Pi dashboard backend, PHP for the public community site, and MySQL for the community database. The dashboard frontend is plain JavaScript with Leaflet for mapping.
The whole stack is intentionally simple and standard — easy to understand, easy to fix, easy to extend.
The PiLNK community forum at pilnk.io is the primary support channel. Post your problem, what hardware you're using, what you've tried, and any error messages.
The community and the project maintainers are active and friendly. Most install problems get sorted within a day.
Most of the time it's the antenna setup, not the software. Quick checklist:
1. Is the antenna actually plugged into the RTL-SDR dongle?
2. Is the dongle plugged into the Pi (and showing up via lsusb)?
3. Is the antenna near a window or with line-of-sight to the sky?
4. Are you in a region with active ADS-B traffic? (Most of the world is, but very remote areas may have low traffic.)
If all of those check out and still nothing, post on the forum with your Pi model, dongle model, antenna setup, and your location — the community will help diagnose.
PiLNK is actively developed. Planned features include:
Flight Replay — rewatch interesting flights with full trail and emergency events.
Premium Audio mode — higher-quality ATC reception with proper AM demodulation.
3D flight visualization — see aircraft in 3D space, not just on a flat map.
Pre-configured SD cards — for one-step setup without flashing your own.
Check the changelog for the latest updates and the forum for community discussion.
The most valuable support is using PiLNK and contributing to the community — running a node, posting on the forum, reporting bugs, suggesting features, helping new users get started.
If you'd like to support development directly, financial contribution options will be added in the future. For now, just run a node and tell a friend.
Head to the community forum on pilnk.io.
It's the fastest way to get an answer and the best way to meet other PiLNK users.