PiLNK turns a Raspberry Pi into a full aviation tracker — live aircraft, three map layers, aviation data, rain radar, ATC audio, and a 24-hour history. Runs on your own hardware, talks to the global network, costs nothing.
Every aircraft your Pi receives via ADS-B, plotted live on the map with colour-coded flight phases. Click anything to see what it is, where it's going, and what it looks like.
Tap an aircraft icon and PiLNK pulls a photo from Planespotters, the route, registration, altitude, speed, heading, and vertical rate. Works for commercial flights, private jets, helicopters, military, and gliders.
Live traffic list sorted by distance or flight phase. Click a callsign to centre the map, draw the leader line, and pop the tooltip — useful when you want to follow a specific aircraft without losing the others.
See where every aircraft has been over the last 24 hours, and label them with callsigns on the map for fast visual scanning. All toggle-able from the Options panel.
Green is climbing, blue is cruising, orange is descending, red is final approach. Glance at the map and you instantly read what's happening.
Coming in v2.0: a fifth colour — purple — for aircraft currently transmitting on ATC frequencies, alongside a live transcript of the conversation in the aircraft's click-card. Click a plane, see what the controller and pilot are saying right now.
Switch between street, satellite imagery, and topographic — each tuned for different ways of looking at airspace. Plus light and dark themes for day or night ops.
Toggle dashed range rings centred on your node — pick from 25 / 50 / 100 / 150 nm, or 46 / 93 / 185 km in metric. Useful for judging aircraft distance at a glance and visualising your station's reception range.
Two themes designed for sun-up and sun-down. Auto Day/Night switches them automatically based on real sunrise/sunset times for your location. Optional terminator overlay shows the day/night boundary live on the map.
Real aviation reference layers from OpenAIP — VORs, NDBs, controlled airspace, IFR fixes — toggleable independently. NZAA shown here with 8 NAVAIDs and 99 airspaces in range.
Live precipitation radar, wind direction, and current observations from your nearest airport — all on the map, no extra apps.
RainViewer overlay shows precipitation in real time across your map area, with past frames so you can see the storm coming. Adjustable opacity, animation toggle, and the legend doubles as a scale.
Top-left compass shows live wind direction and speed for your nearest airport. Click it and you get the full METAR — visibility, cloud, temp/dew, QNH, conditions.
Every aircraft your node has tracked, sorted, counted, and remembered. Live counts, today's leaderboard, all-time records, and a full 24-hour history with hourly chart.
Stats tab gives you a real-time read of what's overhead: how many climbing vs cruising vs on approach, today's fastest / highest / furthest / weirdest squawk, types breakdown, and traffic patterns over time.
Your station's high-water marks: most aircraft in one day, fastest ever, highest ever, furthest contact. Updates automatically every time you beat your own record.
Hourly activity chart shows when your sky is busiest. Below it, the full list of every aircraft seen — callsign, hex, max altitude reached, when first contacted. Useful for spotters, pilots tracking commute patterns, and anyone curious about the rhythm of their local airspace.
The System tab is a live read-out of your station's health — services, receiver performance, and host resources — so you can confirm at a glance that everything's running sweet.
Confirm the PiLNK and dump1090-fa services are up, watch your receiver's signal and noise floor, and keep an eye on CPU temperature, load, memory, and disk — all refreshed live, no SSH required.
Add a second SDR dongle and PiLNK becomes a full ATC scanner — tune any VHF aviation frequency, search by airport, save favourites, and record sessions locally.
Type any airport name or ICAO/IATA code and PiLNK lists its frequencies — Tower, Ground, Approach, ATIS. One click and you're on. KJFK, KLGA, EGLL, NZAA — all of them work, globally.
Type any frequency between 118.000 and 137.000 MHz and tune directly. Squelch and RF Gain sliders let you tune for clarity. Audio plays both via your Pi's HDMI/3.5mm output and streams to your browser.
Every visual element on the dashboard is toggleable. The Options tab is your control panel — what to show, when to switch themes, how to display distance.
Map layer, weather radar, aviation overlay, flight trails, distance rings, aircraft labels, auto day/night, terminator. Pick what you want to see, hide what you don't.
PiLNK calculates real sunrise and sunset times for your station's coordinates, and fades the theme automatically as the day rolls. Or pin it to one and forget about it. Optional terminator overlay draws the day/night line on the map live.
Pan the map across the country and tap the recenter button (top-right of map) to fly straight back to your node. One tap, smooth animation, your sky again.
The Legend panel keeps every colour, icon, and marker labelled and reachable. No guessing what the orange dashed line means, ever.
Climbing, cruising, descending, final approach. VOR/NDB markers. Light / moderate / heavy rain. All in one panel, always visible.
Your node is one of many. Register and you appear on the global PiLNK network. Updates roll out automatically — no SSH, no terminals, no waiting weeks.
PiLNK polls for new releases every five minutes and shows a friendly banner when one's ready. Click Install Now and your node is on the new version in about 30 seconds. Or hit Check for Updates manually — handy when you know we just shipped one.
PiLNK runs on Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 and a $25 RTL-SDR dongle. Install in 10 minutes. No subscriptions, no lock-in, your data stays yours.