PiAware ADS-B Dashboard for Raspberry Pi

A lightweight, self-hosted operations dashboard for FlightAware PiAware and dump1090-fa receivers.

Monitor live aircraft, receiver range, ADS-B message rates, signal quality, Wi-Fi health, Raspberry Pi resources, and essential services from one responsive local web interface.

Why use this dashboard?

PiAware and SkyAware are excellent for aircraft tracking. This companion dashboard focuses on the receiver itself: whether data is fresh, services are healthy, the Pi is running safely, and the network is reliable.

• Fast and lightweight: Python standard library plus static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—no Node.js, database, containers, or build step.
• Receiver-focused: aircraft activity, positioned tracks, message and position rates, reception range, gain, signal, noise, and peak signal.
• Pi health at a glance: CPU temperature, throttling, load, memory, disk, uptime, Wi-Fi signal, and link rate.
• Honest failure states: production errors are shown as unavailable or stale instead of being replaced with demo data.
• Safe service design: runs as a restricted system user with systemd hardening and separate liveness/readiness endpoints.
• Works alongside PiAware: uses port 8088 and does not replace the standard PiAware or SkyAware interface.

Features

ADS-B receiver monitoring

• Live data from PiAware / dump1090-fa runtime JSON.
• Aircraft count, fresh positioned tracks, message rate, and position rate.
• Automatically scaled receiver-centered aircraft plot and range history.
• Aircraft flight, hex code, altitude, track, RSSI, distance, and last-seen details.
• Gain, signal, noise, and peak-signal monitoring.
• Data-age and API-latency indicators for detecting a slow or stale feed.

Raspberry Pi monitoring

• CPU load, memory, disk usage, uptime, and temperature.
• Model-aware temperature warnings with optional custom thresholds.
• Raspberry Pi under-voltage and throttling flags through vcgencmd.
• Local network and Tailscale addresses.
• Wi-Fi connection, signal strength, and transmit link rate.

Service and operations monitoring

• Required service state for dump1090-fa and piaware.
• Optional service state for fa-mlat-client and lighttpd.
• Links to SkyAware, PiAware, and the local aircraft JSON feed.
• /healthz process-liveness and /readyz receiver-readiness endpoints.
• Timeout, non-overlapping refresh scheduling, and automatic retry backoff.
• Compressed API responses and an accessible, responsive interface.

Quick start

Requirements

• Raspberry Pi running FlightAware PiAware and dump1090-fa.
• Python 3.
• systemd.
• Git for installation from GitHub.

The standard PiAware interfaces are usually available at:

http://<your-pi-address>/
http://<your-pi-address>/skyaware/

Install

Run on the Raspberry Pi:

git clone https://github.com/B1ackCat7/piaware-adsb-dashboard.git
cd piaware-adsb-dashboard
sudo ./install.sh

Open the dashboard:

http://<your-pi-address>:8088/

The installer:

1. creates a restricted piaware-dashboard system account;
2. installs the application under /opt/piaware-dashboard;
3. installs and enables piaware-dashboard.service;
4. starts the dashboard and verifies its health endpoint.

How it works

The server reads PiAware receiver data directly from:

/run/dump1090-fa/aircraft.json
/run/dump1090-fa/stats.json
/run/dump1090-fa/receiver.json

It also reads standard Linux system information, checks local services with systemctl, and serves a small JSON API plus static frontend files. The browser refreshes the dashboard every five seconds.

PiAware / dump1090-fa JSON
            │
            ▼
    Python dashboard server
       localhost:8088
            │
            ▼
  HTML + CSS + JavaScript UI

Service management

sudo systemctl status piaware-dashboard.service
sudo systemctl restart piaware-dashboard.service
sudo systemctl stop piaware-dashboard.service

Follow service logs:

journalctl -u piaware-dashboard.service -f

Check process health and receiver readiness:

http://<your-pi-address>:8088/healthz
http://<your-pi-address>:8088/readyz

• /healthz returns success when the dashboard process is serving requests.
• /readyz returns HTTP 503 when required PiAware services are unavailable or receiver data is stale.

Configuration

The default systemd service configuration is:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_HOST=0.0.0.0
PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_PORT=8088

To change the port, edit /etc/systemd/system/piaware-dashboard.service, then run:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart piaware-dashboard.service

Temperature thresholds

The dashboard selects model-aware defaults. Override them when needed for a particular enclosure or cooling setup:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TEMP_WARNING=70
PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TEMP_CRITICAL=80

Map tiles

The receiver-centered range display can show a greyscale base map. By default, the viewing browser loads OpenStreetMap raster tiles:

https://tile.openstreetmap.org/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

Use a local or custom tile provider:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TILE_URL=http://<tile-server>/{z}/{x}/{y}.png

Disable map tiles for fully offline operation:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TILE_URL=none

Custom providers can supply visible attribution:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TILE_ATTRIBUTION=© Example Maps
PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TILE_ATTRIBUTION_URL=https://example.com/attribution

Development and demo mode

Run locally:

python3 -B server.py

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8088/.

On a machine without PiAware, production mode reports receiver data as unavailable. Use sanitized demo data for development or screenshots:

PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_DEMO=1 python3 -B server.py

Testing

Run the standard-library test suite and syntax checks:

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v
python3 -m py_compile server.py
node --check static/app.js
sh -n install.sh uninstall.sh

Privacy and security

• Receiver and system data stay on the Raspberry Pi and are not sent to an external application server.
• The dashboard service runs without root privileges and uses systemd sandbox protections.
• The API does not silently substitute demo values for failed production data.
• When the default map is enabled, the viewing browser requests map tiles for the receiver's general area from OpenStreetMap.
• Set PIAWARE_DASHBOARD_TILE_URL=none or use a local tile server for fully offline operation.
• Because the dashboard displays local receiver and network information, expose port 8088 only to networks and users you trust.

Uninstall

From the cloned repository:

sudo ./uninstall.sh

Project scope

This is an independent community dashboard for local PiAware installations. It is not an official FlightAware product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by FlightAware.

Related technologies: ADS-B, PiAware, dump1090-fa, SkyAware, FlightAware, Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR, aircraft tracking, receiver monitoring, and self-hosted aviation software.