Jake Shaw

dump1090 on Mac OS X El Capitan Quick Start Guide

dump1090 is software that will decode ADS-B transmissions from nearby aircraft. ADS-B transmissions include information like aircraft tail number, latitude, longitude, airspeed and other telemetry data.

Your degree of success will depend on which SDR device you have. The NooElec NESDR Mini 2 is cheap and pretty good, though.

Prerequisites

• A Mac. This software also runs on Linux, and I believe, Windows, but the instructions may be different.
• A supported SDR device.
• XCode installed and updated
• Homebrew installed.

Instructions

1. Open Terminal.
2. Run brew update and then brew install librtlsdr.
3. Run git clone https://github.com/antirez/dump1090.git
4. Do a cd dump1090 and then run make. You should soon have a dump1090 executable in the current directory.
5. Plug your SDR USB device into your Mac.
6. Run ./dump1090 --interactive.