Feeding ADS-B Exchange and community networks: adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live

The antenna is up, the Raspberry Pi is running, and the first aircraft are moving across the screen on your local map. Now comes the step that turns a private receiver into a building block of worldwide flight tracking: feeding ADS-B Exchange and the community networks adsb.fi, adsb.lol and airplanes.live. These four services in particular are exciting for spotters because, as a rule, they do not specifically hide military, government and business flights. This guide shows you how the connection works, how to set up MLAT properly and how to check that your data really arrives.

The short answer

You feed ADS-B Exchange and the community networks by downloading one installation script per network on the computer with your decoder and running it with root privileges. The script asks for location, antenna height and a station name, sets up two system services – one for the position data, one for MLAT – and connects them to the network’s servers. Because each network uses its own services, you can run all four in parallel without touching existing feeders for FlightAware or Flightradar24.

The prerequisite is a working receiver. If you do not have one yet, start with Build your own ADS-B receiver and install the decoder following the guide Installing readsb and tar1090. What ADS-B Exchange can do as a map is explained in ADS-B Exchange explained.

Why several networks at once?

The four services share a history. ADS-B Exchange started in 2016 as a hobby project and has belonged to the aviation data provider JETNET since January 2023. After the sale, community maps such as adsb.fi, adsb.lol and airplanes.live grew, built on the same open-source technology: readsb as decoder and data collector, mlat-client for multilateration and tar1090 as the map interface. Anyone at home on one of these maps finds their way around all of them. A detailed comparison of the maps is provided by Unfiltered community trackers compared.

For you as a feeder this has two practical consequences. First, each additional network costs hardly any resources, because all of them tap the same data stream from your decoder. Second, every additional station improves the MLAT coverage of the respective network. Military aircraft that transmit only Mode S without a position of their own, in particular, show up only when several receivers hear the same signal. How that works is explained in MLAT/multilateration.

Network	Installation script	Configuration file	Services	Check status
ADS-B Exchange	adsbexchange.com/feed.sh	/etc/default/adsbexchange	adsbexchange-feed, adsbexchange-mlat	adsbexchange.com/myip
adsb.fi	adsb.fi/feed.sh	/etc/default/adsbfi	adsbfi-feed, adsbfi-mlat	Connections on 30004/31090
adsb.lol	adsb.lol/feed.sh	/etc/default/adsblol	adsblol-feed, adsblol-mlat	adsb.lol home page
airplanes.live	install.sh in the GitHub repo airplanes-live/feed	/etc/default/airplanes	airplanes-feed, airplanes-mlat	Connections on 30004/31090

The details come from the projects’ guides as of October 2026. Script addresses can change, so before installing it is worth a look at the respective network’s official page.

Preparation: what your system needs

Before you start a script, three things should be in place.

• A running decoder. adsb.fi and airplanes.live require a separately installed decoder such as readsb, adsb.lol is aimed at existing receivers, and ADS-B Exchange names receivers with readsb, dump1090 or PiAware as the starting point. The decoder must provide its data stream in Beast format, by default on port 30005. If you already run PiAware, dump1090-fa is already there – see Setting up PiAware.
• Exact coordinates and height. All guides begin with this step. You need your antenna’s latitude and longitude with several decimal places as well as the height above sea level, ideally ground elevation plus mounting height. The projects point to online elevation finders for this.
• Internet and SSH access. The scripts download software from the network. You work in the Pi’s terminal, directly or via SSH.

A word on security: all four networks distribute their installation as a shell script that you run with sudo. So download it only from the official project page or the official GitHub repository and take a look inside before starting. The “download first, then run” pattern in the guides gives you exactly that opportunity.

Connecting ADS-B Exchange

For ADS-B Exchange you download the feed script into a temporary directory and start it:

curl -L -o /tmp/axfeed.sh https://adsbexchange.com/feed.sh
sudo bash /tmp/axfeed.sh

The script asks you for the details on location, height and name and sets up the services adsbexchange-feed and adsbexchange-mlat. According to the project, existing feed clients are left untouched. Afterward, from your home network, you open adsbexchange.com/myip. The page detects from your public IP address whether an ADS-B and an MLAT feed are arriving. Whether your station shows up in the MLAT network you can also see on ADS-B Exchange’s MLAT map.

Two optional additions are interesting for spotters:

• Stats package: It installs an online map that shows only the aircraft your own antenna receives. The address for it is then printed by the command adsbexchange-showurl.
• Local interface: An extra script under /usr/local/share/adsbexchange/git/ sets up a tar1090 map on your home network, reachable at your Pi’s IP with the path /adsbx.

If you later want to update only the software without re-entering the configuration, use the separate update script feed-update.sh from the same address. For changes to location or name, you simply run the installation again.

Connecting adsb.fi, adsb.lol and airplanes.live

The three community networks follow the same pattern; the scripts are closely related. For adsb.fi:

curl -L -o /tmp/feed.sh https://adsb.fi/feed.sh
sudo bash /tmp/feed.sh

For adsb.lol:

curl -L -o /tmp/lol-feed.sh https://adsb.lol/feed.sh
sudo bash /tmp/lol-feed.sh

For airplanes.live:

curl -L -o /tmp/feed.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/airplanes-live/feed/main/install.sh
sudo bash /tmp/feed.sh

Each script stores its configuration under /etc/default/ and starts a pair of services following the pattern <network>-feed and <network>-mlat. In adsb.fi’s configuration file you can see, for example, where the data comes from: the INPUT entry points by default to 127.0.0.1:30005, i.e. the decoder’s Beast output on the same device. If your decoder runs on another computer on the network, you enter its IP address there and restart both services.

For adsb.fi and airplanes.live there is also an optional local map interface, which the script install-or-update-interface.sh sets up under /usr/local/share/<network>/git/. For airplanes.live you reach it, for example, at your Pi’s IP with the path /airplanes.

Setting up MLAT properly

The position data from ADS-B comes straight from the aircraft. For MLAT, by contrast, your station itself is a measuring instrument: the server compares when the same signal arrives at several receivers and calculates the position from that. MLAT therefore depends on your station’s master data.

• Coordinates: Wrong decimal places shift your station computationally by hundreds of meters. The server notices and can discard your measurements.
• Height: It enters the calculation just like latitude and longitude.
• Clock and synchronization: The timestamps come from the decoder. Stable reception without overloading the Pi helps synchronization with neighboring stations.

One detail concerns the MLAT results: the scripts can feed the calculated positions back to your decoder so they also appear on your local map. In the configuration the RESULTS entry controls this, delivering to 127.0.0.1:30104 by default. If you feed several networks, it can make sense to leave the feedback active for only one network, so your map does not mix duplicate positions from different sources. ADS-B Exchange documents its own commands for switching this off and on.

Important: MLAT only works where several stations hear the same aircraft. In sparsely populated areas your station can be set up perfectly and still deliver hardly any MLAT positions. The more networks you supply, the greater the chance that at least one has enough neighbors within range.

Checking the feed: is everything running?

After installation you check each service by the same pattern. First the status:

sudo systemctl status adsbfi-feed
sudo systemctl status adsbfi-mlat

Both services should appear as active and running. For adsb.fi and airplanes.live you then check the network connections:

netstat -t -n | grep -E '30004|31090'

The result should show connections in the ESTABLISHED state to the servers – one on port 30004 for the data and one on 31090 for MLAT. For ADS-B Exchange a look at adsbexchange.com/myip is enough; for adsb.lol the home page shows whether you are recognized as a feeder.

How well your receiver works overall you do not see on the feed services but on the decoder. For range, message rate and signal strength, Measuring reception performance with graphs1090 is worthwhile.

Typical mistakes and their fixes

Symptom	Probable cause	Fix
Service starts, but no connection on port 30004	Decoder delivers no Beast stream on 30005	Check the decoder, check the INPUT entry in /etc/default/<network>
myip page shows no feed	Query from another network or via VPN	Open the page from the same home network without VPN
MLAT service runs, but no synchronization	Wrong coordinates or height, too few neighboring stations	Correct the master data, run the script again
Duplicate aircraft on the local map	MLAT results fed back from several networks	Empty RESULTS on all networks except one
Services missing after a system update	Installation incomplete or damaged	Run the network’s update script or reinstall

If that does not help, you read the logs. For support requests the projects ask for the last lines of both services after a restart:

sudo journalctl -u adsbfi-feed --no-pager
sudo journalctl -u adsbfi-mlat --no-pager

For the other networks you replace adsbfi with adsbexchange, adsblol or airplanes. You can restart any service with sudo systemctl restart, and display the current configuration with cat /etc/default/<network>.

The alternatives: image or Docker

Individual scripts are ideal when you want to extend an existing receiver. If you start fresh, there are more convenient ways.

ADSB.im is a ready-made feeder image for single-board computers that adsb.lol recommends in its documentation for new stations on dedicated hardware. After flashing, you open the address adsb-feeder.local in the browser, enter name, location and time zone and then select the networks you want to supply. airplanes.live also offers its own image for the Raspberry Pi that bundles decoder, MLAT client, map and statistics.

For Docker users there is the widely used Ultrafeeder container from sdr-enthusiasts, and adsb.lol also documents a Docker route for technically experienced users. How to run many networks at the same time with it is shown in Feeding multiple networks at once with Ultrafeeder. Which feeder programs exist besides the ones described here is summarized in ADS-B feeder programs compared.

Privacy and law

Anyone who feeds passes on data, and that includes your location. The networks need your exact coordinates for MLAT, but display your station in varying detail depending on the service. Read the privacy and license notes before installing. adsb.lol, for example, states in its terms that you waive copyright and related rights in the data you supply under CC0, and says it collects no personal data apart from briefly stored log files.

Whether receiving and passing on the data is allowed in your country is a separate question. An overview for Germany, Austria and Switzerland is given in Receiving ADS-B data: the legal situation.

What you get out of it

The community networks are not an exchange with premium subscriptions like the commercial services, but feeding is still worth it. You improve coverage around where you live, often exactly where you spot yourself, for example at the Munich Airport visitors’ hill or the Teveren spotters’ hill near Geilenkirchen. With ADS-B Exchange you get, through the stats package, a map of only your own receptions. What the commercial and community services offer in return, one by one, is compared in What feeders get in return.

For practice at the fence what counts most is: the denser the network, the more reliably military aircraft on the map and business jets that are missing on other services appear.

Conclusion

Feeding ADS-B Exchange, adsb.fi, adsb.lol and airplanes.live is not rocket science once your decoder is running. One script per network, a few details on location and height, two new services – and your antenna contributes to several unfiltered maps. The master data deserves the most care, because MLAT depends on it. For checking, service status, ports and logs are enough. Anyone new to this saves the individual steps with a feeder image.