SDR-Enthusiasts Hub

Introduction

SDR-E Hub is the spiritual successor to ACARS Hub.

When I started the ACARS Hub project years ago I had no idea where it would go. It started small; just a very simple interface to read raw JSON output from ACARS and VDLM decoders. Quickly, with input from the SDR-E community, and my own wants, it grew into a full fledged web application that could show ACARS/VDLM/HFDL/Satellite Based ACARS, as well as a pair it with ADS-B data and store data to view later. However, because it started life as a simple JSON reader, it was never designed to be a full fledged web application. It was a hack, and it showed. And, of course, at the time my skillset with programming was much less than it is now; not that it's terribly impressive now, but it's better than it was.

So, I decided to start from scratch. I wanted to build the replacement for ACARS Hub that was designed from the ground up to be everything we wanted it to be, and even things we haven't yet imagined. I wanted to build a web application that was designed to be modular, and easily extensible. I wanted to build a web application that was designed to be easy to use, and easy to deploy.

Thus, SDR-E Hub was born. I considered keeping this under the ACARS Hub name, but I felt that it was time to move on. ACARS Hub was a great project, and I learned a lot from it, but it was time to move on. This is a from scratch, ground up idea that is designed to be everything ACARS Hub was, and more.

What is SDR-E Hub?

SDR-E Hub is a visual interface, both a web application and/or an application you can run on your own computer, for reading and analyzing data from various SDR decoders. This includes ACARS, VDLM, HFDL, ADS-B, and more.

But wait, doesn't tar1090 and virtualradarserver do this?

Yes, but also no. This is not a replacement for tar1090 in any way. tar1090 is much more optimized for displaying real time ADS-B data. This is much closer to a replacement for virtualradarserver, but with a focus on more than just ADS-B data as well as being actively developed and easier to configure.

Migrating from ACARS Hub

Sorry, there is no migration path from ACARS Hub to SDR-E Hub. The data that ACARS Hub saves is so incomplete that there really isn't a point in migrating anything over.

Tasks

• Alpha 1
  • Create a basic web interface
  • Docker build
  • Application build
  • Manage settings from the web interface
  • GitHub CI
  • Custom Error handling
  • FIXME/TODO Cleanup
  • Code documentation
  • Unit Tests
• Alpha 2
  • Connect to data providers
    • ADSB
    • ACARS
    • VDLM
    • HFDL
    • Satellite ACARS
  • Combine data from data providers and provide a state machine to manage data
  • Display data on the web interface
  • FIXME/TODO Cleanup
  • Code documentation
  • Unit Tests
• Alpha 3
  • Implement database storage
    • RRD style data storage for relevant stats
    • SQL storage for historical data
    • General stats
  • FIXME/TODO Cleanup
  • Code documentation
  • Unit Tests
• Beta 1
  • Focus on interface; clean it up, mobile functionality, etc
  • FIXME/TODO Cleanup
  • Code documentation
  • Unit Tests

Thank you

ACARS Hub was a labor of love driven by the boundless enthusiasm of everyone that tried and continued to use it. There were countless people who gave me ideas, motivation, let me bounce ideas off of them, debugged my code, added new features, and more. I can't thank you all enough. I hope that SDR-E Hub can be as successful as ACARS Hub was.

Contributing

Why Rust?

I chose Rust mostly because I wanted to. The other option was to stick with python and TypeScript/NodeJS, which would have been much easier. The code would have been easier to write, the support of npm packages to do tasks is much bigger, and lastly the ability to search the web and find answers to questions is so much easier.

That said, one of the main goals of this project was to be as performant as possible, as well as a unified code base that could generate both a web application and a desktop application. Rust makes this pretty easy.

Cool. I want to write code

Please see the docs for more information.

License

SDR-Enthusiasts Hub is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more information.