PingView

A live ADS-B traffic map for a uAvionix pingRX Pro receiver. Plug the receiver into a Mac, Windows or Linux computer, open PingView, and nearby aircraft appear on the map. You don't need drivers, a decoder or any config.

The map and UI come from adsb-tar1090: altitude-coloured aircraft, tar1090-style segmented trails, an aircraft list, a detail card, a reference location with distances, and history.

Hardware

pingRX Pro ──UART 57600──► STM32F401 "Black Pill" (USB CDC bridge) ──USB──► computer

pingRX Pro	Black Pill
VCC	5V
TX	PA10 (USART1 RX)
RX	PA9 (USART1 TX)
GND	GND

Wireless: a Seeed XIAO ESP32-C3 on a battery replaces the Black Pill and streams the same data over Bluetooth LE (your computer keeps its Wi-Fi for internet), or optionally Wi-Fi. PingView finds it on its own:

pingRX Pro ──UART 57600──► XIAO ESP32-C3 ──Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi (TCP 5760) or USB──► computer

Wiring, power and flashing for both bridges: see firmware/README.md.

ADSBee 1090

An ADSBee 1090 works too, plugged straight in by USB with its stock firmware, with no bridge or setup needed. When it connects, PingView switches the ADSBee's USB output to MAVLink 2 without saving that, and puts it back as it was when PingView disconnects or quits. Settings you've saved on the ADSBee aren't touched.

Receiver shows which receiver is connected. For an ADSBee it also has a link to the ADSBee's settings page: its address on your network, or, if it's only running its own hotspot, the hotspot's name and password.

Install

Download the installer for your OS from Releases:

• macOS: .dmg (universal: Apple silicon and Intel)
• Windows: .msi or -setup.exe. Windows SmartScreen may warn because the build is unsigned. Choose More info → Run anyway.
• Linux: .deb (installs a udev rule so the receiver works without sudo) or .AppImage (see docs/linux.md for the one-time permission setup)

Using it

The map fills the window. Bottom-left, the dock opens Map Options: map style and brightness, then collapsible sections for overlays (network traffic), airports (heliports, labels, icon size), aircraft (trails, icon size), aircraft labels, and units (time zone, airport codes, altitude, speed, coordinates, distance, temperature, altimeter setting), with a reset button. More holds History and Settings; click the status pill for Receiver details (port, message rates, frame and CRC counters). Bottom-right: full screen, your location (use the device's location or pick a point on the map) and zoom. A pill top-left shows the receiver state and aircraft count.

Network traffic (Map Options, on by default) adds aircraft your receiver can't hear, from adsb.lol / adsb.fi, within a radius you choose (25–250 nm) of your location or the map centre. They're tagged NET. adsb.fi's open data is for personal, non-commercial use only.

Aerodromes (2,700+ in Australia) show by zoom level; click one for its CTAF, tower and other frequencies.

Click an aircraft (on the map or in the list) for its card: route with progress and ETA, altitude, speed, vertical rate, photo, registration and type. More details adds identity, the receiver's own position and signal data, and, when online, live data from the adsb.lol/adsb.fi network (airspeed, wind, selected altitude, …), labelled with where it came from.

Works offline first. Aircraft from the receiver, the aircraft database (registration, type, owner), airlines, airports and history all work with no internet. A built-in offline map (Natural Earth coastlines, borders, highways and towns) is always underneath, so the map is never blank. Settings → Local only guarantees PingView never touches the internet. Online extras (detailed map tiles, photos, routes, network traffic) are a bonus: if the connection drops, the status pill shows Offline, they pause, and they come back on their own.

Maps. Map Options → Map lets you pick:

• Offline: the built-in world map (OpenStreetMap via Protomaps, zoom 0–7: roads, towns, water, borders everywhere), free, no key, no internet (the default). If a machine can't run it (no WebGL), a small Natural Earth map is used instead.
• MapTiler styles (Dark, Streets, Topographic, Satellite): add a free key from cloud.maptiler.com in Settings. Tiles you've viewed are cached on disk (up to 500 MB) and keep working offline.
• Your own map: an XYZ tile URL (https://…/{z}/{x}/{y}.png; a server on your local network keeps working in Local-only mode) or a raster .mbtiles file on disk (PNG/JPEG/WebP; fully offline). Vector MBTiles (pbf, e.g. OpenMapTiles) can be used by serving them as raster with tileserver-gl and adding its http://localhost:8080/styles/<style>/{z}/{x}/{y}.png URL.

Offline: aircraft come from the receiver, and registration/type/owner come from the bundled aircraft database, so both work with no internet. Online assist (callsigns the receiver hasn't heard yet, routes, photos, network data) quietly does nothing while offline, and can be turned off in Settings.

History: positions are recorded to one JSONL file per UTC day (same format as adsb-tar1090). Load a day onto the map, save it elsewhere, or open the folder from the History panel.

Development

The built-in world map (~189 MB) is too big for git. Fetch it once before building. It downloads from this repo's basemap-<build> release, and falls back to extracting from Protomaps with the pmtiles CLI:

scripts/fetch_basemap.sh   # writes basemap-data/world.pmtiles, checksum-verified

Set PINGVIEW_DEBUG_BASEMAP=1 to log the app's map-file and tile requests.

Requirements: Rust (stable), Node 22+, and on Linux the Tauri prerequisites plus libudev-dev and libdbus-1-dev (Bluetooth).

npm install
npx tauri dev                       # run against a plugged-in receiver
PINGVIEW_REPLAY=src-tauri/tests/fixtures/capture-2026-10-13.bin npx tauri dev
                                    # no hardware: replay a recorded capture
cd src-tauri && cargo test          # backend tests

How it works: the Rust backend (src-tauri/src/) reads the serial port, splits MAVLink frames (mavlink.rs), decodes ADSB_VEHICLE traffic reports (adsb.rs), keeps per-aircraft state (store.rs) and pushes a snapshot to the React frontend once a second as an aircraft event. Map tiles go through a pingview:// scheme so they can be cached on disk (tiles.rs). The design is in docs/superpowers/specs/2026-10-13-pingview-design.md.

Releasing

Push a v* tag. The Release workflow builds every platform and creates a draft GitHub Release. macOS builds are signed and notarized when these repo secrets are set (same Apple account and names as Pingnet): APPLE_CERTIFICATE, APPLE_CERTIFICATE_PASSWORD, APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY, APPLE_TEAM_ID, APPLE_API_ISSUER, APPLE_API_KEY, APPLE_API_KEY_CONTENT.

Credits

• Built-in world map © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), via Protomaps; fonts Noto Sans (OFL), icons from tangrams (MIT).
• Fallback map from Natural Earth (public domain).
• Map tiles © MapTiler, map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
• Aircraft database (aviation-data/aircraft.csv.gz) from tar1090-db.
• Airline prefixes and telephony from OpenFlights (ODbL).
• Aerodromes (aviation-data/australia_aerodromes.json) compiled from public aerodrome and frequency listings.
• Live network data from adsb.lol and adsb.fi; aircraft info and routes from hexdb.io; photos from planespotters.net, credited to each photographer.

MIT licensed.