Skip to content

readme.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
87 lines (66 loc) · 2.48 KB

readme.md

File metadata and controls

87 lines (66 loc) · 2.48 KB

ADSB Vehicle MAVLink Simulator

A Python tool for simulating ADS-B aircraft traffic over a serial connection using the MAVLink protocol. Useful for testing ADS-B receivers, ground station software, or flight controller integrations without real aircraft.

Requirements

pip install pymavlink pyserial

Usage

python adsb_sim.py <com_port> <json_file> [--baud BAUD] [--rate RATE]

Arguments

Argument Required Default Description
com_port ✅ — Serial port (e.g. COM3, /dev/ttyUSB0)
json_file ✅ — Path to JSON file with aircraft definitions
--baud ❌ 115200 Serial baud rate
--rate ❌ 1.0 Update rate in Hz

Examples

# Windows
python adsb_sim.py COM3 aircraft.json

# Linux
python adsb_sim.py /dev/ttyUSB0 aircraft.json --baud 57600 --rate 2.0

Aircraft JSON Format

Each aircraft is defined as an object in a JSON array:

[
  {
    "icao_address": 1001,
    "lat": 49.2344299,
    "lon": 16.5610206,
    "altitude": 300,
    "heading": 237,
    "hor_velocity": 30,
    "ver_velocity": 0,
    "callsign": "V250"
  }
]
Field Type Unit Description
icao_address int — Unique ICAO identifier
lat float degrees Latitude
lon float degrees Longitude
altitude float meters ASL Altitude above sea level
heading float degrees (0–360) Track heading
hor_velocity float m/s Horizontal speed
ver_velocity float m/s Vertical speed (positive = climb)
callsign string — Aircraft callsign (max 8 chars)

How It Works

The simulator connects to a serial port and continuously transmits two MAVLink message types:

  • HEARTBEAT — sent once per second to identify the component as an ADS-B device
  • ADSB_VEHICLE — sent for each aircraft at the configured rate, containing position, velocity, heading and identification data

All aircraft from the JSON file are broadcast in every update cycle. The positions are static — aircraft do not move between updates.

Notes

  • Altitude is transmitted in millimeters internally (altitude * 1000) as required by the MAVLink ADSB_VEHICLE message spec
  • Heading is transmitted in centidegrees (heading * 100)
  • Callsigns are ASCII-encoded and null-padded to 9 bytes
  • flags is set to 3 (lat/lon and altitude valid)
  • tslc (time since last communication) is hardcoded to 1 second