See drones, their operators and their handsets

A drone broadcasting Remote ID gives up its serial, its position and where the operator is standing, whether that broadcast rides on Wi-Fi or on Bluetooth LE. A DJI airframe reading its own DroneID adds the home point, which is where it took off from.

The control view is the other half: every model control link in earshot with a bar per channel in microseconds, the frame rate, the signal level and whether the handset is asking to arm. ExpressLRS is placed by the receiver itself; FrSky ACCST, FlySky AFHDS-2A and XN297 are read as well.

Digital FPV is read too: a Walksnail Avatar link on 5.8 GHz gives its channel, frame rate, modulation and link quality, and the goggles’ bursts give away the pilot’s end. Analogue FPV is shown as a picture, named with its channel.

One 2.4 GHz channel is 20 MHz wide, so this is the job that wants a HackRF or a LimeSDR rather than a dongle, and 5.8 GHz wants the HackRF.

$ waveshark --tune 2437 --span 20000 --control