Feed from Your Windows PC (Beta)

The Windows Desktop Feeder

Best for:

Your everyday laptop or desktop: it runs quietly in the background while you get on with other things (on a work PC, check with your IT team first)
A PC that’s on anyway: a home server, a workshop machine, a laptop plugged in by the window
Windows users who don’t want to set up a Raspberry Pi or Linux
Trying feeding out before buying dedicated hardware

You’ll need: a Windows 10 or 11 PC (64-bit), an RTL-SDR USB stick and a 1090 MHz antenna.

One installer. The app starts with Windows, lives in the notification area, installs the SDR driver for you (no Zadig), and keeps the PC awake while it’s feeding. Open the window for the live feed, a radar of the aircraft around you, your aircraft list, lifetime history and settings.

Windows may say “Windows protected your PC” while we’re new to it as a publisher. Check that the publisher is JETNET, L.L.C., then choose More info › Run anyway.

Beta. The Desktop Feeder is new. It has fed ADS-B Exchange around the clock on our own PCs, but it has only been tried on a handful of machines and receivers so far, so expect the odd rough edge. If something doesn’t work, tell us on Discord and we’ll look into it.

Download the Beta for Windows

See It Running

Forty-five seconds, start to finish.

Run the installer. There’s no admin prompt and nothing to configure.
Plug in the stick. The feeder installs its driver for you.
Feeding starts by itself, and the Live feed card fills with aircraft.

After that it runs from the notification area and starts with Windows, so your PC feeds whenever it’s on.

What You’ll Need
- A PC running Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit)
- An RTL-SDR USB receiver. Any ADS-B capable stick should work; the ones we’ve tested are under Which receiver? below.
- A 1090 MHz antenna with an SMA connector (the ADS-B Exchange stick is sold without one)
Step 1 — Install the App
Download and run the installer. Windows may show “Windows protected your PC” while it gets to know us as a new publisher: check that the publisher is JETNET, L.L.C., then choose More info, then Run anyway. The installer asks for administrator permission once, because it installs for everyone on the PC. Leave Open ADS-B Exchange Feeder ticked on the last page. From then on the app starts with Windows in the notification area.
Step 2 — Plug in the SDR
Connect the antenna and plug the SDR into a USB port. The first time, Windows asks for permission to install the stick’s driver: choose Yes. Feeding starts by itself.
Step 3 — Enter Your Location
In Settings, enter your latitude, longitude and antenna altitude, which MLAT needs. Use https://www.freemaptools.com/elevation-finder.htm to find your elevation.
Step 4 — Verify Your Feed
The Status tab shows Feeding and the Live feed card. Then check your feeder page:
- The History tab links to your stats page, or visit https://www.adsbexchange.com/myip
- For MLAT status: https://map.adsbexchange.com/mlat-map/

Which Receiver?

The Desktop Feeder should work with any ADS-B capable RTL-SDR stick (the common RTL2832U kind), and it installs the Windows driver for you. So far it has only been tested with the three sticks below. If yours works, or doesn’t, please tell us on Discord.

For the best results, use a stick built for aircraft. The ADS-B Exchange stick has a 1090 MHz filter and amplifier inside, and in our side-by-side test it heard about four times as many messages and reached about four times as far as general-purpose sticks on the same antenna. The general-purpose sticks are good receivers that cover a wide range of frequencies; they simply have no 1090 MHz filter or amplifier. Already have an RTL-SDR? Plug it in and start feeding; you can always upgrade later.

In our test	Nooelec NESDR SMArt v5	Nooelec NESDR Nano 3	Nooelec SMArt v5 + SAWbird+ 1090	ADS-B Exchange stick
Built for ADS-B	General purpose	General purpose	General purpose plus a filtered amplifier, with its own power lead	Yes: 1090 MHz filter and amplifier
Messages heard per minute	848	518	2,238	3,213
Aircraft heard (with a position)	5.3 (4.6)	4.8 (3.3)	15.7 (14.0)	17.4 (14.8)
Typical range	35 nm	24 nm	136 nm	133 nm
Best range	54 nm	41 nm	164 nm	153 nm
Signal above noise	13 dB	11 dB	16.6 dB	15 dB
Driver set up by the feeder	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Antenna in the box	No	No	No	No
Where to buy	Nooelec	Nooelec	Nooelec (stick) and Nooelec (SAWbird+ ADS-B, the current model)	ADS-B Exchange store

One laptop indoors, one afternoon, Auto gain, each stick on the same USB port in turn. The Nooelec sticks shared one Nooelec antenna; the ADS-B Exchange stick was measured on its own antenna, and did as well or slightly better on the Nooelec one, so the antenna isn’t what separates them. Air traffic changes minute to minute, so treat the aircraft counts as rough; messages per minute and range are the better comparison.

None of these sticks comes with an antenna. You’ll need a 1090 MHz antenna of your own: anything with an SMA plug connects straight to any of them.

Using a general-purpose stick? A 1090 MHz filtered amplifier at the antenna should close much of the gap. The Desktop Feeder can power one through the antenna cable with its bias tee setting. We haven’t tested that combination yet.

Built In

MLAT

Multilateration is on by default, so your feeder helps position aircraft that don’t broadcast their own. Privacy is on too: you’re off the public MLAT map unless you choose otherwise.

Stats & Leaderboard

The same statistics our feeder kits send, so your feeder page, aircraft counts, range and uptime fill in, and you appear on the leaderboard.

Alerts

A notification if the feed can’t reach ADS-B Exchange for 15 minutes or hears nothing for two hours. It clears itself once things recover.

Prefer Dedicated Hardware?

A Raspberry Pi or turnkey kit can run around the clock on a few watts:

Connect a receiver you already run
Build your own from our Pi image
Buy a preconfigured kit

Connect Equipment

Why isn’t there a Mac version?
Nothing stops a Mac app, and it’s on our list. We started with Windows because it’s where most people without a Raspberry Pi are, and because Windows needed the most help with SDR drivers. In the meantime, a Mac can feed the same way a Linux PC does: run readsb with the feed client, and ask on Discord if you get stuck.