A $50 ADS-B receiver built by thefatmoop tracks aircraft up to 150 nautical miles away using a Meshnology W12 board, which pairs an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with an LR2021 LoRa radio tuned to 1090 MHz.
The hardware decodes OOK and Manchester-encoded ADS-B transmissions, validates CRCs on the ESP32-S3, and serves live aircraft tracks through a web interface. An optional GNSS module gives the receiver its own position fix for relative tracking. The reason to read the full build log: the filter modification on the W12 board is the difference between mediocre and 150-nautical-mile range, and thefatmoop documents exactly what to change.
The project lives on GitHub under thefatmoop/esp32s3-lr2021-adsb-receiver. If a sub-$50 parts cost for a functional ADS-B ground station sounds too clean, the filter caveat is why. That detail alone makes the source worth opening.
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