// the find
lyusupov/SoftRF
:airplane: Multi-functional, compatible DIY general aviation proximity awareness system
SoftRF is a DIY proximity awareness system for general aviation — gliders, paragliders, UAVs — that speaks FLARM, OGNTP, ADS-B, FANET+, APRS, and several other radio protocols. It runs on an impressive range of hardware from ESP8266/ESP32 to nRF52840 to RP2040/RP2350, with both wearable and panel-mount form factors. If you fly light aircraft and want to build your own collision avoidance gadget, this is the most complete open-source option that exists.
Hardware breadth is genuinely remarkable: 20+ supported MCU platforms including recent silicon like ESP32-C6, nRF52840, RP2350, and even Rockchip RK3506, with active commits as of this week. Protocol coverage is deep — simultaneous FLARM AIR V7, OGNTP, P3I, FANET+, ADS-B (978 UAT and 1090 ES), and ADS-L in a single device through the Octave/Duo concepts, which no commercial unit matches at this price point. Several editions have real FCC/CE certification, which means the firmware has been through RF compliance — not just a hobby hack. The Semtech LR2021 integration (added Q1 2026) lets the radio chip receive ADS-B at 1090 MHz directly, eliminating the need for a separate SDR dongle.
Protocol compatibility table has a footnote warning that 'compatible' doesn't mean 'fully compatible' and they implement only 'a reasonable minimum of the protocol specs' — in aviation context that ambiguity is a real concern before trusting it for actual traffic separation. The codebase spans 10+ years and dozens of hardware targets in a single monorepo with no obvious abstraction layer; the firmware source tree is a sprawling Arduino-style flat structure that will be painful to navigate or modify without deep hardware-specific knowledge. Many newer platform ports are marked 'may need improvements' with no changelog explaining what's missing, so you won't know what you're getting until you test it. Documentation lives entirely in GitHub wiki pages with no offline or versioned docs, which is a problem if you're trying to build something for actual flight use where network access isn't guaranteed.