Real-Time GPS Tracking Station(linkedin.com)

v0.1.57 — Real-Time GPS Tracking Station
GPS SATELLITESTRACKER

A real-time GPS satellite tracking dashboard using data from USB GPS Receivers
Docker containers and a lot of coffee and cake

Live Dashboard

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Parquet Log Files Created

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GB Total Data So Far

0
GPS Satellites Seen

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Days to Build

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Cups of Earl Grey

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Cakes Consumed

Key Features
Real-Time Satellite Intelligence

A comprehensive GPS tracking dashboard with 3D globe visualisation, signal analysis, and real world satellite telemetry.

3D Globe View
Interactive Three.js globe displaying satellite positions, orbital paths, and real-time tracking with multiple camera perspectives, zoom and pan controls

Signal Analysis
Real-time SNR monitoring with bar charts, line plots, skyplot radar view, and historical sparkline telemetry for each satellite.

Satellite Directory
Browse all GPS satellites with spacecraft specifications, launch history, constellation block details, and real-time status.

Historical Playback
Time-travel through logged GPS data with a timeline slider, variable playback speeds, and frame-by-frame analysis.

Receiver Management
Track multiple GPS receiver locations simultaneously with coordinate display, error scatter plots, and CEP accuracy metrics.

Real-Time Telemetry
Live SSE streaming of GPS data with auto-refresh, instantaneous satellite position updates, and signal quality monitoring.

System Architecture
How It Works

A five-container architecture: USB serial data ingestion via MQTT, visualised through a Flask web frontend.

USB GPS Receiver
Cheap USB GPS module connected via serial port, outputting standard NMEA 0183 over serial.

Backend Pipeline
Raspberry Pi parsing NMEA data, computing satellite positions, and publishing structured telemetry to MQTT brokers.

Processing Service
Docker based Python processing service producing structured parquet files from the MQTT subscriptions

Web Dashboard
Modern Flask application serving Three.js 3D globe, DuckDB-powered Parquet queries, and SSE streaming for live updates.

Coming Soon
Build or buy a tracking device to stream your own telemetry and geo-location data directly to the server.

Future Hardware Support
Support for the battery powered LILYGO TTGO T-A7670G ESP32 based board with global 4G LTE and GPS.

Get Started
Try the Live Dashboard

Explore the full GPS tracking interface with real-time satellite data, 3D globe visualisation, and signal analysis tools.

Launch Live Dashboard

About
The Project

A weekend hobby project turned experiment in agentic coding — building a personal GPS tracking station from scratch.

Creator

Robert Wolf
Machine Learning Engineer

LinkedIn

Facebook

YouTube

[email protected]

System Information

Created Date:
8th June 2026

Software Version:
v0.1.57

Parquet Log Files:
46 files

Total Data Size:
7.24 MB

Date Coverage:
2026-06-09 to 2026-06-19

Receiver Location:
53.383°N, 2.173°W

The Story

Inspired by a recent Veritasium video on GPS jamming over Europe and Canada "Something is jamming GPS over Europe. Here's what we found", I decided to kick off a weekend hobby project to build a personal GPS tracking station. My goal wasn't just to log data, but to run an experiment in using agentic coding to help me.
I picked up a cheap USB GPS receiver, fired up my development server running TrueNAS SCALE, and used Google's Antigravity CLI to build a two-container architecture: a backend to ingest USB serial data, and a friendly web frontend. Within three hours and about 50 to 60 micro-revisions through the CLI, I had a working Docker container logging GPS data into hourly Parquet files. I never touched a single line of backend code in that first three house and the code quality was good.
Next up was the WebUI. I built it panel by panel, feature by feature completely through the Antigravity CLI. While the AI nailed vague prompts perfectly most of the time, it also went down some bizarre rabbit holes. I frequently had to step in as the "Senior Dev" to course-correct.
Out of the entire build, only a couple of bugs regarding the time slider defeated the agent, requiring me to step in and manually tweak the code.
I will be updating the website from time to time. If you have any problems please wait a few minutes as I'm probably updating the code and docker container behind the scenes.

Technology Stack

Python 3.13
Flask
Gunicorn
Three.js
DuckDB
Parquet
MQTT
Docker
TrueNAS SCALE
pynmea2
pyserial
Antigravity CLI
OpenCode
SSE
Orbitron UI
paho-mqtt
pyarrow

GPS-Tracker
Tracking Dashboard

A full-featured GPS satellite monitoring interface with three interconnected views: 3D globe, signal noise analysis, and satellite directory.

TACTICAL 3D
Orbital perspective with live satellite positions, orbital paths, and real-time tracking overlays

ERROR HEAT MAP
GPS accuracy error distribution with colour-coded heat overlay showing positional uncertainty zones

EARTH VIEW
Clean Earth perspective with continent outlines and lat/lon grid for global spatial context

3D Globe View
Interactive Three.js-powered globe with multiple viewing modes:

Tactical 3D – orbital perspective with satellite positions
Observer Zenith – view from receiver looking up
Trajectory – orbital satellite path visualisation
Time-Space – temporal positioning view
Error Heatmap – GPS accuracy heat overlay

Signal Noise Analysis
Comprehensive signal quality monitoring tools:

Real-time SNR bar chart for all visible satellites
Historical SNR line plots with time navigation
Signal statistics (avg, max, min SNR)
Skyplot polar radar view of satellite positions

Satellite Directory
Detailed spacecraft information database:

PRN identification and spacecraft names
Constellation block and manufacturer data
Launch dates and vehicle information
Real-time status and visibility tracking

Historical Playback
Time-travel through logged GPS data:

Interactive timeline slider for frame navigation
Playback at 1x, 2x, 5x, 10x, 20x speeds
Multi-timezone time display
Proximity alerts and path limit warnings

Real-Time Telemetry
Live data streaming:

Sub-satellite latitude/longitude coordinates
Altitude, elevation, and azimuth angles
Range-to-receiver distance calculation
Signal SNR history sparklines

Receiver Management
Multi-receiver GPS tracking support:

Multiple receiver coordinate display
GPS error scatter plot visualisation
Circular Error Probable (CEP) metrics
Per-receiver historical data analysis

Try It Now
Launch the Dashboard

Visit the live dashboard to explore real-time GPS satellite tracking data.

Open Live Dashboard