3 Easy Steps for OSX - RTL2832U R820t Setup

3 Easy steps for OSX

I thought I would write up some info on how to get RTL2832U R820t DVB-T dongles working on Mac OSX (My current version is Mavericks).

First download the pre-built rtl-sdr binaries from
http://www.hfunderground.com/wiki/RTL-SDR
and follow their instructions on where to copy the files too.

Secondly we will need a decoder.
Dump1090 is the only one I could get to work. There is a ported version for OSX but I couldn’t get it to work (Something to do with BETA version).
Anyways , you can obtain Dump1090 from:
https://github.com/antirez/dump1090
On the right hand side of the website you can download the Zip file.

Once you have extracted Dump1090, open up a terminal and CD into the directory and type ‘make’.

*** Please note you will need to have developers tools installed. You can get these with mac ports and xcode. http://www.macports.org/install.php

Assuming you have successfully compiled Dump1090, you can start with this command

Third, start feeding Fr24
I had to contact support to build an Flightradar24 OSX feeder as I couldn’t find it on the forums. However this file was hosted on drop box. I’m unsure if this was the support person’s personal drop box account or not, so in the meantime you can download it from
http://www.sammybakar.com/files/fr24osx.tgz
Extract the file and start it with issuing this command

If flightradar24 can provide a dedicated link I will amend the link.
I hope this helps, it took me a few hours to get this running.