ARCHITECTURE Signal 426
Pants for Birds releases ADSBee m1421, a sub-2-gram dual-band ADS-B receiver module for $48
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Illustration only Photo by Amsterdam City Archives on Unsplash
Pants for Birds introduced the ADSBee m1421, an open-source solder-down dual-band ADS-B receiver module weighing under 2 grams and drawing less than 60mW, built around Semtech's LR2021 and TI's CC1314.
The module targets size- and power-constrained detect-and-avoid applications like drones and weather balloons where the full ADSBee 1090U feature set is unnecessary. Engineers should note the LR2021's tradeoffs: it sacrifices squawk code reception, non-ADS-B packet diversity, per-packet timestamps, and RSSI in its high-throughput configuration, making it unsuitable for multilateration out of the box.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
ADSBee m1421 receives both Mode S and UAT (including TIS-B traffic and FIS-B weather) in a 23.4 x 14.5mm x 2.7mm solder-down module.
The LR2021-based Mode S receiver is limited to Downlink Format 17 (ADS-B) packets for adequate dynamic range, omitting squawk codes and reducing non-ADS-B packet reception.
Standard variant costs $48 and an NDAA-compliant variant costs $75, with cost parity expected by December 2026.
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