[HN Gopher] My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
___________________________________________________________________
My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
Author : jakey_bakey
Score : 444 points
Date : 2023-11-27 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
| SteveNuts wrote:
| Another fun project would be to build your own ADS-B receiver!
|
| https://www.adsbexchange.com/ways-to-join-the-exchange/
| gattr wrote:
| Just a few weeks ago I got interested in this as well ("where
| does FR24 get its data from?"). I ended up buying a cheap RTL-
| SDR dongle (R820T2) and a small outdoor antenna. I run the free
| dump1090 tool (I'm on Fedora) to decode ADS-B messages, then my
| own simple "radar-like" visualization program ([1]) connects to
| dump1090's network socket to receive decoded data (SBS1 textual
| format). Even with the antenna just sitting in my room (on a
| photo tripod), I typically receive data from 10-20 aircraft, up
| to 190 km away. I drove to a hilltop this weekend (some 600 m
| higher) and immediately got >100 aircraft, up to 500 km.
|
| [1] https://github.com/GreatAttractor/plane-tracker
| trackone wrote:
| I don't have any experience with it myself, but you can
| provide your ADS-B data to ADS-B exchange.
| https://www.adsbexchange.com/ways-to-join-the-exchange/
| qwertox wrote:
| If you share your data with these sites, they usually give
| you premium access for free.
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/premium
|
| I share ADS-B data, how do I activate my free Business plan
| subscription?
|
| Please sign up for a free Basic account using the following
| link using the same email address with which you registered
| your feed. Once your feed is live, your complimentary
| Business subscription will be activated.
| filterfiber wrote:
| Heads up - IIRC ADSB-exchange was sold out, an alternative
| might be adsb.fi
|
| Regardless you can send your ADS-B data to all of them -
| ADSB-exchange, adsb.fi, flightradar, flightaware, etc.
|
| That way you get all of the benefits and contribute
| community data.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| aiui there was some kerfuffle over adsb.fi DNS ownership
| - I think https://airplanes.live is where the OSS
| community gravitated.
| filterfiber wrote:
| Ah I've been out of the loop - thanks for correcting me!
| jjwiseman wrote:
| The ADS-B Exchange situation is more complicated than it
| "was sold out," and there are valid reasons for not
| wanting to use them-but it is still the most
| comprehensive source of uncensored flight tracking data.
| jashanno wrote:
| I have done the same thing in C# and ArcGIS maps.
|
| I'm going to test it out in an airplane. My map is dynamic,
| doesn't have to be stationary, and works offline.
| macNchz wrote:
| I set one up a few months ago and was really surprised at how
| much coverage I got-I thought I might need an outdoor one, or
| at least to fiddle with it a bit, but even just plopped on my
| desk behind my computer screen on the ground floor of a three
| story house in a dense area I'm picking up planes from miles
| all around.
|
| I built a little app that processes the data to count how
| many are flying low over the park nearby, so I can go there
| when it's quiet: https://noisy.today/prospect-park/
| michaelmior wrote:
| Not as fun as building your own, but note that you can apply
| for a free receiver from FR24.
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/apply-for-receiver
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That's incredible, whats the catch!?
|
| I reckon if I shelled out for a business plan I could start
| doing some simple stuff with free tier / extra paid features
| filterfiber wrote:
| > That's incredible, whats the catch!?
|
| They prioritize low-coverage areas (no idea how generous
| they are for covered areas).
|
| Nearly all of their position data is from these receivers,
| so you're providing them with more coverage/redundancy for
| the plane positions.
|
| The hardware is relatively cheap (under 50$) and I don't
| imagine the business tier costs them much money.
|
| > I reckon if I shelled out for a business plan I could
| start doing some simple stuff with free tier / extra paid
| features
|
| You don't need to they'll give it to you for free.
|
| sidenote: You can build your own with an rtl-sdr and a
| raspberry pi/cheap computer. If you do this you can forward
| the data to all of the commercial sites for the free perks,
| and to all of the community sites.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That's quite genius, I wonder whether Apple's I/O and Radio
| APIs will let me do this on mobile...
| beembeem wrote:
| Mine serves as a fun party trick. I never built this out but I
| always wanted to build a little display that shows the overhead
| plane's src/dest, speed, and altitude using the antenna.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Once you have a receiver, you can use a raspberry pi image like
| https://adsb.im/home to easily feed data to more than 20
| different networks. FlightAware, FlightRadar24, ADS-B Exchange,
| airplanes.live, TheAirTraffic, etc. Most of the networks give
| extra privileges to people who feed them data.
| ano-ther wrote:
| Love it!
|
| From the error message it seems that too many HN users are trying
| it out right now. I will come back later.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Yeah, the API is free and has no guaranteed SLO.
|
| I think for V2 I'll allow people to enter their OpenSky
| credentials, since it allows for basic auth
|
| V3 (unlikely unless this takes off, pun intended) I might look
| into paid services.
| blt wrote:
| This is great!
|
| Small detail question: Did CRT radar scopes really have scan
| lines? I would have guessed they were vector displays.
|
| Re. list of extra features: Since the app targets planespotting,
| it would be cool to show aircraft type, maybe for a few seconds
| after you tap a blip.
| ghewgill wrote:
| They were vector displays. But possibly not quite in the way
| you're thinking.
|
| The original radar displays would scan from the center outward
| along a radial. The timing of the scan was predefined to scale
| for distance. The beam intensity signal was directly the
| (amplified) radar return signal. So a stronger returned signal
| would cause a more visible "blip" on the long-phosphor display.
|
| The interesting part is to make the radar beam scan around the
| CRT display, the whole cathode tube emitter assembly would be
| driven by a motor synchronized with the spinning radar dish.
| This rotation would have to match the speed and direction of
| the radar dish at all times, otherwise the blips would show in
| the wrong place.
|
| The fixed radial and distance lines would be printed either on
| the CRT tube itself or on a transparent cover. Displays like
| this were used for decades, probably well into the 1980s or
| even early 1990s. Newer versions were able to use simple
| electronics to scan in the X and Y direction independently, to
| avoid the more complex rotating beam emitter assembly.
|
| More info at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_display#Plan_position_in...
| blt wrote:
| I was wondering about that after asking my question, since
| converting the signal to an x/y scope requires trigonometry.
| Probably a challenge to do electronically in the early days
| of radar. Leave it to the WW2-era engineers to find an
| electromechanical solution!
| fl7305 wrote:
| No, you're right. Old-school radar displays were basically like
| oscilloscopes where the X and Y position were controlled by the
| angle of the radar, and the current range of the radar return.
| So it's a type of polar plot.
|
| The phosphor afterglow made it so that stronger radar returns
| remained on the screen for a bit. If the radar made more than a
| revolution in that time, you'd see the same airplane as a new
| dot ("plot") that had moved a bit. You could use a felt tip pen
| to mark the plots as "tracks" on the screen.
|
| There were also special radar screens with a movie camera
| pointed at them, where hours of radar returns could be recorded
| for later playback.
|
| For instance this sped up recording of Warsaw Pact planes
| during the 1968 revolution in Czechoslovakia:
| https://youtu.be/rAUodXI4LPw?t=622
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| It's not an actual radar, it just queries some API.
| ghewgill wrote:
| What he has done is awesome. Yes, I misunderstood the title at
| first too, but that was more than made up by the care and
| attention put into building this app. Building things for your
| own kids just for the fun of it is what parents do.
|
| Stop dunking on people having fun.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| They don't seem to be dunking.
|
| The title of the the piece/submission would be well served by
| calling it a simulated radar. I, like I suspect many others,
| clicked on it because I was honestly intrigued by the concept
| of some sort of homebrew radar. Setting that bar and then
| seeing that it's some API results plotted on a simulated
| radar screen is a bit of a letdown.
|
| Submission is clickbait. It's a cool project, sounds like fun
| and I'm sure their kid likes it, but the root post is not
| wrong.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| Thank you. I clicked thinking that I was gonna see
| someone's home made radar.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| I clicked because I was excited to see the story of their
| unexpected interaction with the FCC and FAA (or local
| equivalents) due to putting out that much EM radiation in
| those spectra. But no. Still cool, though.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| The difference is, I was expecting literally what was on
| the title :-)
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Are you human?
| runjake wrote:
| This is probably an alt account for _jocaal_ who posted a
| nearly-identical, unuseful comment and then deleted it. Then
| this one magically appeared right after, to again point out
| what 's already obvious to the rest of us.
|
| Nonetheless, a great little project that inspires wonder in a
| kid!
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Thank you :)
| qwertox wrote:
| True, but it even looks more like a radar than Flightradar's
| radar.
|
| Cool tool for a small kid to have.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| I don't know, phones are addicting and getting a toddler
| hooked seems like a disservice. There's so many educational
| things the author could be giving their toddler and they're
| teaching them to have their eyes glued to their screen from
| such a young age...
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > I don't know, phones are addicting and getting a toddler
| hooked seems like a disservice.
|
| Phones are not addicting. Algorithmically manipulated
| services are addicting.
|
| > There's so many educational things the author could be
| giving their toddler and they're teaching them to have
| their eyes glued to their screen from such a young age...
|
| Like how to use one's skills and passions to develop a
| product for their beloved child?
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| I believe you're missing the crux of the problem.
|
| What's new about phones is NOT that things are
| manipulated so that we want more of it. "News" have been
| around for centuries and they've always been manipulated
| to give most people outrageous stuff to consume.
|
| What's new about phones is that A) they are an
| effectively infinite source of stuff and B) it takes 2
| seconds to get them from our pocket.
|
| So you're blaming addiction on optimization by evil
| services, but in reality the problem are the phones
| themselves: they make it too easy to "get more".
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, it's a totally reasonable
| point. I tried from the outset to make it more like a toy
| that prompts you to look at the real world once it gives
| you information. But, this is a totally reasonable stance
| qwertox wrote:
| I like that it involves more than just scrolling. There's
| the thing about searching and finding it in the sky and
| the questions which can arise from this, like where did
| this plane come from.
|
| Even if it were a real radar you'd still be looking at a
| screen in order to make use of it.
| sertbdfgbnfgsd wrote:
| I have a two year old. He loves planes too. I don't get
| it :-)
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Unfortunately I was unable to jailbreak my iPhone to recieve
| transponder codes, but my cousin who works at NSO Group tells
| me he's working on it
| auspiv wrote:
| Kraken SDR has 5 receivers, all synchronized to the same time.
| There was a "passive" radar project that used its hardware but
| got shutdown.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2022/11/19/open-source-passive-radar-ta...
|
| apparently passive radar is governed by some US Munitions list:
|
| US Munitions List, Category 11(a)(3)(xxvii): Bi-static/multi-
| static radar that exploits greater than 125 kHz bandwidth and
| is lower than 2 GHz center frequency to passively detect or
| track using radio frequency (RF) transmissions (e.g.,
| commercial radio, television stations);
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I'm surprised this is getting downvoted: Completely different
| type of project and misleading headline. Still a cool project!
| fragmede wrote:
| I downvoted for implied tone. while their comment is true,
| sertbdfgbnfgsd could be less of a dick about it.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| Slightly off topic: I went to download this and it said I needed
| iOS17. Out of pure curiosity what from iOS17 does it need?
| Apologies if it's mentioned in the article, I just skipped ahead
| to final product.
| cbhl wrote:
| It is mentioned in the article -- the app uses new APIs in iOS
| 17 for map annotations.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Correct, also SwiftUI Metal Shaders (about which I've written
| an upcoming article) and SFSymbol animations
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Not off-topic at all, happy to answer!
|
| - Map Annotations - SwiftUI Metal Shaders (for the CRT effect)
| - SFSymbol Animations
|
| If I remember anything else I'll mention :)
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| I didn't know they still let children into the cockpit anymore!
| toddmorey wrote:
| I think only when the plane is grounded.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| This would be right!
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I believe they still do after and possibly before the flight.
| They used to do it _during_ the flight!
| ipython wrote:
| I see one issue with this app: the app page clearly says it's
| only for 4+ yet your target audience is only 2 :)
|
| Nicely done!
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| I hope to stay _under the radar_ of the app store police :D
| amelius wrote:
| Eventually you will be building this:
|
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/12/09/retired-man-travels...
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That is extremely cool.
|
| I have always planned to make a low-tier version of this for my
| kid using an old music mixing board
| progne wrote:
| I occasionally get large military transport planes that buzz my
| rural area at very low altitudes, often below my house in a
| canyon just a 3 iron away. I suppose they're training. The roar
| is epic. It'd be nice to get a little notification when that's
| about to happen. Not enough to write my own app for it though.
| Kudos for the hustle.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That's a really great little niche market, it's times like this
| I wish I was more entreprenurial
|
| Thank you for the kudos :)
| auspiv wrote:
| The military planes are hit or miss for what they put out in
| terms of position. Most will do Mode S transponder, which does
| not, by itself, include position. But if you get enough of
| these ADS-B receivers in an area, they can triangulate the
| position.
|
| Every few weeks we have "mean jets" (what our 3 year old calls
| fighter jets, I think from the Iron Giant) buzz our house near
| KBJC going in for landing/taking off. They're super loud and
| often gone before you can get outside to see them (they leave
| at 400+ kts).
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Idk why, but this is delightful to use. There's something so fun
| about it. Will likely delete after a few days, but just turning
| it on and seeing the planes appear on a radar-like screen is just
| charming.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Thanks, that's great to hear :)
|
| Will try not to toot my own horn, but I think the explicit goal
| of making it a toy vs making a commercialised product with
| ads/aggressive paywalling meant I could make something simple
| that gives nonzero value without any baggage
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| This is perfect. We need more hobbyist apps. Minimalist design,
| simple and solid functionality, and no ads in sight. Shake off
| the shackles of the advertising dystopia!
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| This comment is perfect :)
|
| I think certianly the toddler-based inspo made it easier to
| turn into a simple toy
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| This is cool in concept, but FlightRadar24 has a built-in
| Augmented Reality feature that works _really_ well.
|
| https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/show-us-your-best-augment...
|
| Also, if I were to build my own local copy, I'd use an RTLSDR to
| get the ADSB packets direct and base my app on tar1090.
| https://github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090
| fsckboy wrote:
| what children truly want, need, and enjoy, is interaction with
| adults, and the less augmented the reality of the human
| contact, the real-er it is. build something that doesn't work
| so well with them, rather than off the shelf something perfect.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Now I'm just thinking about how I'd put a CRT filter on AR
| planes
| farhaven wrote:
| This rings true. I remember the wooden toy biplane my dad
| made in his wood shop when I was a kid a lot more fondly than
| all the other bought plastic toys that came after it.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That is very awesome, TIL
|
| If I were commercially-minded (I'm not), I'd go full hog on the
| Mattel approach and carve out the niche as a toy vs an
| informational product
| westurner wrote:
| MSFS (MS Flight Simulator) has real-time Flight _and Weather_
| data and works in Steam 's Proton fork of WINE on Linux.
|
| FWICS there are third-party open source tools for adding live
| Flight data and logical behaviors to flight simulator
| applications.
|
| https://fslivetrafficliveries.com/user-guide/ :
|
| > _FSLTL is a free standalone real-time online traffic overhaul
| and VATSIM model-matching solution for MSFS._
|
| (... Til about FlyPadOS3 EFB: _An EFB is intended primarily for
| cockpit /flightdeck or cabin use. For large and turbine
| aircraft, FAR 91.503 requires the presence of navigational
| charts on the airplane. If an operator's sole source of
| navigational chart information is contained on an EFB, the
| operator must demonstrate the EFB will continue to operate
| throughout a decompression event, and thereafter, regardless of
| altitude._ https://docs.flybywiresim.com/fbw-a32nx/feature-
| guides/flypa...)
|
| https://twinfan.gitbook.io/livetraffic/ :
|
| > _LiveTraffic is a plugin for the flight simulator X-Plane to
| show real-life traffic, based on publicly available live flight
| data, as additional planes within X-Plane._ [...]
|
| > _I spent an awful lot of time dealing with the inaccuracies
| of the data sources, see [Limitations]. There are only
| timestamps and positions. Heading and speed is point-in-time
| info but not a reliable vector to the next position. There is
| no information on pitch or bank angle, or on gear or flaps
| positions. There is no info where exactly a plane touched or
| left ground. There are several data feeders, which aren 't in
| synch and contradict each other._
|
| ...
|
| "Google Earth 3D Models Now Available as Open Standard (GlTF)"
| (2023) ; land, buildings:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35896176
|
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/tile/3d-til...
| :
|
| > _Photorealistic 3D Tiles are a 3D mesh textured with high
| resolution imagery. They offer high-resolution 3D maps in many
| of the world 's populated areas. They let you power next-
| generation, immersive 3D visualization experiences to [...]_
|
| GMaps WebGL overlay API:
| https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...
|
| ...
|
| From "GraphCast: AI model for weather forecasting" (2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38267794 :
|
| > _TIL about Raspberry-NOAA and pywws in researching and
| summarizing for a comment on "Nrsc5: Receive NRSC-5 digital
| radio stations using an RTL-SDR dongle" (2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158091 _
|
| ...
|
| "Show HN: I wrote a multicopter simulation library in Python"
| (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38255362 :
|
| > [ X-Plane Plane Maker, Juno: New Origins (and also Hello
| Engineer), MS Flight Simulator cockpits are built with MSFS
| Avionics Framework which is React-based, [Multi-objective gym +
| MuJoCo] for drone simulation, cfd and helicopters ]
|
| ...
|
| "DroneAid: A Symbol Language and ML model for indicating needs
| to drones, planes" (2020) https://github.com/Code-and-
| Response/DroneAid https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22707347
| ... https://github.com/Call-for-Code/Project-Catalog
| salawat wrote:
| Careful. This will be tolerated right up until you start building
| fire-control radars, at which point people with absolutely no
| sense of humor may take an unhealthy interest in you.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Maybe I'll make a lucrative exit to the military-industrial
| complex
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| "A fire-control radar (FCR) is a radar that is designed
| specifically to provide information (mainly target azimuth,
| elevation, range and range rate) to a fire-control system in
| order to direct weapons such that they hit a target. They are
| sometimes known as narrow beam radars,[1] targeting radars, or
| in the UK, gun-laying radars. If the radar is used to guide a
| missile, it is often known as a target illuminator or
| illuminator radar."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-control_radar
|
| That was a new one for me.
| louison11 wrote:
| Great minds... I published something very similar (albeit less
| advanced) that also went viral on HN back in September:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37379801
|
| Mine is a webapp 80% generated by GPT that makes a sound when a
| plane enters a certain radius around the user's location.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Oh awesome! Great minds indeed :)
|
| Honestly building a toy for my toddler is some of the most fun
| I've had coding in years, I can't wait for her to get a little
| older and start articulate her own ideas
| louison11 wrote:
| I feel you. I have all kinds of ideas for when he gets a
| little bit older. For example: a voice-controlled (perhaps
| motion activated) electric train. I think having a child
| gives me an excuse to express my inner child's passion for
| tinkering.
| JacobBartlett24 wrote:
| Off topic but you have my exact name (first and last). I wonder
| what the chances are on that.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Us Jacob Bartletts gotta stick together
| niccl wrote:
| numerically, quite low, but given the number of people on the
| internet, it happens routinely. I'd guess most English speaking
| people have used <internet_search_of_choice> for their name and
| found duplicates So:
|
| guess maybe 100 million English names on the internet, between
| 2 and 100 matches, so around 1 in 10 million
|
| BTW. I got bored counting the matches for Jacob Bartlett on
| facebook. definitely more than 10
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Jacob and Bartlett are both relatively common names, I'd say
| aggregating over a lifetime one can expect to coincidentially
| bump into quite a few over the years (since the advent of the
| internet at least!)
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I've never met anyone (outside known relatives) with my
| spelling of surname. When I moved to my current UK city I was
| surprised to find a Firstname Lastname match in the same
| city.
|
| Facebook shows dozens of the same name in the general area.
|
| As I've seen some say, if you're one-in-a-million then
| there's ~7000 people like you out there somewhere!
| jefftk wrote:
| Nice! Minor nits:
|
| * It takes me out of the immersion a bit when planes move after
| having been drawn. It would feel more realistic if the blips were
| "painted" by the sweep and then static until the next sweep.
|
| * To make it a bit more realistic you could extrapolate from
| previous data points so each plane would make consistent progress
| from sweep to sweep.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Thank you :)
|
| Both very valid points. I think if I was clever with timing and
| angles the first one is definitely doable. The second one woudl
| be even simpler - the API returns flight velocity so I can even
| calculate this from one data point
| invalidator wrote:
| I suggest adjusting your gradient so they don't fully fade
| out until just before the sweep hits them, or maybe even only
| down to 10%, so they only get wiped by the bar. It'll make it
| much easier to watch a plane if it doesn't keep disappearing
| entirely.
| dazhbog wrote:
| I swear there are startups that blabber for years before making
| an MVP.. Jacob was able to build this in a cave, with a box of
| scraps..
| barelyauser wrote:
| I'm not Jacob Stark...
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| :)
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| In the interests of appeal to modesty, I can tell you about my
| long history of unreleased apps, failed startups, and false
| starts :)
| dylan604 wrote:
| if you're anything like me, you have a stash of items that
| you just haven't gotten to yet but have every intention of
| doing something with at some point. law of averages suggests
| one of them will hit!
| oakmad wrote:
| This is great. On my << one day >> build list.
|
| In a similar vein, my 5yr old son has a flight log book - I
| started it for him as a baby. Every flight he gives asks one of
| the crew if the captain wouldn't mind completing it. It logs
| route, aircraft and any events that happened. The crew _love_
| this kind of thing - we've toured cockpits and crew rests and the
| messages are always gracious. He's always beaming to get it back.
| Highly recommend it for little plane geeks.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| That's genius, being invited into the cockpit felt extremely
| cool even as a grown adult, so I will absolutely get this
| started next time we get a flight
| Havoc wrote:
| That's super wholesome. Congrats on app and plane-curious kid
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Thank you :)
| filterfiber wrote:
| If anyone is interested, you can build your own adsb receiver for
| very cheap (under 50$), and you can forward the data to all the
| platforms - ADSB-exchange, airplanes.live, flightradar,
| flightaware, etc.
|
| You'll get the business tier plans on the commercial sites for
| free, and you'll feed the community exchanges.
|
| You'll also be getting the data directly, so they aren't
| censored, and don't rely on the internet.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| I bet this'd be a lot more reliable than the free API I'm using
|
| (no hate to OpenSky though they were very nice and clear to me
| when I emailed them)
| auspiv wrote:
| yep and you also can get multiple updates per second per
| plane. I think it tops out at 8 or so which is entirely
| unnecessary for the radar-style app but you can count on an
| update between each "scan".
|
| https://austinsnerdythings.com/2021/04/18/moving-my-ads-b-
| an...
|
| https://austinsnerdythings.com/2021/03/09/receiving-
| aircraft...
| zwieback wrote:
| So cute! And of Sunday afternoon a flying saucer with green
| tractor beam came by to check out what the fuss was about.
| idatum wrote:
| I wrote a simple program that connects to (default) port 30003 on
| dump1090-fa (Flightaware version). It parses the ADS-B output and
| uses Flightaware's AeroAPI (there is a free tier based on
| requests) to augment with airline, aircraft, and city departure
| information. I then publish to my MQTT (Mosquitto) broker for
| planes within 2.1 nautical miles (i.e. I can visually make them
| out).
|
| An MQTT client on an RPi3 (Linux) subscribes to those messages
| and uses a TTS service (Azure) to generate a wave file. I then
| use USB audio (this might have been the hardest part) to play it
| to me while I sit on my patio and watch local planes fly by.
|
| I live near a couple major airports, so most of the planes are
| easy to spot (~5000 MSL). It's a simple pleasure.
| alexpotato wrote:
| > then use Linux USB audio (this might have been the hardest
| part)
|
| Linux Audio is ALWAYS that hardest part.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Linux Audio is ALWAYS that hardest part.
|
| Only if you're not using ffmpeg or (c)vlc.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I did this too! - and built out an Alexa skill so I could ask
| 'where's that plane flying to'
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| That's great, do you have a write up somewhere?
| idatum wrote:
| I'll finally get motivated and share :)
| MandieD wrote:
| When you do, I'll be eager to try it, as I currently rely
| on FlightAware's local web display to show my 3 year old
| what planes our antenna is picking up.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| I have an iOS shortcut that anyone can use to do something
| similar. Install it, name it "What's Overhead", and then you
| can say "Siri, what's overhead?" and then Siri will speak
| details on whatever aircraft is closest to you.
|
| I use it when driving, or via my watch if I hear an unusual
| plane or helicopter and don't want to pull out my phone.
|
| https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/92f43e8881ce4291b48b28a4b0b...
| bbarn wrote:
| Great idea. Simple but effective, I'm up on a mountain with
| weird military traffic here and there, in addition to
| commercial stuff, so I'll play with this when I am driving
| around for sure.
| victor106 wrote:
| > Which begs the question, why can't Google Maps ever work out
| which direction I am facing?
|
| I always wondered this as well. Apple Maps seems to be much
| better at this
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| It used to do it fine and then they had an update that made it
| terrible. You need to hold your phone flat, if it's at even a
| slight angle it stops working.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| When I was in Tokyo I noticed that the compass was completely
| useless. Too much EMI?
| fragmede wrote:
| My Apple maps consistently has me 90deg off from where I'm
| actually pointed.
| dottjt wrote:
| My first initial thought to this headline was he actually built a
| radar for his own curiosity, not because their toddler loves
| planes.
| dramm wrote:
| OK very nice, but I had brief hope of a home built primary radar
| featuring a microwave oven magnetron :-)
| coolliquidcode wrote:
| Same. Cool project but way less interesting.
| bonniemuffin wrote:
| I like the idea that changing the display color was a must-have
| feature for the initial release. Shows a very solid understanding
| of the target demographic's user needs. (My 3yo loves any toy
| that includes a color picker!)
| hn_ta456 wrote:
| Love the design, but super uncomfortable with giving phones to
| toddlers as toys. For mine, the longer I can put it off the
| better. There are enough infants bumbling around the world
| already glued to screens, in imitation of their zombie parents
| (this is a general observation, not levelled at OP). For the
| inevitable "but kids need to learn how to use phones as tools" -
| tools for what? They are designed to consume you and your
| attention. I also don't regard the ability to halt a conversation
| while you 'look something up' as a benefit.
| renewiltord wrote:
| This is a terrific toy. Great work!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I thought about building a laser system to write on overcast
| skies at night and realized it would have to have something like
| this so it doesn't pass any aircraft.
| int32 wrote:
| Awesome, thank you for making this app! My 2yo is obsessed with
| planes too and we spent a good chunk of our day looking up the
| sky scanning for planes :) We tried the Flightradar24 app too but
| it is way to distracting for him... can't wait to show him
| tomorrow!
| 1-more wrote:
| Related "An app can be a home cooked meal" on cloning the defunct
| social network app Tapstack for just his family's usage
| https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
| bunabhucan wrote:
| >the crew spots you with a cute plane-obsessed toddler, they
| invite you in to check out the cockpit.
|
| Matching NASA orange jumpsuits are the passport into every
| cockpit. The crew gets way more excited than the kids. Also makes
| them super easy to find in the airport.
| jaxelr wrote:
| My son loves this app and he's 7. Thanks!
|
| A small gripe, I'm unsure whats the api refresh rate and my kid
| continues closing and opening the app and then it sporadically
| gets time outs on the API. That being said, I much appreciate
| taking the time to release it and blog about it.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I love the design but go one step further - forget the API and
| get an SDR that is tuned to ADB frequencies at 1090 Mhz and
| gather the data yourself. Then she'll have a true radar.
| RachelF wrote:
| Nice app and writeup - but she won't have a radar - she'll have
| an app that displays the positions of airplanes. A true radar
| needs to transmit and receive.
|
| The SDR is still just listening to the telemetry from the
| plane, which they transmit all the time for this ADS mode.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| You can have passive radar:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_radar
|
| But yes, it needs to be doing more than receiving telemetry
| to qualify, and there has to be something transmitting.
| StephenAmar wrote:
| There's a really cool setup at CuriOdyssey in San Mateo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16vZjWb5n6E&t=1s
|
| My son can spend hours just waiting for planes landing in SFO.
| xrd wrote:
| So many people say: "Don't take young kids abroad, they won't
| really remember those travels." BS. I took my son to Brazil, it
| was great, we got on a $1 cab ride, got on a pirate ship, endless
| alpine slide after the aerial tram, and went to the Botanical
| Garden in Rio. I took my three kids to Barcelona and Greece. They
| don't remember the time we took a bus from Athens to the beach
| and they were rolling around on the dirty floor of a bus, but
| they do remember the Abba-themed wedding.
|
| Those experiences matter.
| QkPrsMizkYvt wrote:
| Very off topic, but I +1 this. I am half and half and as a baby
| and young kid we went to one spot every summary. To this day I
| remember these travels. They matter a lot indeed.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Advice for a wholesome activity with your daughter: Bring her to
| the closest road/parking lot/park at the inbound end of your
| closest international airport runway (Typically this changes
| based on wind direction). Park and watch the planes come in and
| land. She can use her "radar" to see which planes are coming in
| (we used flightradar24). My kids were FLOORED how close the
| planes get to the ground on approach - especially the bigger
| jetliners. Easily entertained for hours and had to bargain with
| them to leave because they wanted to see if the next plane was
| bigger/closer than the last.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| Bring some earmuffs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| When I was in high school, there was a gravel lot just outside
| of the airport perimeter fencing at the end of one of the
| runways. When the wind was going the right direction so that
| the airplanes were taking off over that lot, it was _the_ place
| to park and make out.
| Full_Clark wrote:
| Nice work and nice writeup. It's interesting to me how strongly
| the design of original radar displays anchors the project. Your
| toddler might never interact with a real CRT, much less an ASR-9
| with a PPI display. But you've gone to great lengths to simulate
| one for her.
|
| Partly because of your affinity for skeumorphism, as you said,
| but it may also be because the OG radar display is a fantastic
| distillation of "Is there something in the sky and where is it
| relative to me?" All the UIs we have for sky-watching now have
| moved away from that in favor of contextual data or linking out
| to other services (or creating space to display ads). In the
| process of presenting all that additional information, they've
| lost the ability to easily answer that particular question.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-27 23:00 UTC)