An LED panel that shows the aviation around you

https://github.com/AxisNimble/TheFlightWall_OSS

98•yzydserd•2mo ago

Comments

cmiles8•2mo ago

Nice job on this. I love a good builder project and the ESP32 is a great platform for these.

SkyPuncher•2mo ago

Holy crap! I’ve been considering nearly the exact same project.

We live under the flight path for the local airport. I’ve wanted to build exactly this. Like, literally exactly this. This is just way more polished than I could have built.

Future product would be cool to stick this behind a mirror to make it a bit more interior decor approved.

donclark•2mo ago

Very cool project. I would like a text message or a log that I could go to with timestamps and aircraft details along with the date. Is there such a service or app?

RankingMember•2mo ago

Are you looking for a log of planes that have overflown your location or something else? You can see historical info via the history function on https://globe.airplanes.live/

donclark•2mo ago

That is a great live service. Thank you for sharing. We live near an airport/military and often hear loud or low flying aircraft and wonder exactly what it was. My question is if there is a log for my area that I could search by approximate date/time to try to identify the aircraft.

dylan604•2mo ago

I would venture that once you had this reference to look up, you will be able to start identifying the planes by sound alone. Lots of grease monkeys can ID a car by its sound. Some are more obvious than others. I can easily tell when the dual rotor Chinook flies over compared to other helicopters.

RankingMember•2mo ago

Yep! The interface icons are a little cryptic, but if you click the little icon in the upper right that looks like a play button surrounded by a reversing arrow, that will bring up an interface at the bottom to specify the date and time you want to see the history for. Click the "pause/unpause" button and it'll play back the activity at the speed you set so you can see all the planes that overflew at that time.

RankingMember•2mo ago

Fun project! I've been slowly working at something similar that pulls tail numbers of overflying planes, grabs an image of the actual plane from jetphotos, and displays it along with flight info on a little LED screen.

filtinious•2mo ago

I'm often awoken by aviation flying over South East London at 6AM in the morning. This might be a good thing to look at during those times...

(I wear earplugs and have double glazing, but the noise is deep and penetrating. I wonder how many other hundreds of thousands of people are also disturbed by early morning planes...)

esseph•2mo ago

For much of a year I slept at the end of a runway in a combat zone in Iraq and used to hear all the jets take off with full afterburner.

I got to the point I just slept through it.

danudey•2mo ago

When I was visiting Jerusalem in 2001 I got used to the sound of what was apparently helicopter gunships firing on... I dunno, something, off in the distance.

Definitely not the same as sleeping under an F16 or whatever, but it's amazing what we can get used to.

wkat4242•2mo ago

Nothing like the smell of murder and oppression in the morning!

sokoloff•2mo ago

For this situation, it’s not clear that a live display is more helpful than a replay of ADS-B data that you could explore later.

Something like: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay=2025-12-01-16:38&lat=...

filtinious•2mo ago

Thanks, that is helpful. I can see from it there's lots of plane traffic flying just south of the river, from East to West, into Heathrow airport, from 5am onwards.

nocoiner•2mo ago

If you like this, you’d probably really enjoy the hobby of ADS-B tracking. If you have a spare Pi sitting around, you can get an SDR and decent starter antenna for under $100. It’s also a fun entry point into other radio and satellite stuff. Airplanes.live is a good place to start.

cptnapalm•2mo ago

There's a flight path directly over my house. I'm going to see if my wife would be on board for this.

dddw•2mo ago

Ask nicely, but decidedly

vs4vijay•2mo ago

I vibe coded something similar as PWA WebApp - https://huggingface.co/spaces/vs4vijay/skywatch

CPLX•2mo ago

I wonder how hard it would be to combine this with a camera and some kind of image processing to actually create a live view video of the adjacent window with the planes annotated. That would be like the world’s coolest screen saver.

cdfuller•2mo ago

I've seen this done a few different times. FlightRadar24 has a 24/7 livestream in Las Vegas that tracks and annotates them.

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/inside-flightradar24/live...

dangus•2mo ago

Really cool project, though I’d recommend going with 3 or 4 64x64 LED matrix panels instead of 20 16x16 panels since it’s a lot less work with assembly and wiring and the end result is the same.

There are also pre-built LED matrix controller boards including an existing drawing library like the Interstate75 which I can recommend.

https://github.com/pimoroni/interstate75

kimos•2mo ago

Love this. It gives me a great idea for what to do with my Tidbyt.

https://tidbyt.com/

thenthenthen•2mo ago

Reminds me of the beautiful work by Quadrature, Satelliten, plotting overhead satellites on a physical map: https://2016.kikk.be/en/program/exhibition/quadrature

floydian10•2mo ago

Awesome! I was planning to do something very similar to this. This is really useful

US Accuses China of Secret Nuclear Testing

Peacock. A New Programming Language

A postcard arrived: 'If you're reading this I'm dead, and I really liked you'

What to know about the software selloff

Show HN: Syntux – generative UI for websites, not agents

Microsoft appointed a quality czar. He has no direct reports and no budget

AI overlay that reads anything on your screen (invisible to screen capture)

Show HN: Seafloor, be up and running with OpenClaw in 20 seconds

Tesla turbine-inspired structure generates electricity using compressed air

State Department deleting 17 years of tweets (2009-2025); preservation needed

Learning to code, or building side projects with AI help, this one's for you

Effulgence RPG Engine [video]

Five disciplines discovered the same math independently – none of them knew

We Scanned an AI Assistant for Security Issues: 12,465 Vulnerabilities

Amazon no longer defend cloud customers against video patent infringement claims

Show HN: Medinilla – an OCPP compliant .NET back end (partially done)

How Does AI Distribute the Pie? Large Language Models and the Ultimatum Game

Resistance Infrastructure

Fire-juggling unicyclist caught performing on crossing

Restoring a lost 1981 Unix roguelike (protoHack) and preserving Hack 1.0.3

GPS and Time Dilation – Special and General Relativity

Show HN: Witnessd – Prove human authorship via hardware-bound jitter seals

Show HN: I built a clawdbot that texts like your crush

Scientists reverse Alzheimer's in mice and restore memory (2025)

Compiling Prolog to Forth [pdf]

Show HN: Cymatica – an experimental, meditative audiovisual app

GitBlack: Tracing America's Foundation

Horizon-LM: A RAM-Centric Architecture for LLM Training

We just ordered shawarma and fries from Cursor [video]

Correctio

US Accuses China of Secret Nuclear Testing

Peacock. A New Programming Language

A postcard arrived: 'If you're reading this I'm dead, and I really liked you'

What to know about the software selloff

Show HN: Syntux – generative UI for websites, not agents

Microsoft appointed a quality czar. He has no direct reports and no budget

AI overlay that reads anything on your screen (invisible to screen capture)

Show HN: Seafloor, be up and running with OpenClaw in 20 seconds

Tesla turbine-inspired structure generates electricity using compressed air

State Department deleting 17 years of tweets (2009-2025); preservation needed

Learning to code, or building side projects with AI help, this one's for you

Effulgence RPG Engine [video]

Five disciplines discovered the same math independently – none of them knew

We Scanned an AI Assistant for Security Issues: 12,465 Vulnerabilities

Amazon no longer defend cloud customers against video patent infringement claims

Show HN: Medinilla – an OCPP compliant .NET back end (partially done)

How Does AI Distribute the Pie? Large Language Models and the Ultimatum Game

Resistance Infrastructure

Fire-juggling unicyclist caught performing on crossing

Restoring a lost 1981 Unix roguelike (protoHack) and preserving Hack 1.0.3

GPS and Time Dilation – Special and General Relativity

Show HN: Witnessd – Prove human authorship via hardware-bound jitter seals

Show HN: I built a clawdbot that texts like your crush

Scientists reverse Alzheimer's in mice and restore memory (2025)

Compiling Prolog to Forth [pdf]

Show HN: Cymatica – an experimental, meditative audiovisual app

GitBlack: Tracing America's Foundation

Horizon-LM: A RAM-Centric Architecture for LLM Training

We just ordered shawarma and fries from Cursor [video]

Correctio

An LED panel that shows the aviation around you

Comments