Aircraft/Flight Number Ident

This has been pretty quiet over the past several months but same - near an airport. Would love to see any of the iterations demonstrated here.

I recently got a TidByt and my first try at making an app was to find out the closest plane to me based on latitude and longitude. Iā€™m currently using the Flight Radar API to get data and havenā€™t published it live due to costs of the API if it went public.

The app displays the flight origin, destination, flight number and aircraft type on the right and a graphic of the tail on the left. Hereā€™s my tweet as an example https://twitter.com/eddichen/status/1612190591017799686?s=20&t=QXaGJ3DKkuxy-Fk7zs9NAA

4 Likes

Any chance you might share the code so others can experience it or further develop based on your work?

3 Likes

Tidbyt may be willing to cover costs if it isnā€™t excessive and there is enough desire for an app like this (which Iā€™m assuming there is). Think it would be cool to have. Relooking at this thread, it looks like @rohan had looked into it a long time ago, but not sure if anything actually came of it or the status.

But yeah if the code is at least public, users could get their own api key potentially and run it themselves.

4 Likes

Let us know if this progresses or you opt to share the code. Look at great!

1 Like

Where did you get your airline images from?

Iā€™ve got a similar setup where Iā€™m integrating with home assistant and my Adsb feed + flight radar 24 (all rendered locally).
My design is pretty lousy for now but the good news is the data is getting there so it has potential :slight_smile:

Side note: i have a F24 business plan and they straight up told me they donā€™t even offer an API. So Iā€™m just using the unofficial python API and my login credentials

1 Like

Please do share so others can build on it!

1 Like

Iā€™ve added pull request for my app Flights Nearby New app: Flights Nearby by eddichen Ā· Pull Request #1123 Ā· tidbyt/community Ā· GitHub

3 Likes

Check out 901 Airline logos matched with IATA and ICAO codes for airline tail images

2 Likes

This looks great, I plan to add it to my Tidbyt when itā€™s released.

Just a thought, itā€™d be pretty cool if you displayed what direction you needed to look to see it. Feel free to leverage the ā€œVisible Planetsā€ code on getting a bearing :slight_smile:

1 Like

I started messing around a few weeks agoā€¦ and this is where Iā€™m at. Still a few bugs to workout - but this version utilizes the FlightAware API; and in my current version allows me to either give it a tail number to specifically track or an ICAO code to show me the latest departure.

The manual input of a tail number is a little bit of a pain and I donā€™t imagine myself utilizing it too heavily if every time I need to login and input it manuallyā€¦ I wish an app such as Flighty had an API that I could pull what the flight Iā€™m currently tracking there is and display that.

Top bar changes colors based upon scheduled / enroute / onetime / delayed / cancelled / etc. and while enroute will function as a progress bar of the completion of the flight thus far.

5 Likes

Screenshot_20230314-222017
Looking good! Am I inputting something wrong or shouldnā€™t the middle lines be reading status/aircraft type etc? Donā€™t have that prob when looking at arrivals or departures

looks very cool!
Iā€™m looking to set it up and before doing this, I just to confirm that this would need the AeroAPI key?
it does look like you get a decent 5$ allowance from FlightAware before they start charging you, that is 1000 free requests.
I was wondering if anyone set it up already and if can share the request rate of the app. Iā€™m looking to calculate the cost Iā€™m looking to foot for setting up the tracker in the Tidbyt, and Iā€™m trying to plan the app so I would try not to breach the free allowance if possible. My rough calculation is that you could do about 2 requests per hour if you have it running a continuous 12-hour period.

I was able to install this on my new Tidbyt. Managed to figure out how to pull an API key through RapidAPI. Not sure if the one I copied is just for my use or someone elseā€™s. Leaving the API field empty yielded no results.

Iā€™m in Southern California and noticed the more popular airlines here Alaska and Southwest, donā€™t have a tail associated with them. :slight_smile: Any way we can help add more?

I used @eddichenā€™s app as a jump off point and have been updating it with tail logos for airlines that fly into my local airport (WN, LH, AC, F9, XE, AS, SY, NK, FX, 5X, XP). I also tweaked the options sent to the API so that it doesnā€™t pull in helicopters or smaller aircraft.

The available options in RapidAPI for the list-in-boundary function are: altitude, speed, airline, type, airport and reg. Might be worth adding some of these as an option for users to choose. Not sure how the airline/type/airport fields are supposed to work. I assume comma separated values.

image
image
image

Iā€™m currently running this in a container with a script that generates the webp every 180 seconds, and then using ā€˜pixlet push --installation-idā€™ to put locally on my Tidbyt.

The API key Iā€™m using from RapidAPI has a 500 monthly hard limit, and Iā€™ve already used over 300 callsā€¦

1 Like

Iā€™ll probably sign up for the $10 RapidAPI FlightRadar plan which includes 10,000 calls. Since I donā€™t want to go over, I implemented some Home Assistant automations that can control a systemd service I created on the container running pixlet. This is done by issuing a ā€˜systemctl start/stopā€™ command over SSH with the command_line switch integration of HA. (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/switch.command_line/)

When my Hue Office Sensor detects Occupancy, the service is turned on. It only happens between 6 AM and 10 PM, since those are the operating hours of my home airport. When the sensor doesnā€™t detect a presence for more than 30 minutes, the service on the container is stopped.

The service basically runs my script that updates the local app every 3 minutes, and on stop it issues a curl DELETE command to remove it from the Tidbyt rotation.

Now if we had proper Home Assistant integration, this would be a lot easier :slight_smile:

1 Like

@motoridersd, could you please share your updates?

Iā€™m missing why you are generating the webp and pushing it every 180 seconds.

Iā€™m doing what the app is supposed to do when it runs on Tidbyts servers, but Iā€™m running it on my own server.

The original app will query a flight tracking API and determine what aircraft is nearby, it does it every 180 seconds. The script generates a webp image that is then sent to the Tidbyt, so you have to push the updated image with the new info to it at the same interval.

I submitted some tail logo updates to the Github, and also realized someone else made a lot of cool work to make the app work with other providers on top of FlightRadar/RapidAPI. It has support for OpenSky (free), Flightaware and an ADS-B URL. Their pull request is here: https://github.com/eddichen/community/pull/1

They also made some changes that will display the logo/outline of smaller craft, so if you happen to have a non-commercial plane or a helicopter above, you get a cool little icon and a bit more information so that the screen isnā€™t empty.

image

I merged my updated tail logos into their app and Iā€™m now running that version. An update I need to submit is to add an option to limit by speed and/or altitude, Iā€™m hardcoding this at the moment.

The changes made by the other person were submitted a week ago, and a pull request was also generated, but the changes have not been accepted. Not sure how long it takes Tidbyt to accept these things, but this is another reason why I run things locally for now.

1 Like

Thanks for the info. I hope @eddichen merges the PRs soon. I have it working with my local ADS-B feed using Chrisā€™ PR.

When I install the app with the API it only runs once and I canā€™t access any of the configuration setting. I am still new to developing on the Tidbyt, is this intended? I could delete and reinstall the app like you are doing, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose.

What about info for flights you are scheduled to take? It would be nice to see if itā€™s on time, gate and terminal info, even things like how long the airport says it takes to get through security at a given time.

1 Like