Agree with you. But seems like the limiting factor are the API call limits. Not sure if there’s some movement to be made with one of the new ads sites like adsb.fi etc
For those interested in (yet) another flight tracker app, I wrote Flight Overhead. It has just been published. By default, OpenSky is the provider. An optional OpenSky account can be used to extend the request quota. An AirLabs API Key is required to use AirLabs as the provider. Additional aircraft and route data is supplied by HexDB and ADSB.lol. I have been running it for several weeks to get information about flights in the pattern around O’Hare. I have my Tidbyt set to use OpenSky (authenticated as a free registered user) for the provider.
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Hi all, proud new tidbyt owner. Have spent some time today testing around the available flight tracking apps. Have so far only gotten samsagarino’s app to work.
I live under the flight path for arrivals at SAN. Ideally looking to catch / anticipate flights in the minute(s) before they arrive and as they touch down. Any pointers on where to start? I’m modestly technical but not at the level of many of you.
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Giving an update on my post above. What has worked best for my purpose so far is kylebolstad’s app announced above. I’ve used OpenSky, and I’ve set the address to about 2 miles further up the flight path in order to time things well. My only question (which betrays my lack of technical knowledge) is what the “Provider TTL Seconds” variable means (currently set at 5). This, and looking for ways to filter out helicopters which are often in the 3 mile radius I’ve set. It’s working great for the most part.
@mrnickel001 Glad to know it is working for you!
The Provider TTL Seconds field is used to set the number of seconds to cache the results. This could be helpful when dealing with APIs that have rate limits. Let’s say you have your Tidbyt set to cycle apps every 30 seconds and only have Flight Overhead installed; it would get called 2880 times a day. Some providers may not like that and will block the request if you exceed their self-imposed limit. For example, OpenSky only allows 400 requests a day as an anonymous user. If you register for free, that limit is increased to 4000 times a day. If you didn’t want to register, you would need to set the Provider TTL Seconds to something like 216 (i.e. three and a half minutes) to stay under their daily limit.
In general, the data isn’t particularly reliable at automatically knowing if a flight is a helicopter. I do have a filter that can ignore certain tail registration numbers. In theory, you could use that to ignore helicopters (probably medical flights) that routinely show up on your flight path. I will have to update the app to expose that to the end user, though.