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Hi! I am the guy behind this, awesome to see it posted here. Happy to answer any questions. To answer a question I saw pop up, I am using the FAA aircraft registration data to pull up the extra information about the planes. It lists who actually owns the plane, vs who is operating it. That is why you see so many banks. Places like Flightaware have much better data, but a pricy to look up.
A year ago today I launched something similar, but for Great Lakes boats passing my house on the Detroit River (uses AIS rather than ADS-B, and passively tracks the boat crossing the fixed camera rather than pointing the camera): https://twitter.com/detroitships
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I posted a bit more on what I am using on the About page: http://skybot.cam/about I got all the camera gear on ebay, which was lucky. I figure since it is all based on ADS-B data, there isn't anything too crazy about making it public. I am also still trying to figure out if it is actually useful for anything... besides getting unlimited plane photos!
> I figure since it is all based on ADS-B data, there isn't anything too crazy about making it public. The only non-public information you're making available is the approximate location of your house! It's a very high end approach to planespotting though. People used to just tick off serial numbers in books :D
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Instead you should just feed ADSBExchange, which doesn't require premium business plans or other nonsense. They also do not censor the data and will show you planes that the owners don't want you to see. https://www.adsbexchange.com/
Back when I first discovered flightradar24 it seemed like every plane I was curious about came up on there. The curious ones are mostly military planes as they don't follow standard routes and schedules. Then more and more I noticed stuff not appearing. Later I discovered ADSBExchange and things seemed to be on there. But now, again, I regular hear military planes right over my house with not a thing shown on ADSBExc…
A year ago today I launched something similar, but for Great Lakes boats passing my house on the Detroit River (uses AIS rather than ADS-B, and passively tracks the boat crossing the fixed camera rather than pointing the camera): https://twitter.com/detroitships
Feels like the website-about page: http://skybot.cam/about is a much better link than a tweet.. loaded with details. For example: - Most planes are passing at over 30,000' - It's using a Costar RISE 4260 camera /w built in heater - It leverages SkyScan by IQT labs[0] - It leverages Azure custom vision API[1] [0]: https://github.com/IQTLabs/SkyScan [1]: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
I wonder what the monthly Azure bill is. Also wondering what the stack would look like for a self-hosted version with equivalent or better functionality!
If you add a laser pointer, you effectively built a low cost anti aircraft weapon. Very cool
I am not trying to be negative about what seems like Ana amazing project but I am genuinely curious: why? Is it the cool factor of being able to identify aircraft out of the sky with a camera? Being able to show the photos to someone (who?)? Asserting your rights to capture this data? Why would someone want to do this?
Yeah, pretty much. But for short we just call it “planespotting” in the hobby community ;)