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My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

jacobbartlett.substack.com

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Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#141

Post by tuskastus »

xrd wrote: post #122

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. (He did say: "that day was totally boring, we didn't do anything!", but I know it was the greatest day of his life, and I can point out all those thing…

My kids have been to a lot of places, and have been questioned about the logic of taking a 4-year old to Machu Picchu or wherever as they won't remember it.

I've said that it doesn't matter if they remember it. It's much more important that they experience it.

You can only experience Rome as a four-year old when you are four years old, there is no chance of getting that experience ever again their lives. They can experience Rome again, and again as an adult if they want, but being 4, 8, 12 or teenager at new place is not something that anyone has a chance of ever repeating.

They remember somethings, forget others, but come away with an interest in people, places, environments, etc.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#142

Post by bcrosby95 »

xrd wrote: post #122

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. (He did say: "that day was totally boring, we didn't do anything!", but I know it was the greatest day of his life, and I can point out all those thing…

Our 8 year old doesn't remember life before her siblings. She was 3 when they were born. To her it's like they were always here. She doesn't even remember her 4th or 5th birthday parties. But starting around 5.5 years old she remembers a lot more.

Our niece supposedly remembers life before our oldest. She was 3 when she was born. I think a big difference though is she had the continual disappointment from then on of not being the only grandchild.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#144

Post by magicmicah85 »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #136
magicmicah85 wrote: post #119

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. Edit: fair point on what a radar is, today I re-remembered :)

Disregarding the other replies for a moment where they rightfully call out that it wouldn't be radar, wouldn't they still need a publicly available API for this data if they wanted to access it outside of their house (e.g., when at the park)? So at that point, why add the additional complexity if there's already someone sharing ADS-B data to OpenSky for your area?

Why add the complexity? Cause you can. You can also submit the data to contribute while at the same time receiving and displaying it in their webpage.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#145

Post by ghewgill »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #71
MaximilianEmel wrote: post #16

I didn't know they still let children into the cockpit anymore!

I believe they still do after and possibly before the flight. They used to do it during the flight!

I've done that! It was on what I think was my first commercial flight, a 767 from probably YVR to LAX sometime in the early 80s. My grandfather was the king of getting kids into fun places, he would go talk up the crew (of the plane, ferry, train, whatever), then come back and fetch whichever grandkids he had.

Sadly those days are long gone now.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#146

Post by harshreality »

Now you get to explain to her in a few years how different ADS-B-based web data (or locally received ADS-B, even) is from genuine RAdio-Detection-And-Ranging (either the old school rotating type or modern fancy PESA/AESA ones).

And she'll forever remind you how your app [name] is a lie.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#147

Post by ridgeguy »

tgtweak wrote: post #123

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 - especi…

And if you're in the D.C. area, Gravely Point is the place for this. Feels like you can count the rivets for planes on either departure or landing.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#148

Post by idatum »

MandieD wrote: post #118
idatum wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll finally get motivated and share :)

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.

I just realized I have the transform of the dump1090-fa data to MQTT message already written up: https://github.com/idatum/adsb2mqtt What's missing is the client that enhances flight info and uses TTS to play the generated wave. I also wanted to play around with Home Assistant's TTS. I'll get motivated to write this up more fully, blog style.

Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar

#149

Post by [deleted] »

blt wrote: post #116
ghewgill wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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!

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