It's a very cool app. It would be great to tap on a plane and see its source and destination airports. My kids always ask where I think a plane is going and it would be great to have a way to easily tell them!
My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
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Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#242This is cool in concept, but FlightRadar24 has a built-in Augmented Reality feature that works really well. https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/show-us-your-best-augment... Also, if I were to build my own local copy, I'd use an RTLSDR to get the ADSB packets direct and base my app on tar1090. https://github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090
what children truly want, need, and enjoy, is interaction with adults, and the less augmented the reality of the human contact, the real-er it is. build something that doesn't work so well with them, rather than off the shelf something perfect.
I'm not suggesting that you give the kid a phone and leave them unattended. But you, as the parent, could totally hold your phone up in AR mode so you both can see what the plane is, and where it's going. Maybe make it a little game. Guess where it's coming from, where it's going to, what kind of plane - then see the answers.
If I build and give the kid a display so they can simply stare at it all day without any human interaction... how is that better than the AR on parents phone? It's not, it's worse. (Note, I'm not saying that's what the author actually did, just proposing an option)
The technology here is not the problem. Be in AR or CRT. The problem is how we use it and how we teach our kids to use it.
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#243This is cool in concept, but FlightRadar24 has a built-in Augmented Reality feature that works really well. https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/show-us-your-best-augment... Also, if I were to build my own local copy, I'd use an RTLSDR to get the ADSB packets direct and base my app on tar1090. https://github.com/wiedehopf/tar1090
That's the first thing I thought about too, I use it all the time to confirm my A380 spottings.
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#244Related "An app can be a home cooked meal" on cloning the defunct social network app Tapstack for just his family's usage https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
That's a lovely article, bookmarked! Agree, I'd have been happy with zero downloads because the process was rewarding itself. Going viral also not bad though.
for sure! Congrats on your big W!
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#245So 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…
Even if my kids forget them all, I won't. The first time we traveled internationally with our kids (a 5-year-old and nearly-2-year-old twins), my wife and I assumed the kids wouldn't really care, but we'd go anyway because we didn't want to give up international travel for a few decades just because we have kids. They absolutely loved it. Now the 5-year-old is 15, they've been joined by a couple more siblings, and (C…
That's a great way of looking at it, and touches on why I have the most fond memories of the most difficult of trips with the family. The challenges unite to find a shared purpose and a shared identity that persists long after the trip is over.
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fly-in communities are actually pretty common as far as aviation stuff goes. There are probably several hundred in the US.
While that sounds like a great concept I'd be worried about the constant lawnmower tier noise that GA planes make over my home.
Then you probably shouldn't buy a house where the biggest selling point is that it's directly connected to a runway.
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#247That is so cool. Kudos for a great use of tech!
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like your comment — it points out that our RADAR displays were a both a product of the technology that was used to generate them (the sweep) but also that it was a deliberate way to make clear what it was you were observing (target distance was represented by distance from center, target bearing by angle around the circle). To your point though, perhaps emulating the sweep was the questionable design decision — the…
Now I have a funny vision in my head of a WWII radio tech standing in a field, wearing an absurdly large RADAR rig, with a big sweeping antenna protruding from a backpack and a massive screen on his chest, turning this way and that, all confused by how the sweep doesn't look quite right...
That'd be a fun Halloween costume. "I'm a functional radar."
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like your comment — it points out that our RADAR displays were a both a product of the technology that was used to generate them (the sweep) but also that it was a deliberate way to make clear what it was you were observing (target distance was represented by distance from center, target bearing by angle around the circle). To your point though, perhaps emulating the sweep was the questionable design decision — the…
Now I have a funny vision in my head of a WWII radio tech standing in a field, wearing an absurdly large RADAR rig, with a big sweeping antenna protruding from a backpack and a massive screen on his chest, turning this way and that, all confused by how the sweep doesn't look quite right...
That's not too far off, actually. Airborne radar as recently as the F-14 needed time to "settle down" an extrapolated track after maneuvering, to the point that they could give false indications of targets changing heading. This phantom turn looked aggressive and contributed to the US downing 2 Libyan fighter jets in 1989.
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyMfC3M0fZQ?t=12m32s
Re: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
#250Love the design, but super uncomfortable with giving phones to toddlers as toys. For mine, the longer I can put it off the better. There are enough infants bumbling around the world already glued to screens, in imitation of their zombie parents (this is a general observation, not levelled at OP). For the inevitable “but kids need to learn how to use phones as tools” - tools for what? They are designed to consume you…
Very reasonable point to be fair, and I agree with you. I certainly would not be comfortable building something for a kid to stare at that had no relation to the real world
Arguably most apps have a relation to the real world - chat and live video sharing, etc.