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An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

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Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

#41

Post by firesteelrain »

boguscoder wrote: post #15

Perhaps I didn’t read it thoroughly enough but it seems that lat/long of the “radar” are expected to be entered by user, I think using wifi positioning could be of great assist and could be done from mcu itself without involving web portal, though maybe portal already does it (didn’t get to see it)

Could use https://ipgeolocation.io to provide it however still requires configuring an API key like if the little airplane “radar” had a backend it could reach. For WiFi configuration, could use something like comitup [1]. Put together that would eliminate the need to login to the device.

1. http://davesteele.github.io/comitup/

Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

#42

Post by mlrtime »

ustad wrote: post #19

“Finally, the firmware now supports authenticated OTA updates, so future builds can be installed through the browser instead of connecting the board over USB.” What does that mean?

I have about 30-40 esp32 / esphome type devices running. Typically to flash or update a device, you would plug it into your usb port.

esphome can also be flashed "OTA" which just means compiling your project locally, then pushing the binary over tcp/ip and giving an instruction to install it.

With https://github.com/esphome/device-builder you can run a network of multiple esphome builders so you can update many devices at the same time "OTA" (TCP/IP).

Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

#44

Post by fsniper »

nunodonato wrote: post #35
holoduke wrote: post #32

These kind of project are now so easy. A few prompts and you have something like this. I did it with quite a few similar like projects. You can buy super cheap esps with integrated lcds for less than 20 dollars.

yeah, I've been dying to do something with ESP32, but still waiting for that idea. Something with eInk displays :D

I did vibe coded one, where It downloads images from my (currently defunct) immich server album, dithers them for 4 color inky display, downloads the weather data and display them. It's a fun little one. I wish the inky only had a "faster than 30secs full refresh" partial update capability.

Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

#46

Post by windexh8er »

dlcarrier wrote: post #22
sephamorr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would actually expect the math to decode ads-b traffic is substantially less complex than, for example, a TLS connection.

TLS is supported in hardware, so it takes no more processing power than moving the data around without encryption. In the US, ADS-B in uses 1.3 MHz of bandwidth, which would require 2.6 Msps. The ESP32-C3 running at 160 Mhz would have ~70 instructions per sample to process the data. That's probably doable, but the ESP32-C3 is one of the less capable variations of the line, and there are dual-core versions running at…

Except on small memory / processing devices (like ESP32) it's not actually that simple. Processing ADS-B on an ESP32 would, likely, be easier.

Part of the reason I've come to understand how finicky TLS is on ESP32 is because there have been a ton of TLS issues with these devices in Home Assistant [0]. The linked issue just being one of them that's still not fully resolved.

[0] https://github.com/esphome/home-assistant-voice-pe/issues/31...

Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk

#50

Post by scarecrowbob »

I live a couple of miles from an airport that houses a fire-fighting air tanker base, and I am somewhat terrified of fires- 120K Acres has burned in my area of the state so far this year.

I've also been a ham radio enjoyer and had been looking for projects that work with radio. So I built a little antenna that works with ~1Mhz and hooked it to a raspberryPi running dump1090... it's amazing how far I can receive. 50-ish miles across a bunch of 12k-14k mountains.

However, I've switched to just using one of the ADSB sites because they have a lot more tracking info.

It's been super interesting to watch the tankers take off. Mostly c130 and md80, but there have been a pair of canadair float planes... quite a menagerie of aircraft.

Anyhow, the adsb stuff gets really interesting once you identify the spotting planes, as it's a little faster at identifying where agencies are looking at fires than WatchDuty (which also works very well).

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