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I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

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Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#171
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing a vision only approach would be really cool. A lot of the interesting planes do not have their ADS-B transponder on. The two systems could actually work well together. My system ends up generating a really nice, labeled dataset. I put some initial scripts / notebooks together for building ML models that can classify the different types of aircraft. https://github.com/IQTLabs/SkyScan/tree/main/ml-model/script...

Since 2020-01-01, ADS-B is a requirement in a lot of US airspace (FAR 91.225). Turning it off is allowed for govt / intelligence / law enforcement / military only. Many countries have similar requirements. People often think an aircraft is flying with transponder off because it doesn't appear on FR24/FlightAware. In fact these companies allow blocking aircraft from their service; this is why ADS-B Exchange is better.

If turning ADSB off is only allowed for government / military / intelligence airplanes, would using a CV algorithm to capture these airplanes be against the law?

Recently there was a post of Google satellite cameras capturing a B-2 Stealth Bomber showing up on Google Maps [1]. Would such planes be captured by a vision system only, and would that be of concern to the government that might be trying to keep it undetected?

1: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001%2718.5%22N+93%C...

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#172
post #54
post #22

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...

Unfortunately no HTTPS on the website

http://n-gate.com/software/2017/

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#173
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a website who's only purpose is delivering blurry pictures need HTTPS?

Preventing ISPs and other bad actors from using it to deliver ads/malware?

Now thats a user problem, if the users ISP is shit. There was internet before Lets Encrypt you know?

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#174
post #68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately no HTTPS on the website

Why would a website who's only purpose is delivering blurry pictures need HTTPS?

To securely deliver the intended content.

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://n-gate.com/software/2017/

I'm not sure if this is a joke/meme but that is also insecure.

It neither a joke nor a meme, its a reality check for unnecessary https.

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#177
post #126

Wow there is a plane roughly every 2-3 minutes even at 1 am. You should be living pretty close to the airport for that kind of traffic? I really don't know how about the traffic density is in various places. Since they are mostly over 30k i assume noise is not an issue ? Would it be possible to mount a omnidirectional mic along with the camera to see if you capture any sounds ?

> Wow there is a plane roughly every 2-3 minutes even at 1 am.

US cities and surrounding areas have turned into air traffic hell.

Loud, low-frequency noise is particularly awful and is basically inescapable 24/7.

NextGen seems to have made things much worse since 2015 or so.

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#178

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.

Do some airlines not provide details, or is that some other issue? I'm seeing a flight 3C7601 that shows -1 passengers and -1 engines. Same for 4007f3 from British airways and 394a06 from air France. A8060C seems to have something in the way, it's just gray with a black stripe

Re: I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly over my house

#180
post #67

About 5 years ago I started trying to build this exact thing. I wrote some code, printed some gears and attached them to servos, assembled some hall effect sensors onto the whole thing, and then stopped. I had a camera that I could command to an azimuth and an elevation. I think it was a PlayStation3 pseye camera. It certainly would not have been able to zoom in to the point that this one seems to be able to. I was g…

>printed some gears. Would it be easier to get an astronomy mount and control it programmatically?

Easiest today would be to use the project this project uses. I don't think it existed at the time I was trying, though. And, yes, that would be easier, but not in the vein of "doing it myself" that I was aiming for. :D
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