One of the only things I really use Siri for is asking “what planes are over-head?” John Graham-Cunning created this super nifty desktop display to always feed flight data. Not content with just an io screen they added lights, a moving model plane for bearing!
This uses a Raspberry Pi Model 3, PiTFT 3.5″ touch screen (which is kind of wasted because I don’t use the touch functionality), a 24 LED NeoPixel ring, 28BYJ-48 stepper motor, and the ULN2003 driver, and a small model aircraft. It’s all contained in an acrylic pot that I got from Muji.
The screen shows flight information and model aircraft and LED show the current direction the aircraft is flying (the track) and where to look for the aircraft. The first time the device is started the direction of north needs to be calibrated by holding down the blue button on the back until the LED points to north, releasing the blue button and then holding it down once again until the model aircraft points in the same direction. Once done the code keeps track of the calibrated position in planes_position.py so that unless the device is moved to a different location no further calibration is needed.
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