A Flight Tracker for Your Wall
AxisNimble's TheFlightWall is an open source LED wall that uses an ESP32 to show real-time info about planes flying by.
When it comes to real estate, they say that location is everything. If that’s true, then living close to an airport is something you generally want to avoid. Between the constant roar of jet engines taking off and landing and the window-rattling vibrations they cause, airplanes zipping by your home won’t give you a lot of peace and quiet.
But sometimes, especially in large cities, avoiding the noise associated with a nearby airport is almost impossible. So if you find yourself in that situation, you may as well make the best of it. That’s what AxisNimble has done with the development of TheFlightWall. It is an LED wall that shows live information about the flights going by your window. You might as well at least know who is bugging you, right?
TheFlightWall is an open source device made from a set of 20 16x16-pixel LED panels. 3D-printed brackets and a wooden frame hold the panels together to make a single display. An ESP32 development board is used to collect information on local flights and display it on the LED wall.
Both the FlightAware AeroAPI and OpenSky are leveraged to supply flight information. The ESP32 then parses that data and displays the airline’s logo, as well as the flight number and destination on TheFlightWall.
The firmware, circuit design, and 3D design files are all freely available on GitHub. If you would like to save some time, you can also buy a pre-built device for $449. If that’s a little bit more than you’d like to spend, there is also a smaller, desktop-sized version of TheFlightWall that is selling for $165.