See Right Through Your Roof with This Airplane Tracker

Living close to an airport is not normally considered to be a good thing. You have to deal with the noise and vibration caused by low-flying jets zipping by your home at all hours of the day and night. But after seeing Cameron Paczek’s latest project, you might want to pack your bags and move right next to the nearest airport. Makers have created some really cool airplane trackers over the years, but Paczek has one-upped them all in a huge way with a system he calls Skylight.

Most plane trackers use a small screen to show nearby air traffic. But Skylight uses your entire ceiling as the display. By projecting the information overhead, the system allows you to see exactly where every plane is in the sky in real time. Paczek says his creation is like an X-ray through the roof, and the demonstration video backs that up. He recorded a low-flying plane passing over his house, then went inside to show that it was represented in the exact same position on the ceiling in his home.

The illusion is made possible by combining an upward-facing projector with live aircraft data captured from an inexpensive RTL-SDR software-defined radio receiver. Skylight decodes ADS-B broadcasts transmitted by nearby aircraft and converts them into smooth, animated graphics that glide across the ceiling at 60 frames per second. Instead of simple dots on a map, the system renders different aircraft types with their own custom icons. Widebody jets appear much larger than regional aircraft, helicopters display spinning rotor animations, and turboprops show rotating propellers.

No detail was left out of this project. Aircraft leave glowing comet-like trails behind them, while altitude changes are represented with color gradients. Runways from nearby airports are drawn in their correct physical positions, allowing viewers to watch arrivals and departures line up realistically as they approach the field. Each flight can also display its destination city, remaining distance, and the local time at the destination.

Alongside aircraft, the system projects the current positions of the sun, moon, bright stars, constellations, and satellites such as the International Space Station. Everything is calculated for the user’s exact location and current time, making the ceiling projection function as both an aircraft tracker and a live planetarium.

Paczek’s build uses a Raspberry Pi 5, an RTL-SDR Blog V4 receiver, and a 1080p projector pointed upward from the floor. While his setup uses a premium laser projector for deeper blacks, he notes that inexpensive LED projectors work perfectly well in dark rooms because the visuals are mostly sparse graphics on a black background.

Although the original installation focuses on San Francisco International Airport, users can configure the software for virtually any location by entering their own coordinates and airport runway data. The project can also run entirely without radio hardware by pulling aircraft data from a free online API.

If you are interested in this project, you can sign up for update notifications. Paczek is ultimately planning to start a crowdfunding campaign for Skylight.