Shovan Mondal's Tiny Model Plane Tries to Take Off When It Detects Air Traffic Overhead
A location set from a phone's GPS and a link to the OpenSky Network allow this Espressif ESP32-based model to detect flights overhead.
Information science engineering student Shovan Mondal has built a plane-spotting desk accessory with a difference: it's a little model aircraft that spins its propeller when it detects one of its friends in the skies above.
"SkySpotter is a miniature, beautifully handmade vintage aircraft model [which] hides a secret: every time a real aircraft flies overhead, its propeller starts spinning," Mondal explains of the ornament. "The heart of this project relies heavily on GPS mapping and geo-fencing. The miniature plane connects to your home Wi-Fi and hosts its own custom web dashboard. Using your smartphone's built-in GPS, it pings your exact geographical coordinates (Latitude and Longitude) and allows you to set a custom detection radius."
The plane — which, as much as it might like to, sadly cannot fly — is driven by a Lolin Wemos D1 Mini, a low-cost microcontroller development board built around the Espressif ESP32 wireless chip. An upcycled haptic vibration motor, salvaged from an old phone, serves to make the propeller spin on demand — or, rather, upon detection of real aircraft in the skies above.
When connected to the user's Wi-Fi network, the plane hosts a page which can retrieve GPS coordinates from a smartphone in order to center a bounding box above. This then forms the basis of queries to the OpenSky Network application programming interface (API), which provides access to aircraft positioning data based on ADS-B, Mode-S, ADS-C, FLARM, and VHF traffic — without the need to have a radio receiver of your own. When a plan enters the bounding box, the model responds by spinning its propeller — seemingly in an effort to take flight and join its brethren in the skies.
"Building the vintage frame entirely from scratch and wiring up the custom circuitry takes a good bit of effort," Mondal says of the project. "But honestly, that is exactly what makes this project so incredibly valuable! Despite keeping the overall hardware costs remarkably low, the final result feels like a premium, personalized, and highly functional piece of art."
Full documentation, including source code and instructions on building the plan from balsa wood or thick cardstock, is available on Instructables.