Wow so cool! I had daydreamed about doing something similar with e-ink display on my wall so I could see details about whatever plane I'm hearing.. but this blows that out of the water.
I bought several 3b+ Raspberries a really long time ago and this seems like the perfect simple&breathtaking project for such ancient hardware. Who needs a fourth PiHole on their local network?!
"Fortunately" I live directly beneath CHA's main landingstrip, so lots of regular data available. Fortunately, I am not in the main takeoff path because that would be much worse.
ryandrake•Jun 3, 2026
I've got a Raspberry Pi 2b I've been using for probably close to a decade, with two SDRs hanging off it, pulling aircraft ADS-B locations and VHF radio transmissions out of the sky. It's a great application for this platform. ADS-B scanner averages about 25% CPU and the VHF airband receiver averages about 17% (uses hardware FFT).
thenthenthen•Jun 3, 2026
Such a fan of the lower power, fanless, larger/‘regular’ connectors old school rapi’s.
eben-vranken•Jun 3, 2026
This is so awesome
bronlund•Jun 3, 2026
That is cool!
frereubu•Jun 3, 2026
(To be clear, the "I" in the title is not me, the submitter - it's the title of the Reddit post).
waltbosz•Jun 3, 2026
The repo subtitle is `Project the aircraft passing overhead onto your ceiling, in real time — an X-ray through the roof.`
The demo video starts outside pointing at a cloudy sky with an airplane passing overhead. My mind, seeded with the word "x-ray", thought the outside shot was the video projection on his ceiling. I thought his rain gutters were crown molding, and when the camera man runs inside, I thought he was running outside to show the real life airplane.
The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.
notpushkin•Jun 3, 2026
> The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.
Something like Sega Toys Homestar?
culopatin•Jun 3, 2026
I thought the same exact thing and I thought that I would love a sky projection on my ceiling
jasondigitized•Jun 3, 2026
Thought the same thing. Would be super cool to project the night sky with procedurally generated cellestial objects, planes, spaceships, etc.
evan_•Jun 3, 2026
I thought the same thing! The plane being so low made it seem like an exaggerated computer-generated plane.
rootusrootus•Jun 3, 2026
Not too many things make my jaw literally drop, but this did. This is magnificent!
thenthenthen•Jun 3, 2026
Oof that looks like a loud place to live :O Happy to see it inspiring a project tho take care
gruntled-worker•Jun 3, 2026
I expect to have trouble falling asleep just vicariously relating to the noise level there. Awesome project though.
DoneWithAllThat•Jun 3, 2026
Random aside: there’s a restaurant in San Diego on the SAN flight path with a split flap display over the bar. Every time a flight passes over it updates to show flight number and departure airport. It’s quite neat.
14 Comments
I have used this on my tidbyt (now a Tronbyt) for years for this purpose... simple solution tied into my adsb system
or the repo https://github.com/cpaczek/skylight
"Fortunately" I live directly beneath CHA's main landingstrip, so lots of regular data available. Fortunately, I am not in the main takeoff path because that would be much worse.
The demo video starts outside pointing at a cloudy sky with an airplane passing overhead. My mind, seeded with the word "x-ray", thought the outside shot was the video projection on his ceiling. I thought his rain gutters were crown molding, and when the camera man runs inside, I thought he was running outside to show the real life airplane.
The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.
Something like Sega Toys Homestar?