[HN Gopher] I built a system that takes pictures of all the airp...
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I built a system that takes pictures of all the airplanes that fly
over my house
 
Author : tosh
Score  : 125 points
Date   : 2022-01-22 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
 
web link (twitter.com)
w3m dump (twitter.com)
 
| 15characterslon wrote:
| How much does it cost to run this on Azure?
 
| dt3ft wrote:
| This is very cool, great idea and execution! :)
 
| chopsuei3 wrote:
| Very slick! Were you using PiAware or listening to ADSB prior to
| this project?
| 
| I remember starting a similar project years ago when I got my
| first RTL-SDR adapter - didn't get too far, but probably cheaper
| than this setup
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160228105159/http://simonaubur...
 
| robotastic wrote:
| Hi! I am the guy behind this, awesome to see it posted here.
| Happy to answer any questions.
| 
| To answer a question I saw pop up, I am using the FAA aircraft
| registration data to pull up the extra information about the
| planes. It lists who actually owns the plane, vs who is operating
| it. That is why you see so many banks. Places like Flightaware
| have much better data, but a pricy to look up.
 
  | busheezy wrote:
  | If you set up an ADB, Flight Aware will give you an Enterprise
  | account. FlightRadar24 also will give you a Business account.
  | There is a docker image out there that will let you pump data
  | to both services.
 
  | csours wrote:
  | Awesome! I live north of Austin-Bergstrom and I quite often see
  | planes on final approach. I've thought about doing this, and
  | also trying to find a physical site for a telescope or
  | telescopes to watch take-offs and landings.
 
  | ytjohn wrote:
  | This is absolutely incredible. I have been wanting to do this
  | as well, but I was going to approach it from the computer
  | vision approach (blueiris and deepstack ai). Or a dedicated
  | camera and pythoncv. I never even thought of having cameras
  | move to match flightaware data.
  | 
  | A number of planes fly low and when I check flightaware,
  | they're not on it. Or there's a plane that could be it, but
  | it's flight path is heading East to West 30 miles North of me,
  | while this plane came from the South heading North. Also,
  | pretty much once a month or so, a pair of A10 Warthogs fly over
  | or near our house. Last month, we had a real treat with 4 of
  | them directly over the house, better than an air show.
  | 
  | So I'd like to setup 4 cameras on my tower focused skyward and
  | have them try to catch clips of planes. I'll be looking at your
  | work to see if I can also match those with flightaware.
 
| cmurf wrote:
| Anyone know what these bank trustee planes are all about?
 
  | dismalpedigree wrote:
  | I was wondering the same thing
 
  | ct0 wrote:
  | https://www.bankofutah.com/corporate-trust/trust/aircraft-ow...
 
  | 8bitben wrote:
  | Many airlines have arrangements where banks purchase the planes
  | outright then lease them back in a long-term deal. Helps with
  | airlines finances.
 
    | alkonaut wrote:
    | Isn't the operator of a flight what shows up in e.g.
    | Flightradar and also what you'd typically be most interested
    | in, rather than the owner of the aircraft?
 
| [deleted]
 
| yeldarb wrote:
| Any interest in sharing the plane dataset you used to train Azure
| Custom Vision with others? Happy to host it on Roboflow Universe
| along with an API to a trained model others can hit to detect
| planes in images.
| 
| We've got one detecting planes on the ground but not yet in the
| air! https://universe.roboflow.com/gdit/aerial-airport
 
  | phkahler wrote:
  | Did they ever indicate using a model like that? Just plug in an
  | ADS-B receiver and they'll broadcast their tail number and
  | location to you. Everything else can be looked up.
 
| tomcat27 wrote:
| so coooool :)
 
| 0x0000000 wrote:
| This is really neat. I've thought about doing something similar,
| but feared that this is enough information to deduce where one
| lives. Kudos to the author for not only making this, but also
| publishing it
 
  | ryandrake wrote:
  | You're not wrong. In 2017, 4chan trolls (in)famously deduced
  | the location of (and defaced) Shia Labeouf's "HWNDU" flag
  | art/protest project in 37 hours [1] from only a webcam pointed
  | at the sky. Never underestimate the capabilities of bored
  | people on the Internet with an ax to grind.
  | 
  | 1: https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-
  | first-...
 
    | solarkraft wrote:
    | Arguably more entertaining telling of the story by the
    | Internet Historian: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vw9zyxm860Q
 
| gnabgib wrote:
| Feels like the website-about page: http://skybot.cam/about is a
| much better link than a tweet.. loaded with details. For example:
| - Most planes are passing at over 30,000'       - It's using a
| Costar RISE 4260 camera /w built in heater       - It leverages
| SkyScan by IQT labs[0]       - It leverages Azure custom vision
| API[1]
| 
| [0]: https://github.com/IQTLabs/SkyScan [1]:
| https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
 
  | metadat wrote:
  | I wonder what the monthly Azure bill is.
  | 
  | Also wondering what the stack would look like for a self-hosted
  | version with equivalent or better functionality!
 
| mro_name wrote:
| It's a hell lot of them. Is this typical?
 
  | Jabbles wrote:
  | I think someone who doesn't have many planes flying overhead is
  | less likely to build such a system.
 
  | version_five wrote:
  | From my experience you are either under a flight lane and a lot
  | of planes fly over, or none do. There may be some places
  | further north where they are more spread out, but for example I
  | used to live just south of the approach to one of the runways
  | at my city's airport (maybe 10 miles away so the planes were
  | not super low but were already lined up with the runway) and we
  | saw a constant stream of them go by. I really enjoyed it to,
  | there were lots i could identify readily and sometimes an
  | obscure one that I'd jump on flightaware to see what it was. I
  | think this is a cool project and wish I had something similar.
  | 
  | Edit: related, I regularly commuted by plane between two
  | cities, and my parents live out in the country part way between
  | the two. I could regularly see their house out the window of my
  | plane, because by chance one of the flight lanes was just north
  | of them. So they would have have a lot of traffic going
  | overhead, despite being nowhere near an airport. They also have
  | less frequent planes go by on great circle routes to europe,
  | which is probably what you're imagining thinking about seeing
  | planes infrequently.
 
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| About 5 years ago I started trying to build this exact thing. I
| wrote some code, printed some gears and attached them to servos,
| assembled some hall effect sensors onto the whole thing, and then
| stopped. I had a camera that I could command to an azimuth and an
| elevation. I think it was a PlayStation3 pseye camera. It
| certainly would not have been able to zoom in to the point that
| this one seems to be able to. I was going to use my RTL SDR to
| listen to the ADSB and mount the whole thing on my roof under a
| clear plastic dome.
 
| [deleted]
 
| neonate wrote:
| Link to the site: http://skybot.cam/
 
| [deleted]
 
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(page generated 2022-01-22 23:00 UTC)