u/SuperSort

My house sits right under one of the approach paths into Delhi, so all day I see flights coming in low, passing almost exactly over my head. I’d always wondered what they were, where they were coming from, where they were headed. Flightradar scratched that itch for a while, but having to pull out my phone and open an app every single time got old fast.

So I built my own thing.

It’s an ESP32 with a 0.96 inch display. The ESP32 knows my lat/long, polls a few APIs to pull live flight data, and shows whatever is flying nearby right on the screen. No app, no phone, just a little device sitting there that always knows what’s overhead. The response is surprisingly accurate, it lines up well with what I actually see in the sky.

Total cost came to under ₹800, which honestly still surprises me.

Next on the list is swapping in a bigger screen so I can fit more detail per flight (altitude, route, maybe a tiny map).

Happy to do a full walkthrough of how I put it together if people are interested. Let me know.

Edit 1 --

https://github.com/pranshuagrawal/esp32-flight-tracker
I have made the source code live here with a very detailed readme.md

Edit 2 --
Few Updates

• When there is not flights the display converts to a clock with date.
• It now announces the incoming flight on my mac. Mac is a running a small python script which listens and esp32 sends a command with a statement to be announced.
• Added a button to toggle this announcement.
• Led indicator and 1s active buzzer which turns on whenever there is a flight in the defined radius.