As someone not even REMOTELY skilled with building things with my hands, boy, I miss the days when you could just BUY neat stuff like this off the shelf instead of having every piece of consumer electronics be a noisy, branded, attention grabbing wiretap/distraction machine scheduled for obsolescence before the first unit ships.
I hate the future.
It’s never too late to learn. It’s a skill, not an inherent talent or ability; it can be developed from any starting point. ☺️
Oh, I don’t doubt it.
But I work more than full time and lack funds. It’s not impossible - it’s impractical.
I’ve always wanted something like this but when I spec out the parts, I can’t ever justify the cost.
I will say, I once saw a Reddit post about a flight tracker that used a Raspberry Pi, an LED array, and a 3D printed case. I’ve always been an airline nerd, and this thing will tell me what planes are flying near me. Is it dumb? Yup. Did the costs add up? Sure did! Does it bring me joy to see that the daily flight from Tokyo is the one making noise over my house, or that one particular flight that’s neither to nor from my home airport passes over my neighborhood almost daily? Absolutely.
That is AWESOME.
My friend is a big flight buff who keeps flight radar open on a separate monitor all day. Gonna send this to him now
Here’s the build instructions I used!
https://github.com/c0wsaysmoo/plane-tracker-rgb-pi/tree/main
Amazing, thanks! Very up his alley.
