[HN Gopher] My toddler still loves planes, so I upgraded her radar
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My toddler still loves planes, so I upgraded her radar
Author : jakey_bakey
Score : 329 points
Date : 2024-01-22 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobbartlett.substack.com)
| martinky24 wrote:
| Maybe this is pedantic -- Did you build a radar, or did you build
| a wrapper around an ADS-B API?
|
| I clicked this thinking, "Wow! Radars are hard. Building one at
| home would be quite the feat!", but this appears to just be a
| wrapper around an ADS-B data providing service? Not even reading
| the ADS-B data over the air on one's own at home?
|
| Calling this a radar, vs saying "I build a nice GUI around ADS-B
| data", are two very different things! The latter is a fun side
| project at home, but it's a couple orders of magnitude easier
| than the former!
| elSidCampeador wrote:
| FYI, discussion on part 1 here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38435908
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Doing God's work!
| dewey wrote:
| You are taking this too seriously and the answer can be found
| in the blog post.
|
| It's clearly a dad-daughter fun project and the toddler is more
| likely calling it a "Radar" and not "Can I play with the ADS-B
| API Wrapper?" which is the spirit of the whole post and app.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Listen, if you think handing a kid a cavity magnetron and the
| multi-kilowatt power supply to drive it ON TOP of a high-
| voltage CRT display is a good idea -- then I really want to
| know how it goes.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| "Back in my day..."
| nomel wrote:
| Well, obviously that part would be on the roof, and you would
| hand the kid something that would, to them, be
| indistinguishable from the API approach, all as you nervously
| wait for authorities, from the nearby military base, to come
| check your intentions.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I know at least three people who are nuts, skilled and
| moneyed enough to actually build a legit radar system -
| they're all hams. Only problem I think would be getting a
| license to transmit on radar frequencies...
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| As someone who grew up around (literally stacks of) analogue
| equipment, I feel that it's worth noting that there's nothing
| particularly unsafe about high voltages when they're properly
| contained. The dielectric strength of air is sufficiently
| high that you effectively need to be touching the conductor
| before it will arc. At that point, there's not a terrible
| amount of different between touching a live 240V AC terminal
| (the standard where I live and in most of the world) and a
| live 2000V AC terminal. I'm definitely not suggesting that
| one should be cavalier about high voltages, just pointing out
| that _electrocution_ wasn 't a big problem in practice for
| most of the time when these older devices were used.
|
| There several more pressing safety issues with analogue
| equipment than simple electrocution:
|
| - Fire risk due to the much greater energy consumption of
| older discrete components. Even the passive losses when in
| standby are considerable; the need for heatsinks is a given,
| and ventilation is critical.
|
| - Explosion (actually implosion) risk of vacuum
| tubes/thermionic valves. There are a surprising number of
| videos online of people deliberately destroying TVs with
| overvoltage, but suffice it to say that you do not want one
| plugged into the mains during a thunderstorm.
|
| - Physical injury. Not really the fault of the technology
| _per se_ , but it can be easy to forget just how physically
| light modern equipment is. You can hurt yourself by trying to
| move older devices. Having the equipment fall on them is
| probably the biggest risk to a toddler who's not actually
| trying to take the device apart.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| But consider this: there may be an electrical engineer reading
| the article right now thinking "damn, apps are hard, building
| one at home is quite the feat!"
| phkahler wrote:
| One of the GNU radio guys built an actual passive radar quite
| some years ago. I could see someone with that background
| looking at phone app development and scratching their head
| ;-)
| glitchc wrote:
| In the aviation industry the secondary surveillance radar
| (SSR), as it's called, passively interrogates transmitting air
| traffic in ATC's airspace (1090 MHz ADS-B and 978 MHz UAT).
| It's not the primary radar, which is active radar and what most
| people think of when they hear radar. It's a terminology issue
| which we're stuck with now given that SSR is part of the
| nomenclature.
|
| The SSR receiver is usually a long conic rotating dish, the
| length provides lateral isolation, as the dish itself is tilted
| up to match the runway glideslope (inbound and outbound track
| for most transmitting aircraft).
|
| The SSR can receive information well beyond the range of the
| primary radar. For an air traffic controller, a commercial
| aircraft shows up on the SSR first, and can be directed right
| away. The primary radar mainly catches anomalous behaviour,
| foreign objects and GA aircraft that may not be equipped with
| UAT.
| namibj wrote:
| Ehh, secondary radar is still radar. Swapping the passive
| reflector for a preamble/header triggered gated (after header
| received, active for some short duration) non-passive echo,
| doesn't negate the way of "send radio wave, receive echo,
| measure latency/delay, divide by twice light speed, get
| distance".
| tivert wrote:
| > Maybe this is pedantic -- Did you build a radar, or did you
| build a wrapper around an ADS-B API?
|
| To a toddler, it's all the same.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I don't know of any toddlers reading Hacker News.
| tivert wrote:
| > I don't know of any toddlers reading Hacker News.
|
| You're right, but the thing was made for a toddler and the
| "radar" label was probably made for them.
|
| Honestly, "radar" is probably the clearest label for
| something like this for _all people_ who don 't know what
| ADS-B and RTL-SDR mean (which is probably 99% of all
| people, period).
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I wouldn't have any issue if it were worded "radar", with
| quotes. That implies a likeness, but denotes a lack of
| precision.
|
| And I think there are more avnerds on here than you would
| expect!
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I don't understand why you're being downvoted. You are correct.
|
| I also don't think you are being pedantic. This is a forum
| where technology is often the topic of discussion, and in tech
| words often have very specific meanings. Like radar.
|
| No slight whatsoever to the original author, I liked the post,
| and applaud their work :)
|
| I just don't get the downvoting nature of some of the folks
| here. This isn't reddit.
| wglb wrote:
| Downvoting likely signals disagreement as well as
| disapproval.
| liquidise wrote:
| This is a follow-up to a rather popular post from a couple months
| ago[0].
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38435908 _My toddler
| loves planes, so I built her a radar_ (1304 points, 56 days ago)
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Aw, shucks :)
| gridspy wrote:
| Nice one. I'm glad you're still pleasing your user base.
| dylan604 wrote:
| for the rest of his days probably
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Well, I am back to pleasing them after a brief 5-week
| production incident :)
| jshchnz wrote:
| Good job on definitely making your most important user happy :)
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| :)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Awesome!
|
| Side note, I'm tempted to place a !remindme in 18 years to check
| if your daughter managed to pass her flight control exams ;)
| mulmen wrote:
| She's 2 and can get a student pilot license at 16 so set a
| reminder in 14 years.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Do we get free flights if our daughter is a pilot? Maybe we're
| missing a trick nudging her into STEM
| fragmede wrote:
| there's a whole buddy pass system for friends/family of
| airline crew. short answer: yes, but.
| UberFly wrote:
| This is cute and touching. I'm jealous. I miss it when my
| daughters were this age. Awesome work dad.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Thank you :) I suppose the grass is always greener, right? I'm
| simultaneously at the (irrational) age where I'm missing the
| baby stage and excited for her to learn to play video games
| with me
| shermantanktop wrote:
| You'll never stop missing the baby stage.
|
| The entire period from 3 months to around 5-6 is magical -
| they are seeing new things, trying new things, learning at a
| voracious rate, and constantly surprising you. They are still
| great after that but they are more on their path to who they
| will become, and mom and dad of course become a little less
| cool.
|
| Mine are grown and are wonderful people, but I can't tell you
| what I would give to go back and spend a day at the park with
| them at 3-4 years old.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| cue the grandchildren
| methyl wrote:
| Your mileage may vary. I don't miss this age at all, at 3-6
| months a baby is not much more than a moving blob. I enjoy
| it now way more at the age of three.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I have the benefit/drawback of hindsight from years
| later. Before 3ish months, I'm with you - it's the
| "fourth trimester." May depend on the kid too. Mine were
| relatively calm and quiet, but there were some <1y babies
| that I met who appeared to scream and cry every waking
| moment.
| lesmond wrote:
| I am the co-founder of Planefinder.net. We've been tracking
| aircraft since 2009.
|
| Good work!
|
| Love it!
| delichon wrote:
| My house is below a rural MOA airspace and occasionally gets
| buzzed by extremely low flying military aircraft. It can be
| window rattling, ground shaking and heart rate elevating. Do
| you know of a way I can get an alert even a little bit before
| that happens? Is it theoretically build-able with existing
| data?
| Logans_Run wrote:
| Who here in the HN crowd would be up for porting this to Android
| as a sort of open-source crowdsource project? Any takers? At a
| guess (about licensing) I would say that whoever sets up the
| initial GH repo uses this quote from the author " waiting for an
| enterprising Android engineer to port it themselves--I've placed
| enough detail in these posts! _You're welcome to do so, just make
| it free for everybody._ "
| david_allison wrote:
| No long-term capacity to maintain it, but I can probably
| contribute a little.
|
| email in my profile
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Good man!
| reaperman wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion to do something like this! I've never
| made a mobile app but would love to learn how. Even if it's not
| to contribute to a high quality Android app for _this_ radar
| thing, choosing to spend some of my time porting anything like
| it which also falls into the "An app can be a home-cooked
| meal"[0] paradigm likely means that grokking the code will be
| easier than with because it will be programmed with a singular
| vision/paradigm and lack bloat/adware/tracking/etc which would
| complicate reading and understanding the existing code.
|
| This suggestion may put me on the road to find some renewed joy
| in programming.
|
| 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38877423
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Honestly I was hoping to inspire something like this; where
| someone wants to learn to build something interesting that
| isn't just another todo app tutorial
|
| If you do want to build it, I'm happy to share the iOS source
| with you!
| reaperman wrote:
| Sure thing, thank you! And totally happy if other efforts
| either beat me to it and/or create a much more professional
| port than my own.
|
| reaperman_hn@protonmail.com
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I too have a toddler, so I don't have a lot of time, but I am
| motivated to help. tbelaire on GitHub, but I have only done a
| little android before.
| Jerry2 wrote:
| I tried to run that app like 5 times since it was released and it
| failed to connect to the server every single time.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| Really sorry about this, are you rural by any chance? I believe
| there is an error message if there is nothing found overhead;
| as a Londoner I don't think I properly prepared for the less
| crowded airspaces!
| oneepic wrote:
| >As always, it's uniquely gratifying to create something my
| daughter wants to play with. I look forward to her developing
| many more interests -- with any luck, soon she'll get super into
| platforming games or heavy metal.
|
| I got into heavy metal because of the Tony Hawk games (THPS3 -
| Motorhead's "Ace of Spades", THPS4 - Iron Maiden's "Number of the
| Beast"). So there's a potential breadcrumb trail.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Does it blip planes when the radar scan rolls over them and they
| stay in a static position but fade until the next sweep? That
| would be so cool.
|
| Would also be amazing to look at device current gps altitude and
| location to determine the visible skyline per azimuth based on
| openstreetmap buildings and hills/elevation around your current
| position and altitude... then you can show it on the map as a
| radar occlusion [1] - like a fish finder when you go over a log,
| or ship radar occluded by another vessel.
|
| I'm sure you'd cause some industry people to scratch their head
| and wonder how the phone is doing radial scanning
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Occlusion-percentage-
| for...
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| I love all these ideas - my app is very much the Pareto version
| of the potential 100% complete version
| ponty_rick wrote:
| On a sidenote, do kids get invited into the cockpit anymore, in
| this post 9/11 world?
| rezz wrote:
| I was on a flight last Thursday and saw this happen.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| It was before we took off :)
| Ductapemaster wrote:
| I've seen it happen while the plane is at the gate. The pilots
| usually have the door open, and you can go up and talk to them.
| Worst case they say no, so its worth an ask.
|
| Somewhere I still have a Delta wing pin from a trip I took as a
| kid and got to see the cockpit en route. Very cool experience
| that I remember to this day -- I hope your and others' kids get
| to experience some piece of it themselves!
| lightyrs wrote:
| My 6-year old was invited into the cockpit for the first time
| on January 1, 2024. I was wondering the same as you up until
| that moment.
|
| JetBlue US Domestic
| sojournerc wrote:
| My Dad was a pilot, and we'd often align a family vacation with
| one of his flights. There was no prouder moment as a young kid
| than being invited into the cockpit to "start the engines"
| after push-back. I vaguely remember pushing some button and Dad
| pointing out a moving dial in the cockpit. I vividly remember
| walking back to my seat feeling like the biggest kid in the
| world.
|
| That kind of thing definitely wouldn't happen post 9/11.
| jedberg wrote:
| My kids have been in the cockpit post 9/11. But you have to do
| it before takeoff. They don't let anyone in there during
| flight, even the flight attendants (except the lead sometimes).
|
| My kids just ask as we are boarding the plane if the cockpit
| door is still open.
| bluepuma77 wrote:
| First app I see in the wild that only supports iOS 17. Maybe I
| will upgrade some day.
| jakey_bakey wrote:
| This is actually the first OS where this app is possible to
| build in SwiftUI - the MapKit annotations and Metal shaders are
| both brand new
| tobiasbischoff wrote:
| Congrats and thanks for updating! Both of my kids are avid users.
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| Here are my thoughts I left as a comment on the blog:
|
| I've got ideas! As a parent of a toddler myself, I felt that
| comment about picking the color... For sure the most important.
|
| Anyways, here is a feature list of things you may have considered
| but haven't implemented because this is just a fun side project!
|
| 1. Live view. Use the phone's camera and iPhone's AR capability
| to display a dot in the (general) area of the aircraft. I've done
| some coding on how to calculate this based on the user's position
| and ADSB info if you are interested!
|
| 2. Mark an aircraft as "seen" or "missed"* which would go into
| the next suggestion.... (*could even digest this feedback in
| somehow and fine tune what is displayed?)
|
| 3. Badges/Stats! If your daughter is anything like mine, she
| loves getting badges in apps. Maybe create a local DB of previous
| sightings so then you can track things like "number of different
| airlines", "number of different aircraft types", "farthest flight
| time spotted", "shortest flight time spotted" etc etc (Note: I
| understand and totally appreciate the possible issues around
| gamifying apps meant for consumption by children.)
| abraae wrote:
| > If your daughter is anything like mine, she loves getting
| badges in apps
|
| This may sound curmudgeonly, but I try to drill into my son's
| awareness that he should aspire to be a producer of technology,
| rather than just a consumer. We face regular discussions about
| why he shouldn't spend $30 on Robux or some other digital
| currency. I try and explain that these digital currencies don't
| have real value like, say, a tennis racket or a pair of shoes.
|
| As such I also try and give him the tools to fight against
| gamification, and not to be sucked into grinding for hours to
| get some badge or other worthless digital artifact.
|
| So my 2 cents would be not to add features like this to an app
| aimed at kids. Let them see that there is a such a thing as a
| non-gamified, non-ad infested app that adds real value to their
| lives.
| mulmen wrote:
| Devil's advocate: is it possible that Robux teach children to
| contribute financially to the ecosystem's they participate
| in? FOSS is famously not "free-as-in-beer" yet we have
| created the expectation that virtual goods including software
| do not have financial value. Could being raised on Robux
| create an incentive to make modest financial contributions to
| software projects?
| amelius wrote:
| Maybe nice if the toddler can see where daddy is too.
|
| Why is this downvoted?
| wkjagt wrote:
| This looks really cool and has a wonderful story behind it. But
| I'd have to get a new phone to try it, as my OG iPhone SE only
| supports up to iOS 15, and the App Store says this requires iOS
| 17...
| RedOrGreen wrote:
| Very nice, even with no planes overhead. But it looks like the
| map orientation is reversed (off by 180 degrees)? Real bug, or
| just me?
| ppod wrote:
| Slightly off-topic but a question I've been wanting to ask: as
| someone with a terrible sense of direction, the most important
| feature in a phone for me is the accuracy of the little arrow on
| the map that shows me which way I'm facing. I'm an android user,
| and it kind of shows a blue "cone of uncertainty" when it isn't
| sure which way its pointing, and occasionally asks either to move
| the phone in a figure of eight or to point at nearby building to
| calibrate.
|
| What is the limiting factor here, technologically? Are iPhones
| better than android? Is it the hardware (accelerometer?!,
| compass?), the GPS signal, the software? It still, quite often,
| seems to get confused and show the cone in the wrong direction.
| It's so important to me that I would almost switch to iPhone if
| it definitely works better.
| issung wrote:
| Anyone working on an Android port yet? I might try my hand at a
| React Native port as a learning experience. Or is Flutter better?
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