[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a DIY plane spotting system at home
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Show HN: I built a DIY plane spotting system at home
Author : obviyus
Score : 152 points
Date : 2025-01-25 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pilane.obviy.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (pilane.obviy.us)
| jparishy wrote:
| Really cool. I've considered doing something similar for alerting
| me of things seen in the air but without a transponder turned on.
| Good tip about the birds, I wouldn't have anticipated that ha.
|
| Aside, the way air travel still happens out in the open in terms
| of communications data has a real early Internet vibe to me.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| You can see from the photos how people might mistake planes for
| drones or UAP's.
| RIMR wrote:
| Every single one of those pictures, even the blurry ones, even
| the ones taken at night, all look like airplanes.
|
| People aren't getting airplanes confused with drones because
| they look the same. People are getting worked up about drones
| because of collective paranoia, and then they are seeing what
| they want to see.
| ge96 wrote:
| I don't even know what they're afraid of, these drones aren't
| carrying an RPG round like in Ukraine. I guess it's not
| impossible.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Your last sentence negated the first and only furthered my
| point. Moving lights in low visibility are open to a variety
| of interpretations.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Not criticizing you but it will never not be funny to me that
| crazy people have tried to legitimize seeing alien spaceships
| by renaming them from UFOs to UAPs. It's like the conspiracy
| theorist version of unhoused.
| beng-nl wrote:
| In fairness, I get what you're saying, but I think there is
| some legitimacy to it.
|
| First, I believe that this term has been introduced by the us
| government, so it's not the crackpots laundering the
| conspiracy themselves by using a new term.
|
| Second, I believe the reason UAP was introduced is to
| describe properly recorded and credibly witnessed and
| described phenomena (tic-tac, etc) that are not explained by
| any publically known craft, engineering, or science, but
| aren't likely aliens either; and that is well described by
| UAP which doesn't directly imply aliens that ufo does.
| zamadatix wrote:
| The problem is you need a term for "flying thing we saw but
| weren't able to identify and/or categorize" (which is
| certainly a legitimate need) but every time you start using
| it this will increasingly change meaning to "aliens and such
| are zooming around and <some power> doesn't want you to know"
| (completely regardless if it's factually true or not - nobody
| is going to want to use an alternative term someone sets
| aside for "crackpots" in either case) until it gets to the
| point people don't even associate the term with what it was
| created for again.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Um, no, I can't actually. Like, not even close to being able to
| relate to what you're suggesting. These are all single frames
| and frozen in time. Watching any of these actually moving would
| even reduce that possibility even further.
| croisillon wrote:
| Related:
|
| My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar (November 2023)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38435908
|
| My toddler still loves planes, so I upgraded her radar (January
| 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39094288
| obviyus wrote:
| That was such a good read. Thank you for sharing.
| gosub100 wrote:
| related: automated Las Vegas plane spotting
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5PtT7KdlKc
|
| this person has some sort of OpenCV setup from a high-rise view.
| (bonus: Air Force One is currently there)
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that they would park it next to other
| planes like that. Especially with what appears to be no ground
| troops surrounding the plane.
| gruez wrote:
| >I'm kind of surprised that they would park it next to other
| planes like that
|
| The extreme zoom of the camera makes everything look close
| together. In reality it's probably quite far from most other
| planes.
|
| >Especially with what appears to be no ground troops
| surrounding the plane.
|
| Why would you have them stand outside to guard the plane when
| the airport is already fenced off, and has
| surveillance/security? Even if they do need people guarding
| it, it doesn't make sense to stand outside. Waiting inside or
| in a nearby SUV would be much more comfortable for the
| guards.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Guards sitting comfy in an SUV is not a really good guard
| detail.
| gruez wrote:
| Surveillance cameras placed by the airport provides much
| better situational awareness than a bunch of bored guards
| standing around.
| gosub100 wrote:
| That place is crawling with cops from the gutter to the
| street lights.
| 1024core wrote:
| Trump hooking up with Stormy Daniels....?
| mt_ wrote:
| I recommend to not show dates as it can easily help triangulate
| your location of where this Pi is running, and with the internet
| crowd, doxxing yourself is never a good idea.
| gruez wrote:
| How much accuracy can you possibly get from a 600x600 image?
| bobxmax wrote:
| If you know the flight and the date and time you can easily
| pinpoint exactly where the plane was and where it was
| heading. Not incredibly challenging at that point to narrow
| in on roughly where the photos were taken from.
| gruez wrote:
| >If you know the flight and the date and time you can
| easily pinpoint exactly where the plane was and where it
| was heading.
|
| You'd still need reference data from the photo to
| triangulate where it was taken from. A blurry 600x600 photo
| is going to have plenty of uncertainty.
|
| >Not incredibly challenging at that point to narrow in on
| roughly where the photos were taken from.
|
| Most people probably don't care as long as it doesn't
| pinpoint a specific address.
| cess11 wrote:
| I'm under the impression that the OSINT crowd routinely
| comes to more impressive conclusions based on worse
| source material.
| Aspos wrote:
| Those red-green navigation lights are enough. There is
| only one aircraft position which would satisfy a given
| relative configuration. PI camera has a known field of
| view and given hundreds of images one could have
| directions converging pretty accurately.
| echoangle wrote:
| Well we already know it roughly, it's Indira Gandhi
| International Airport in New Delhi.
| echoangle wrote:
| From the regular images, probably not a lot. But if you see a
| plane crossing in front of the moon or the sun, you could
| determine a ground track of the shadow of the plane. If you
| get that with two different planes, you probably have a
| pretty accurate position (a few hundred meters). Combined
| with the image of the setup, showing a balcony, someone could
| probably find the exact location.
| ge96 wrote:
| Maybe if the sky is cut away around the plane, I guess you
| could still make out a shadow on the tube/from the
| wings/engine nacelle
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Depends on how far from the airport you are, and the accuracy
| of the timestamp. If you have accurate-to-the-second
| timestamps and you're within maybe 10km of the airport I
| think you could get down to a neighborhood pretty easily.
|
| You know roughly the perspective that the camera sees the
| plane from, so you take the plane position at that timestamp
| and project that perspective line down onto the ground. The
| higher the plane, the more error there is with estimating the
| observation axis, so the less accurate this gets.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Now spot UFOs/UAPs?
| dave333 wrote:
| Given that drone warfare is now a thing this seems like it could
| be useful as the basis of a personal drone detection and warning
| kit that soldiers could wear over their helmet to spot drones and
| give say an audible warning in the soldiers ears that lets the
| soldier locate the drone direction and maybe azimuth with pitch -
| lower frequency for a low drone and high for one more overhead.
| Not sure if such a thing already exists. That and a shotgun would
| be a reasonable defense.
| nradov wrote:
| Shotguns have proven ineffective as drone defenses. Range is
| too short and the targets are too fast.
| pineaux wrote:
| They are better than other guns though.
| dave333 wrote:
| Was thinking of some recent videos where a small drone closes
| right up to an individual soldier and explodes - assuming
| those aren't AI generated. But I expect there will be drone
| hunting drones and drone dogfights will be a thing.
| pkamb wrote:
| Watching football this fall, I've been thinking about a little
| box that sits on my table and mutes the TV whenever an ad comes
| on.
|
| Not decoding HDMI HDCP or anything, but a webcam + AI or whatever
| that watches football with me and mutes ads. Similar to plane
| detection, maybe. Are there any projects like this?
| pplante wrote:
| I'd settle for a device that just normalized the volume levels,
| but this would be even better!
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Here's a DIY project to make a TV volume limiter, I haven't
| done it myself but it looks cool:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1V2I-otdzk
| s0rce wrote:
| Nvidia shield can do that, they call it "nighttime listening
| mode" or something, I leave it on permanently, much better
| experience.
| concerndc1tizen wrote:
| Nice idea!
|
| Related:
|
| In Black Mirror, they pause the advertisement when you disable
| the sound.
|
| So maybe you'll eventually have to use a separate sound system
| whereby they cannot detect that you're muting it.
|
| Then, they'll track your eyes and require you to watch the
| screen :)
|
| At which point do you stop consuming?
| moffkalast wrote:
| At some point pirates come along with their own streams
| offering better service :P
|
| MBAs think they can enshittfy into perpetuity, but eventually
| people have enough and leave to whatever the competition is.
| mylons wrote:
| i'm about to do it myself. the streaming services are just
| generally putting out shitty content (there's the
| occasional gem), charging more, and creating more and more
| walled gardens. it sucks to be a consumer right now other
| than the "ease" in which you can access these services.
| ge96 wrote:
| Black mirror haha I think Samsung actually does it.
| nejsjsjsbsb wrote:
| Yeah... of course our execs took that Black Mirror course.
| Don't want to get left behind.
| AyyEye wrote:
| Drink a verification can to continue.
| notjoemama wrote:
| > Then, they'll track your eyes and require you to watch the
| screen :)
|
| Check out the recent controversy over Activision and Call of
| Duty. Evidently the game code requires access to your webcam
| and the company has patents on using your gameplay to train a
| bot that play like you do, then uses the idle time to make
| the bot play while you are away. This bulks up the pool of
| players ensuring you are matched with people resulting in a
| good experience for you. There's also a patent detecting your
| emotional state while you view their in game store, possibly
| for adjusting price to influence you to buy or spend more.
| gruez wrote:
| >Evidently the game code requires access to your webcam
|
| Source?
|
| >then uses the idle time to make the bot play while you are
| away
|
| Surely they're better off using a GPU cluster to do
| training like every other AI company?
| gsich wrote:
| Why not, HDCP is only a compliance scheme.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| Probably don't even need the webcam, detection via audio seems
| possible.
| ideashower wrote:
| how about fingerprinting? Not versed in this space but might be
| worth looking into.
| d33dd3d3 wrote:
| Looking at the electric consumption of my 30 closest neighbors
| using an RTL-SDR, I'm still wondering what I should do with the
| information.
| abosherid wrote:
| Are the electric readings sent in plaintext or trivially
| decrypted?
| mh- wrote:
| Unencrypted, I'm sure.
|
| I hadn't thought to look for smart meters, but my RTL-SDR
| (and my Flipper Zero) can pick up all sorts of temperature
| sensors, etc.
|
| A quick google found this _rtlamr_ project with a number of
| blog posts about people doing this with it.
|
| https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
| tejtm wrote:
| only ethical move would be to move your own consumption to
| when theirs is lowest and not retain any data but your own
| konraditurbe wrote:
| Usually football trasmissions have identifiable elements in the
| screen, such as the score, the match title, etc... and those
| are fixed elements that do not appear in ads. For example:
| https://i.imgur.com/blebca8.png
|
| Or the title bar below. You could do some basic OCR on a Pi,
| when the team names are readable, keep the volume up, when they
| are not, disable it.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| This is great. So I've thought of doing something slightly
| similar but with a raspberry Pi and camera to identify if there
| is a free parking space right outside our house (we live in a
| terraced house with no driveway)
| ge96 wrote:
| I think this has been done for public places. A lazy approach
| (not using ML) is cropping/contour finding, then masking
| (opencv) against an empty parking lot, so if something is there
| like a car, would change the result.
|
| The black parking lot would change in shade/hue so have to
| account for a range.
| bazmattaz wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. Yeh I'm sure something like this
| exists. I could probably just mask out the area around the
| space o lab the streets outside our house and then send a
| notification when it becomes available.
|
| The complexity maybe comes in in identifying our cars parked
| there vs someone else's, so maybe I need number plate
| recognition. However my camera would be top down so likely no
| number plate would be visible.
|
| Any thoughts/recommendations are helpful
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