Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

I live on the flight path of a busy airport (Toronto) and have always wondered what type of aircrafts they are as they fly above me.

So, I made a "Plane Above Me" app that listens to airplane sound. Once detected, it polls data from flight APIs and read out the flight info and aircraft data.

In other words, it's my little "Flight Announcer".

https://evergreen-labs.com/PlaneAboveMe.html

I bookmark this page and load it whenever something starts circling/passing overhead:

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?SiteLat=##.####&SiteLon=##.#...

Regular plane noise is a regular thing where I live - I'm right under one of the regular flight-paths for a nearby very busy airport and very close to another busy airport.

One idea I've had for a while is to take my eInk raspberry-pi accessory and poll this data and have a constantly updating "what's overhead" display.

Nice... That would be a great conversation starter at home... feel free to reach out if you put the idea in motion!

Can it measure intensity?

I grew up under a flight path, and now live... under another flight path. Luckily this one is used almost exclusively to land (much quieter) but my parents are still under a takeoff one. All airlines are supposed to follow certain rules to minimize noise, but many just flaunt them. Local authorities own the airport, so their interest in monitoring infractions is... very low.

Having an app that could detect and categorize bad actors, would be pretty cool.

Not at the moment, but it would be easy to add.

If your parents use iPhone or iPad, I am happy to add an intensity label and/or a filter for them so it would display/read out those that are over certain thresholds.

Could you tune in to the radio transmissions?

This thread inspired me to pull out the display and finally tinker with it - and then I realized how expensive the APIs are for this data - especially if trying to do a "constant updating" style approach like you'd want for this idea.

It makes sense you listen for the sound of a plane / wait for a button press before making the call!

Seems like this would be best done with a receiver and monitoring that directly and/or exchanging the radio logging for API access.

Sounds do-able. Radio available on the web too. https://www.liveatc.net/

Not right now, it's do-able as the streams are online. (could use that instead of listening to airplane sound)

Another cool way to do this would be an ADS-B receiver on your roof. They're about $30-40, and when paired with a Raspberry Pi, a waterproof box, and free software[0] they work really well. Plus, you get a free subscription to a lot of flight tracking services like FR24.

[0]: https://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/

British Airways had a famous advertising campaign that did something similar. If I remember correctly they used a digital billboard somewhere in London that showed a little boy pointing to the sky. The text refreshed throughout the day to display the details of the flight passing overhead.

I’m almost certain I heard about a similar project years ago that would automatically file complaints and fine the offending airlines when they were too loud/flying too low.

Ah neat. I'd forgotten I did something like this a few years back using an ADSB receiver on my roof, and integrated it into a Pi-powered digital clock. https://www.behance.net/gallery/42580099/Pi-Clock

It's abandonware now, because it was a PITA to get the flight data from behind a clunky paywall, and an Echo Show could do voice-driven stuff more easily. Maybe I could revisit it now and put it into an e-ink display instead, and use Flightaware or FR24 API...