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Show HN: I built a DIY plane spotting system at home
- jparishy 2y agoReally 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 2y agoYou can see from the photos how people might mistake planes for drones or UAP's.
- RIMR 2y agoEvery 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoYour last sentence negated the first and only furthered my point. Moving lights in low visibility are open to a variety of interpretations.
- DoneWithAllThat 2y agoNot 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 2y agoIn 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 2y agoThe 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 2y agoUm, 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 2y agoRelated: My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar (November 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38435908 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39094288
- obviyus 2y agoThat was such a good read. Thank you for sharing.
- gosub100 2y agorelated: automated Las Vegas plane spotting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5PtT7KdlKc 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 2y agoI'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 2y ago>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.
- gosub100 2y agoThat place is crawling with cops from the gutter to the street lights.
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- mt_ 2y agoI 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 2y agoHow much accuracy can you possibly get from a 600x600 image?
- bobxmax 2y agoIf 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 2y ago>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 2y agoI'm under the impression that the OSINT crowd routinely comes to more impressive conclusions based on worse source material.
- Aspos 2y agoThose 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.
- OutOfHere 2y agoNow spot UFOs/UAPs?
- dave333 2y agoGiven 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 2y agoShotguns have proven ineffective as drone defenses. Range is too short and the targets are too fast.
- pineaux 2y agoThey are better than other guns though.
- dave333 2y agoWas 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.
- giantg2 2y agoUkraine is using shotguns on drones to hunt other drones. Seems it works.
- nradov 2y agoThey are using those mostly to take down larger reconnaissance drones. Not the small ones used to directly attack individual soldiers. Watch the videos.
- giantg2 2y agoI never said it works against all drones. It is a valid option that has shown efficacy. In the context of this thread (one's home/property), it seems reasonably applicable, and in many locations, more likely to be legal than many alternatives.
- pkamb 2y agoWatching 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 2y agoI'd settle for a device that just normalized the volume levels, but this would be even better!
- tehwebguy 2y agoHere’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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1V2I-otdzk
- s0rce 2y agoNvidia shield can do that, they call it "nighttime listening mode" or something, I leave it on permanently, much better experience.
- dtgriscom 2y agoIn the USA since 2010, there have been standards that prohibit ads being louder than the program material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudness_Mitigation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Advertisement_Loudn...
- concerndc1tizen 2y agoNice 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?
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- bazmattaz 2y agoThis 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoThanks 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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- discordance 2y agoThe set up: https://obviy.us/blog/pilane-spotting/ https://obviy.us/blog/pilane-spotting/
- neurostimulant 2y agoVery cool! This plane suspiciously looks like a bird though: https://i.imgur.com/cUdnZTN.png https://i.imgur.com/cUdnZTN.png
- obviyus 2y agoHaha, I'm working on fixing that. One of my ideas is to run inference again on an image to check if it has any birds. If yes, reject the image. It's a really cool time to be checking right now! All commercial flights are grounded in Delhi for Republic Day celebrations so I'm able to see images of Air Force planes!
- notsylver 2y agoCould you get the speed and location of the plane and estimate how far it should move across two images to determine if its the right target?
- obviyus 2y agoThat would work if inference on the Pi was faster. Right now it takes about 2.5s per image. The planes are in view for maybe 3s. By the time the next frame is fetched, the plane's already out of view.
- Scoundreller 2y agoUhhhh: Jan 26, 2025 ~2:45 PM IGO • A20N ROUTE AJL → DEL ALTITUDE 1,325 FT GROUND SPEED 137 KTS VERT. SPEED -768 FT/MIN https://pilane.obviy.us/_astro/38e014bd.CJs63r7b_Z2lCImg.webp https://pilane.obviy.us/_astro/38e014bd.CJs63r7b_Z2lCImg.web...
- obviyus 2y agoUnfortuntalely that happens more often than I'd like, especially if the frame contains both the plane and a bird. Hoping to fix that in V2!
- computers3333 2y agoSuper cool!!!!!
- noppanut15 2y agoThis is so cool!!! Thanks for sharing the setup as well.