RBG Matrix Flight Tracker

Blog article about this project

Setup

Installation

1. Assemble the RGB matrix, Pi, and Bonnet as described in this Adafruit guide.
2. When complete, install the LED-matrix (rgbmatrix) python library, again as described in the Adafruit installation guide.
3. It is assumed the solder bridge is added to the HAT in order to use the Pi's soundcard to drive the device's PWM
4. Clone this repository (git clone https://github.com/ColinWaddell/its-a-plane-python).
5. Install the FlightRadarAPI dependency (sudo pip3 install FlightRadarAPI). Note - running with sudo is required as rgbmatrix must be run as as root for best performance.
6. Go to the its-a-plane-python repo folder cd its-a-plane-python (or wherever you cloned it to).
7. Add a config.py file as described below.
8. Run sudo python3 its-a-plane.py.

Configuration

In the root of the repo create a files config.py with the settings for your display.

• ZONE_HOME defines the area within which flights should be tracked.
• LOCATION_HOME is the latitude/longitude of your home.
• WEATHER_LOCATION is the city that will be used to display the temperature. If using Openweather (see next), please type in the city in the form of "City" or "City,Province/State,Country", e.g. "Paris" or "Paris,Ile-de-France,FR".
• OPENWEATHER_API_KEY If provided, will use the OpenWeather API. You can obtain a free OpenWeather API key by going here (Optional)
• TEMPERATURE_UNITS One of "metric" or "imperial". Defaults to "metric".
• MIN_ALTITUDE Will remove planes below a certain altitude (in feet). Depending on the defined ZONE_HOME, can be useful for filtering out planes parked on the tarmac.
• BRIGHTNESS 0-100, changes the brightness of the display.
• GPIO_SLOWDOWN 0-4, larger numbers for faster hardware can reduce/eliminate flickering. (e.g., 2 seems to work well on a Pi Zero 2 W, but 0 might be fine for an older Pi Zero).
• JOURNEY_CODE_SELECTED Three-letter airport code of local airport to put in bold on the display (Optional).
• JOURNEY_BLANK_FILLER Three-letter text to use in place of an unknown airport origin/destination. Defaults to " ? ".
• HAT_PWM_ENABLED Drive the PWM using the Pi's soundcard, assuming the solder bridge has been added to the HAT. Defaults to True

ZONE_HOME = {
    "tl_y": 56.06403, # Top-Left Latitude (deg)
    "tl_x": -4.51589, # Top-Left Longitude (deg)
    "br_y": 55.89088, # Bottom-Right Latitude (deg)
    "br_x": -4.19694 # Bottom-Right Longitude (deg)
}
LOCATION_HOME = [
    55.9074356, # Latitude (deg)
    -4.3331678, # Longitude (deg)
    0.01781 # Altitude (km)
]
WEATHER_LOCATION = "Glasgow"
OPENWEATHER_API_KEY = "" # Get an API key from https://openweathermap.org/price
TEMPERATURE_UNITS = "metric"
MIN_ALTITUDE = 100
BRIGHTNESS = 50
GPIO_SLOWDOWN = 2
JOURNEY_CODE_SELECTED = "GLA"
JOURNEY_BLANK_FILLER = " ? "
HAT_PWM_ENABLED = True

Usage

If you are running a headless Pi that you are managing over ssh, you'll find that you have to remain connected for the display to keep running. A simple solution is to run the its-a-plane.py script in a tmux or screen session. For instance:

1. ssh to the Pi.
2. sudo apt-get install tmux
3. Once installed, start a new session by running the command tmux.
4. Run sudo python3 /path/to/its-a-plane.py.
5. Detach from the tmux session by pressing Ctrl+B and then pressing D.
6. logout to exit the Pi. Note that you'll need to re-enter or kill the tmux session to modify/stop the display.

A more permanent solution if you'd like the software to run automatically on boot is to add it to your /etc/rc.local

1. ssh to the Pi.
2. Edit /etc/rc.local - for example sudo nano -w /etc/rc.local
3. Add a line pointing to the location this software is installed. In the following example some logging is provided for debugging purposes:

/usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/its-a-plane-python/its-a-plane.py > /home/pi/plane.log 2>&1 &

Optional

Loading LED

An LED can be wired to a GPIO on the Raspberry Pi which can then blinks when data is being loaded.

To enabled this add the following to your config.py. Adjust LOADING_LED_GPIO_PIN to suit your setup.

LOADING_LED_ENABLED = True
LOADING_LED_GPIO_PIN = 25

If you are using rc.local to load this software on boot and you see the error RuntimeError: No access to /dev/mem. Try running as root! then you need to update your rc.local to launch the application using sudo

sudo /usr/bin/python3 /home/pi/its-a-plane-python/its-a-plane.py > /home/pi/plane.log 2>&1 &

Rainfall chart

If weather data is being pulled from the original authors server (as opposed to using OPENWEATHER_API_KEY) then you can display a chart of rainfall by adding the following to your config.py:

RAINFALL_ENABLED = True