Story
Overview
A dedicated aviation tracking dashboard built for the Elecrow 2.8inch 240x320 ESP32 LCD Touch Display | With WiFi and BT/BLE (ESP32-2432S028R). Designed by IamNotIntoTech, this project turns your display into a real-time flight board that tracks overhead aircraft and provides precise 3D vectoring angles—calculating exact compass bearings and line-of-sight elevation so you know exactly where to point your binoculars.
Features
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Displays a real-time tabular Flight Board tracking overhead commercial and cargo aircraft, complete with airline identity color tagging.
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Automatically calculates and displays real-time compass bearing, distance in nautical miles, and line-of-sight elevation angles for each aircraft.
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Features an Interactive 3D Spotter Vector mode: tap any flight to view an analog compass needle pointing to the azimuth bearing, paired with an arc inclinometer showing the exact tilt angle (from horizon to zenith).
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Includes Calibrated Touch Navigation for instant tab switching between the Flight Board and Spotter Vector screens.
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Provides direct-tap aircraft selection with instant acoustic (GPIO 26) and visual (RGB LED) hardware feedback.
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Polls real live aircraft data directly from public ADS-B endpoints (
adsb.lol).
Hardware
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Elecrow CrowPanel ESP32 HMI 2.8-inch display (ESP32-2432S028R)
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USB data cable and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network
Build and upload First, install VS Code and the PlatformIO IDE extension. Clone the project repository and open the elecrow_projects/10-sky-spotter-station directory.
To protect your personal data, configuration is handled via a local secrets file. Copy the secrets.h.example file and rename it to secrets.h. Open secrets.h to enter your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi credentials and your physical spotting coordinates (it defaults to the Eiffel Tower in Paris).
Connect your Elecrow display via USB, allow PlatformIO to install the necessary dependencies, and click Build and Upload (or run pio run -t upload in your terminal).
Source code and license GitHub repository (Star repo for more upcoming project)
Consider supporting us for advanced level projects
YouTube Tutorial & Channel:
https://youtube.com/@IamNotIntoTech
The project is shared under following:
- 💻 Source Code: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0)
- 🎨 3D Models, Enclosures, Artwork, Graphics & Media: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
- 💼 Commercial Licensing: All 3D models, animations, and branding are the intellectual property of Tushar Aggarwal. Commercial use, physical sales, or redistribution requires purchasing a commercial license or donating via GitHub Sponsors / Gumroad. See LICENSE for details.
