I built a ceiling projection mapping of the planes flying over my house | Hacker News Reader

I built a ceiling projection mapping of the planes flying over my house

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229 pointsfrereubu32 comments

The repo subtitle is `Project the aircraft passing overhead onto your ceiling, in real time — an X-ray through the roof.`

The demo video starts outside pointing at a cloudy sky with an airplane passing overhead. My mind, seeded with the word "x-ray", thought the outside shot was the video projection on his ceiling. I thought his rain gutters were crown molding, and when the camera man runs inside, I thought he was running outside to show the real life airplane.

The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.

> The actual projection is neat, but how fun would it be to have an x-ray projection of the night sky.

Something like Sega Toys Homestar?

I thought the same exact thing and I thought that I would love a sky projection on my ceiling

Thought the same thing. Would be super cool to project the night sky with procedurally generated cellestial objects, planes, spaceships, etc.

I can't imagine it would take too much to pull that sort of real information, no? Like, what celestial objects are overhead, constellations, satellites, etc

EDIT: OH! Looks like it's already configured for that!

maybe during the day use birdnet-pi to project birds.

I thought the same thing! The plane being so low made it seem like an exaggerated computer-generated plane.

Their repo linked by someone in the comments: https://github.com/cpaczek/skylight

Maybe this would be a better link: https://skylightceiling.com/

or the repo https://github.com/cpaczek/skylight

It's a planeatarium

Wow so cool! I had daydreamed about doing something similar with e-ink display on my wall so I could see details about whatever plane I'm hearing.. but this blows that out of the water.

https://conormclaughlin.net/2024/04/published-how-i-finished...

I have used this on my tidbyt (now a Tronbyt) for years for this purpose... simple solution tied into my adsb system

I bought several 3b+ Raspberries a really long time ago and this seems like the perfect simple&breathtaking project for such ancient hardware. Who needs a fourth PiHole on their local network?!

"Fortunately" I live directly beneath CHA's main landingstrip, so lots of regular data available. Fortunately, I am not in the main takeoff path because that would be much worse.

I've got a Raspberry Pi 2b I've been using for probably close to a decade, with two SDRs hanging off it, pulling aircraft ADS-B locations and VHF radio transmissions out of the sky. It's a great application for this platform. ADS-B scanner averages about 25% CPU and the VHF airband receiver averages about 17% (uses hardware FFT).

Such a fan of the lower power, fanless, larger/‘regular’ connectors old school rapi’s.

Thanks for the percentages – let's me know that a PiHole can co-pilot as an SDR tracker. Which do you use (via USB, I suspect..)?

I'mma slap a cheap LCD on (instead of projecting onto ceiling) and make it look like the arrival screen you'd see behind an airport kiosk (and broadcast the VHF/tower). This is a perfect front porch project (to encourage neighborhood curiosities).

Two separate USB RTL-SDR dongles. Very important if you do two receivers: Make sure you have an official Raspberry Pi 2b charger that outputs enough wattage. Cheesy bargain bin power supplies you get on Amazon are not up to the task of powering the Pi + 2 radios, and they will not work. Get some good airflow around the radios too, because they can get a bit hot.

I've been really disappointed with the Cannakit power adapters which came bundled with my 3b+ units (four, total). They are definitely not able to deliver enough power to even a dongle-less Raspberry – not sure why they were paired together.

All have been replaced with beefier AC/DC bricks. Definitely thanks for the consideration and model reqs.

My own recommendation is to use a powered USB hub, immediately plugged into any Pi (so the Pi's adapter can just worry about powering only CPU board).

Unlike models with lots of memory, the Pi3 1GB and Pi4 1GB are still cheap, but the Pi4 1GB is sold out everywhere. I think the Pi4 is sweet spot for small projects.

I have many varieties of Pi, but my favorite (overall) is the Pi400 (mine has 4gb, but that built-in keyboard!). The 3b+ is great for one-task projects that don't need [much/any] local input.

Random aside: there’s a restaurant in San Diego on the SAN flight path with a split flap display over the bar. Every time a flight passes over it updates to show flight number and departure airport. It’s quite neat.

Do you remember the name? Would love to visit it

Nolita Hall! Highly recommended.

Would have loved a post on working out the geometry of the projection, especially if it accounted for transitions of ceiling to wall. That would be fun.

The surface through which one is projecting is a flat rectangle. Had it been a hemispherical dome one wouldn't have had to do anything special for the transitions.

I'm sensing "The Conversation" levels of paranoia and it is beautiful.

I expect to have trouble falling asleep just vicariously relating to the noise level there. Awesome project though.

(To be clear, the "I" in the title is not me, the submitter - it's the title of the Reddit post).

Oof that looks like a loud place to live :O Happy to see it inspiring a project tho take care

Not too many things make my jaw literally drop, but this did. This is magnificent!

That is cool!

This is so awesome

The fact that I saw this on X first is concerning, greatjob btw

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