Aircraft

Live aircraft from ADS-B in Wayseer Desktop. Each aircraft appears on the Geo lens where it is and moves on every read. It carries its callsign, registration, type, altitude, speed, track and squawk. An emergency squawk turns it red and shows in Stream.

It is an external module, published in the Wayseer marketplace, and is not built into the app. It reads one of two sources:

OpenSky Network, airplanes.live and ADSB.fi are not offered. Their terms allow only non-commercial or personal use, and Wayseer's users include businesses.

Wayseer is a lens, not a store. The module keeps only aircraft heard within expire, and at most max_aircraft of them. It never asks adsb.lol for the whole world: it needs an area.

Configuration

Install the package with >modules.install, then name it in a config:

modules:
  - kind: external
    name: sky
    options:
      module: wayseer-labs/aircraft
      options:
        area: {lat: 51.47, lon: -0.45, radius_nm: 40}   # around Heathrow

A local receiver, which needs no area:

      options:
        source: receiver
        url: http://adsb-pi.local/tar1090/data/aircraft.json

A secret in secret_env must also be listed in the entry's env. A secret_keyring on Linux also needs DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS there.

adsb.lol's limits rise and fall with its load. When it answers 429 Too Many Requests, the module waits for its Retry-After, or twice the interval, doubling with each limit in a row, and at most five minutes. The error shows in the module's health until a read works. Requests name the module in their User-Agent, and Health declares the interval as the module's pace, so Wayseer doesn't call its data stale between reads.

What it shows

An aircraft is named by its callsign, else its registration, else its address. Each is a member_of its operator. Squawk 7500 or 7700, or an ADS-B emergency of general, unlawful or downed, makes it critical; squawk 7600 or another emergency makes it a warning. The reason says which. An aircraft with no position has no place, so the Geo lens counts it as "without a place".

Series (>grid.show metric=): aircraft.altitude (feet, 0 on the ground) and aircraft.speed (knots) on each aircraft, and aircraft.count on the area. The SDK has no unit for feet or knots, so they carry none, and the names and attributes say the unit.

Events: emergency when one begins (critical or warning) and when it ends (info), and appeared and gone (debug) as aircraft come and go, so a busy area does not flood Stream.

Data and attribution

Data from adsb.lol is © adsb.lol contributors and is made available under the Open Database License 1.0. The area entity's data attribute carries this attribution in the app. The test fixtures in testdata are made up and copy no real flight.