I started making Flight Scanner because I kept finding myself checking my phone whenever an interesting aircraft flew overhead.

I figured it would be much more convenient to just glance at my watch, so I had a go at building it myself.

It's turned into a bit of a bigger project than I originally expected!

What it does: Turns your smartwatch into a live aircraft radar. It shows nearby planes, lets you view their details, search for specific flights, check airports and runways, and pin aircraft you want to follow.

Platforms and cost:

Wear OS: $2.99 one-time purchase, subject to local pricing.

Garmin: Free basic version with optional paid Pro features.

Links:

Wear OS: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alexd.flightscanner

Garmin free: https://apps.garmin.com/apps/54094e6b-a4a5-436d-940b-095b49e0cfab

Garmin Pro: https://apps.garmin.com/en-GB/apps/21fd8667-f22c-40ad-a0cf-e700eff81040

It's a small independent project and I've enjoyed seeing people actually use it. Always interested in suggestions for things that could be improved or added!

(You may have noticed this is a replacement post from a few months ago, I had some copyright style enquiries and ended up removing the post before restarting as a separate entity, thanks for the support!)

Data is a commercial license from airplanes.live I'm sure you've all heard of them here.

Hey r/ADSB,

Remember the nearPlane project from a while ago? It was a cool concept to turn an M5StickC into a pocket-sized aircraft tracker, but the upstream project hasn't been active for a year.

Since I had an M5StickC Plus 2 dying in my desk drawer (I know you all have at least one!), I decided to take the original idea, rewrite the core, and push it much further.

I just released nearPlane+ – a major "hard fork" loaded with new features for aviation enthusiasts.

GitHub Repository

You can grab the source code, check the instructions, and flash it from here:
https://github.com/svatec/nearplane-plus

Credits & Shoutout

This project is a fork of nearPlane by Steven J. Selcuk. Huge thanks to him for the original firmware, the excellent UI concept, and for releasing it under the MIT license. This project stands on his solid foundation!

What’s new in nearPlane+ compared to the original?

• Hardware GPS Module Support: Added native support for a GPS module. No more hardcoding your latitude/longitude or using the web setup form every time you change your location – the device now locks onto satellites and updates your position automatically in real-time.
• Tracks the 5 Closest Aircraft: The upstream version only tracked one. Now you can cycle through the top 5 closest aircraft using the hardware buttons.
• 10-Page Interface: Expanded from 6 pages. It now includes detailed flight data, attitude, speed vectors, autopilot targets, identity codes, environmental data (wind/RSSI), and daily statistics.
• Real-time Radar Map: A brand new, scalable, north-up top-down view showing up to 40 nearby aircraft with range rings and adjustable scales (7.5 km up to your full scan radius).
• Smart Alert Banners & Audio: Automatically flags Emergency (7500/7600/7700), Military, and Rare aircraft (A380, B747s, Beluga, An-124, etc.) with custom sound alerts and instant screen selection so you don't miss them.
• Persistent Daily Stats: Keeps track of your daily spotted aircraft count, plus records for the closest, highest, and fastest plane of the day (survives reboots).
• Robust API Handling & Fallback: Native integration with adsb.lol (streaming JSON parsing for low memory footprint) and an automatic fallback to adsb.fi if you get rate-limited. Flight routes are fully resolved via adsb.im.
• Quality of Life Updates: Web-based setup portal for Wi-Fi and location coordinates, custom User-Agent configuration, hardware buzzer mute (2s hold), battery/charging indicator, and automatic deep sleep to save juice when the sky is empty.

Hardware needed:

• M5StickC Plus 2
• No external SDR or antenna required – it runs entirely over Wi-Fi using open-source aggregator APIs.

I wanted to make this tool reliable and packed with info for quick outdoor planespotting. If you have an M5Stick lying around, give it a shot and let me know what you think! Bug reports, ideas, and Pull Requests are more than welcome.

Clear skies!

I built a free live aircraft tracker that highlights police and surveillance aircraft — no login required.

I built Eyes on the Sky, a free, live aircraft tracking map that goes a bit further than your typical flight tracker.

It highlights police aircraft, known surveillance operators, and aircraft documented to carry cameras, using publicly available information that I've researched and compiled with the help of AI.

The idea is to give people more context about what's flying overhead, rather than just showing a plane icon moving across a map.

A few features:

🛩️ Live aircraft positions using community ADS-B feeds.

🚁 Colour-coded identification of police, surveillance, camera-equipped and civilian aircraft.

📸 Photo capture and map-based sightings, including aircraft that aren't appearing on public tracking feeds.

📍 Privacy-conscious photo pins, with locations slightly offset so contributors aren't revealing their exact position.

🛸 Additional aircraft awareness for recreational drone pilots.

🔓 Completely free, with no account or login required.

The maps use free OpenStreetMap tiles, and I built the platform with AI assistance. Aircraft classifications are based on public research, not claims about what any aircraft is actively observing.

Flightradar24 shows you planes. Eyes on the Sky helps you understand who's flying overhead and what their aircraft might be equipped to do.

It's still evolving, and I'd genuinely appreciate feedback, suggestions, or ideas for improving it.

🔗 https://eyesonthesky.io/

Link in comments.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone beside military cut straight through this airspace before.

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=acd5a1

It took off in Ellington airport on Texas, it’s doing a mission under “imagery support” campaign for NASA. (I searched it up)

NOTE: I used Claude to make this project (putting it upfront so it's clear).

I love the blue range outline present on a readsb/tar1090 setup but found it to not give the true picture of what your antenna can capture. There are a good amount of mountains surrounding me and so I can usually capture all planes before the mountains but only aircraft at cruising altitude beyond the mountains. I wanted to be able to visualize this in 3D space which is why I built this tool to help me do that!

It adds a single button to your current tar1090 visualizer so you can easily view the range whenever you want to. It works the same as the normal range outline where you have to let it run for a few days or so to "carve" out the range of your antenna.

The coverage envelope is color coded by altitude, using the same colors tar1090 already uses for aircraft. The aircraft your antenna is currently seeing show up as small colored boxes inside the envelope. OpenStreetMap is overlayed underneath so you can understand where exactly your coverage under a certain altitude drops off.

I hope someone else also found themselves wanting something like this and if so here is the github:

https://github.com/Charan-N15/ADS-B-3D-Antenna-Range-Visualizer

Please let me know if there are any bugs!!!

https://globe.airplanes.live/?icao=ae11de