[ytjohn]

This is absolutely incredible. I have been wanting to do this as well, but I was going to approach it from the computer vision approach (blueiris and deepstack ai). Or a dedicated camera and pythoncv. I never even thought of having cameras move to match flightaware data.

A number of planes fly low and when I check flightaware, they're not on it. Or there's a plane that could be it, but it's flight path is heading East to West 30 miles North of me, while this plane came from the South heading North. Also, pretty much once a month or so, a pair of A10 Warthogs fly over or near our house. Last month, we had a real treat with 4 of them directly over the house, better than an air show.

So I'd like to setup 4 cameras on my tower focused skyward and have them try to catch clips of planes. I'll be looking at your work to see if I can also match those with flightaware.

[robotastic]

Doing a vision only approach would be really cool. A lot of the interesting planes do not have their ADS-B transponder on. The two systems could actually work well together. My system ends up generating a really nice, labeled dataset. I put some initial scripts / notebooks together for building ML models that can classify the different types of aircraft. https://github.com/IQTLabs/SkyScan/tree/main/ml-model/script...

[jhugo]

Since 2020-01-01, ADS-B is a requirement in a lot of US airspace (FAR 91.225). Turning it off is allowed for govt / intelligence / law enforcement / military only. Many countries have similar requirements.

People often think an aircraft is flying with transponder off because it doesn't appear on FR24/FlightAware. In fact these companies allow blocking aircraft from their service; this is why ADS-B Exchange is better.

[motohagiography]

Not a pilot, but played with ADS-B tracking several years ago, and my impression was below something like 4-5000' the transponder wasn't required to transmit location. This meant that surveillance aircraft (usually single engine propeller craft and helicopters) didn't send GPS, only the fact that it was in the air.

[jhugo]

Yeah. It's a requirement in a lot of US airspace, but not all airspace. Even at low altitudes it's required near major airports though.

Surveillance aircraft, if operated by a government entity, would not be required to transmit anyway. (Though they may choose to for safety purposes if it doesn't compromise the mission, just as the military often do in busy airspace.)

[Naracion]

If turning ADSB off is only allowed for government / military / intelligence airplanes, would using a CV algorithm to capture these airplanes be against the law?

Recently there was a post of Google satellite cameras capturing a B-2 Stealth Bomber showing up on Google Maps [1]. Would such planes be captured by a vision system only, and would that be of concern to the government that might be trying to keep it undetected?

1: https://www.google.com/maps/place/39%C2%B001%2718.5%22N+93%C...

[brokenmachine]

I don't see a B2 at your link?

[Naracion]

Oh wow, they removed it. I apologize, I simply shared the link that had been shared before in December 2021. I should also have taken a screenshot.

Here is the HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29627105

Here's a Techradar post on this: https://www.techradar.com/news/eagle-eyed-redditor-spots-a-f...

[aqfamnzc]

In fact, ADS-B E has an option to filter only aircraft not shown on other sites :)

[mod]

I also have military planes flying over frequently. I live in the Ozarks, and they seem to enjoy flying quite low through the valleys.

I'm sure some people don't like the noise, but I love seeing the planes so close.

[punnerud]

You could use the ADS-B data for training your vision solution