Today, I spent some time giving my local ADS-B Air Traffic Monitor a significant upgrade. The dashboard was already tracking live flights overhead and calculating distance and altitude, but I wanted to make the data richer and more interactive.
Here is a quick overview of the new features added to the dashboard today:
Static Route Mapping
While ADS-B data provides incredible real-time telemetry (altitude, speed, heading), it rarely includes origin and destination information natively.
To solve this, I integrated a custom routes.json database into the Python backend. Now, when a flight broadcasts its callsign (like SKW5334), the backend checks the database and injects the known departure and destination airports directly into the data feed. The frontend dashboard now explicitly displays these routes on the aircraft cards, giving a much clearer picture of where the planes overhead are coming from and going.
Active Military Aircraft Widget
Living near an active flight path, it’s always fun to spot military aircraft on the tracker. I wanted a way to highlight these specifically without having to hunt through the entire grid of commercial flights.
I added a dedicated “Active Military Aircraft” widget right below the main statistics bar. The app now parses the telemetry flags (dbFlags and mil indicators) to isolate military planes. If there are any military aircraft overhead, the widget dynamically generates a list of badges showing the specific aircraft types (e.g., C-17A Globemaster, KC-135R).
Clickable Wikipedia Lookups
To make the dashboard a better learning tool, I turned the aircraft types on the Military widget and the Unique Aircraft page into clickable links. Clicking any of these badges now instantly opens a new tab executing a Wikipedia search for that specific aircraft. It’s a great way to quickly pull up the specs and history of a plane flying over the house!
UI Polish
Finally, I made some minor CSS tweaks to tighten up the interface. The “Close Proximity Alert” box—which flashes when a plane gets within 4 nautical miles—was taking up a bit too much vertical space, so I compacted the padding and margins to make it sleeker and less intrusive.
Overall, the dashboard is feeling much more polished and data-rich. It’s amazing how much utility you can squeeze out of a simple Raspberry Pi ADS-B receiver!