An Alaska-based maker sees your flight tracker and raises you with a two-for-one: a flight-tracking, aurora borealis-photographing, roof-mounted setup.

Pi devices all the way down

A Raspberry Pi 4 wearing a PoE HAT is the brains of the operation, while a Raspberry Pi High Quality Camera wearing a fisheye lens looks up and captures amazing light shows in the Alaskan night sky. Raspberry Pi-compatible sensors for radio and for visible light tell the camera when to kick in and start photographing the sky.

Weatherproofing woes

Weatherproofing this project was a significant challenge. A transparent acrylic dome keeps the weather away from the camera; for a little extra condensation protection, the maker sprinkled a packet of silica gel (the little white bags you get in new shoe boxes) inside the enclosure tube. They also spent time designing 3D printed trays so that the other electronics can slide tidily inside the weatherproof tube, which has an industrial-grade screw-on cap to keep everything dry. The maker painted all the black plastic white to try to keep the electronics inside cool in the sun.

Flight tracking

The FlightAware Pro Stick (the blue thing in the photos that looks like an old USB drive) is compatible with PiAware, an open source software solution which makes aircraft data accessible to everyone. PiAware is considered the easiest way to setup an ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast) flight tracking receiver, and it gives you access to SkyAware, a web-based map showing all aircraft currently being tracked by your ADS-B receiver.

Alaskan sky scenery

I’m not sure you’d see much if I rigged this up on my roof in gloomy England, but the maker has captured some amazing shots of the Northern Lights. I’m also nowhere near a flight path, so that ADS-B tracker would be awfully quiet. There are loads more photos capturing the build process on the maker’s imgur post, so dive in if you want the nerdy details.