Flight Spotlight enables you to see flights in realtime by subscribing to updates to a geographic area. It can display live manned and unmanned air traffic on a 3D globe and additionally display geo-fences etc. In the context of UTM / U-Space you can identify drone traffic using Network Remote-ID, accept feeds for broadcast Remote-ID data and plug in live ADS-B or other air-traffic data. From an unmanned aviation perspective, currently there is ASTM Network and Broadcast Remote-ID standards and they are implemented, as other standards are released, they can be enabled as well.

The live feed and the identification data is processed using a complementary server application called Flight Blender. Flight Blender can fuse and stream manned and unmanned flight data using multiple technologies: ADS-B, Radar, FLARM etc. Network Remote-ID capabilities are also provided by Flight Blender as a specialized module.

Features

This software is compatible with all ASTM and EuroCAE upcoming standards for UTM / U-Space

• Geofencing display compatible with EuroCAE ED-269
• Display Network Remote ID via connections to DSS using Flight Blender
• Display ADS-B and other traffic using streamlined JSON format using a Flight Blender backend
• Upload JSON based flight declarations and/or mission plans from ground control stations.

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Screenshots

Initial screen

Declared Flights

All data is in 3D + time

Self host / Installation

Docker and Docker Compose files are available for running this on your own infrastructure. To install a production server please follow our Installation Guide.

This project uses Node JS and Express JS, a Tile 38 and Redis server, and can connect to a DSS instance. If you are using a DSS instance, you will need a JWT token to connect to the airspace. For that, you will need a approved UTM / U-Space OAUTH server (e.g. Flight Passport).

1. In the console execute the following command git clone https://github.com/openskies-sh/flight-spotlight
2. Enter the directory cd flight-spotlight
3. Copy the sample .env file: cp .env.sample .env
4. Open the .env file and fill out the credentials nano .env
5. You will need help to fill out all the links, since this is associated with Authentication, in short, it will ask you to point to a Flight Spotlight or any other OAUTH2 provider for credentials. (See below for non-Docker Installation)
6. Finally run the installation by typing docker-compose up

Test run

Once you have the Docker container running, you can follow the instructions below to “subscribe” to flights in a AOI:

1. Navigate to http://localhost:5000/spotlight in your browser to launch the application. You should see a globe and a control to input a Area of Interest (AOI).
2. Copy paste the sample GeoJSON AOI from the importers folder in the Flight Blender repository
3. Click the Stream flights button. This subscribe you to the flights in AOI.

Openskies stack

Flight tracking data can be submitted to Flight Spotlight by an Display provider like Flight Blender via the accompanying software like Flight Launchpad, for more information see the diagram below

Logo source

Hatchful