Capsule Radar — Live Flight Radar Desk Gadget

See real aircraft flying around you — live, on a round touch AMOLED. Open-source, and you flash it from your browser.

Overview

Capsule Radar is a 3D-printed desk gadget that shows live air traffic around your location. It pulls nearby aircraft from a free online ADS-B feed over Wi-Fi and plots them on a glowing round radar scope, rotated by heading and colour-coded by altitude, with an animated sweep and fading trails. Tap any aircraft to see its full details — even where it's flying from and to.

It's a finished, polished build: a capacitive touch UI, four selectable themes, a boot splash, audible alerts, battery and real-time-clock support, idle auto-dim, and a built-in web page to configure everything. No coding required — flash it straight from Chrome or Edge, then enter your Wi-Fi from your phone.

The enclosure is a round "scope-orb / pocket-watch" form factor: a matte shell with a knurled tactile ring, a crown on top, a side USB-C port, an integrated speaker, and an engraved logo. No soldering — the Waveshare board carries all the electronics.

💡 Already have this board? It can do more! The same Waveshare ESP32-S3

Functions (what it does)

Live air traffic

• Real aircraft from a free ADS-B feed (airplanes.live, with adsb.lol as a fallback), refreshed every couple of seconds.
• Aircraft are drawn as glyphs rotated by their heading and colour-coded by altitude, with fading trails and an animated radar sweep.
• Out-of-range traffic appears as edge markers pointing in its direction.
• A memory-safe streaming parser caps the number of aircraft so busy areas never overload the device.

Touch & details

• Tap an aircraft to open a detail card: callsign, type, altitude, vertical speed, ground speed, distance, bearing, squawk, and the origin → destination route (looked up online and cached so the same flight isn't re-queried).
• Swipe between three circular views: Radar, List, and Stats.
• On-screen zoom button cycles the display range (10 / 20 / 30 / 50 / 100 km) and shows the current value.
• Long-press the screen to cycle the visual theme.

Four themes (remembered across reboots)

• Phosphor — classic green-on-black radar scope: rings, sweep, altitude colours.
• Capsule / Orb radar — green grid with glowing "ball" blips emitting sonar-style rings and edge arrows for distant traffic.
• Amber CRT — warm amber monochrome scope.
• Military — night-vision green scope.

Status HUD

• Wi-Fi indicator (turns amber if the data feed is failing), in-range aircraft count, clock, battery % (charging bolt; turns red when low), and the date.

Sound (built-in speaker)

• A soft ping when a new aircraft enters range, and an urgent double-beep for emergency / military contacts. Volume, mute and a test button are on the web page.

Power & time

• Battery aware (optional LiPo): on-screen charge %, low-battery warning, and a slower polling rate on battery to save power.
• Real-time clock: keeps the time and date across power loss, so the clock is right even before/without Wi-Fi; it re-syncs from the internet (NTP) when online.

GPS auto-location (optional — "‑G" board variant)

• If you use the GPS version of the board (Waveshare ESP32‑S3‑Touch‑AMOLED‑1.75**‑G**, with an onboard LC76G GNSS + antenna), the radar can set its own centre point — no need to type coordinates. Tick "Use GPS for location" on the web page and a satellite icon appears in the status bar (amber while acquiring, green once it has a fix); the radar then auto‑centres on your real position, with a GPS line on the Stats view too.
  The standard (non‑GPS) board works exactly the same — you just enter your location manually, which is also used as the fallback until a fix is acquired.
  Tip: plug the antenna into the GPS u.FL connector (the board has a separate one for Wi‑Fi), white patch facing the sky, and allow a few minutes outdoors for the first cold‑start fix.

Smart dimming

• Idle auto-dim after a configurable time with no touch.
• Face-down sleep: flip the device over to turn the screen off (motion sensor).

Configuration & updates

• A built-in web page at http://capsuleradar.local/ to set the centre point (pick it on an interactive map), display range, theme, brightness, sound, idle-dim timeout, reset Wi-Fi, and update the firmware over Wi-Fi.
• All settings persist on the device. First boot opens a Wi-Fi setup hotspot.

What you need (Bill of Materials)

The Waveshare board is the only electronics you need to buy. No soldering.

Installation — flash the firmware

You don't need any toolchain.

Option A — flash from your browser (easiest)

1. Open the web flasher: https://socquique.github.io/capsule-radar/ (Chrome or Edge on desktop).
2. Plug the board into your computer with a USB-C data cable.

3. Click Install, choose the serial port, and pick Erase + Install the first time.

Option B — download the binary

• Grab CapsuleRadar-esp32s3.bin from the GitHub releases and flash it to offset 0x0:

   

  esptool.py --chip esp32s3 write_flash 0x0 CapsuleRadar-esp32s3.bin

Option C — build from source with PlatformIO:

pio run -e esp32-s3-amoled-175 -t upload

Tip: if the board isn't detected, hold BOOT, tap RESET, then release BOOT, and try again.

First-time setup

1. After flashing, power the device. On first boot it creates a Wi-Fi hotspot named CapsuleRadar-Setup.
2. Join that hotspot from your phone; a setup page opens. Enter your home Wi-Fi.
3. The radar connects and real aircraft appear within seconds.
4. Open http://capsuleradar.local/ on any device on the same network to fine-tune:
   • Centre point — tap the interactive map or drag the pin (or type lat/lon).
   • Display range, theme, brightness, sound (volume / mute / test), dim-screen-after timeout.

   • Reset Wi-Fi to move it to a new network.

      

Updating over Wi-Fi (no cable)

Once it's running, you can update wirelessly:

1. Open http://capsuleradar.local/update (also linked from the config page).
2. Upload CapsuleRadar-ota.bin (the app image from the GitHub release — not the merged flash image).
3. A progress bar runs and the device reboots into the new firmware.

(Builders can also use PlatformIO: pio run -e esp32-s3-amoled-175-ota -t upload.)

Using it (quick reference)

Troubleshooting

• No aircraft showing — check Wi-Fi (the HUD Wi-Fi icon is red if disconnected, amber if the feed is failing) and that your centre point is set near you. Quiet areas/times simply have little traffic.
• Can't reach capsuleradar.local — use the IP shown on the Stats view instead.
• No sound — check Volume isn't 0 / Mute is off on the web page, and that the speaker is connected. Use the Test ping button.
• Lost/changed Wi-Fi — open the web page → Reset Wi-Fi, then rejoin CapsuleRadar-Setup.
• GPS not locking — GPS is only on the "‑G" board. Make sure the antenna is on the GPS u.FL connector (not the Wi‑Fi one), with a clear view of the sky; the first cold‑start fix can take several minutes.