Living near an airport isn’t for everyone. But for some, like software engineer Cameron Paczek, the unique environment offers inspiration for very unique projects. Paczek’s latest creation, Skylight, harnesses the power of a Raspberry Pi 5, a radio antenna, and a projector to listen for aircraft signals as planes pass over your house and then instantly projects their real-time paths across your ceiling exactly as you hear them soaring above.
What makes Skylight extraordinary is that it uses its own data collection method rather than simply pulling data from flight-tracking services like Flightradar24. The project leverages an affordable USB radio antenna, in this case the RTL-SDR Blog V4, to capture ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast) signals emitted by commercial planes, then uses a Raspberry Pi 5 to decode and render them.
