Frank's Flight Radar¶

Frank's Flight Radar boot splash

Frank's Flight Radar turns an M5Dial (an ESP32-S3 round-screen dev board with a rotary encoder and touchscreen) into a live, standalone aircraft radar for your desk — no phone, no app, no browser tab.

Radar over the OpenStreetMap street map Radar over the offline lo-fi vector map

The OpenStreetMap street map, and the offline lo-fi vector map (coastlines, cities, and airports).

It polls airplanes.live's free, keyless community ADS-B API for real flight traffic around a home location you choose, and plots it on a radar-style display with a real OpenStreetMap tile underlay (or an offline vector map — no network needed).

What it does¶

Live radar display — aircraft plotted by position, heading, altitude, and speed, refreshed on a timer you control, gliding smoothly between updates
Three map backgrounds — a real OpenStreetMap street map, an offline lo-fi vector map (coastlines, borders, rivers, and city labels), or a plain radar scope
Rotary zoom — five range rings from 10 km to 200 km, one twist per step
Touch to inspect — tap any aircraft for its callsign, altitude, speed, heading, registration, and full aircraft type
Follow an aircraft — lock onto a plane and let the radar chase it across the map
Effortless location setup — auto-detect from your network, search by place name, or enter coordinates; store up to three favourites and switch instantly
Emergency squawk detection — 7500 (hijack), 7600 (radio failure), and 7700 (general emergency) are highlighted in red with an on-screen ring flash and an audible alert
Configurable everything — colour themes, units, flight labels, altitude/traffic filters, refresh rate, and more, all from an on-device settings menu

See the full feature list for everything, grouped by area.

Hardware¶


Board	M5Stack M5Dial (ESP32-S3, 8 MB flash, no PSRAM)
Display	1.28" round, 240×240, capacitive touch
Input	Rotary encoder (zoom) + physical button (settings/reset) + touchscreen
Connectivity	WiFi (2.4 GHz)

Where to start¶

New device, never flashed? Start with Getting Started.
Already running and want to know what a button/setting does? See Using the Device and Settings Reference.
Something's not working? Check Troubleshooting first.

A note on data sources¶

Frank's Flight Radar's positional data comes entirely from airplanes.live, a free, volunteer-run community ADS-B network — no account or API key needed. Like any community network, its coverage depends on volunteer ground receivers, so in areas with sparse coverage you may occasionally see no traffic even when aircraft are genuinely nearby. See Troubleshooting for what to expect.