WHAT IT DOES - GET A KIT - ASSEMBLY - FIRMWARE - SETUP - THANKS
Blipscope is a small open-source flight radar for your desk. It sits on a 1.28" round display and shows live aircraft around your location in real time — pulled from public ADS-B data — so you can glance over and see what's in the sky above you, where it came from, and where it's headed.
- Live radar view — aircraft plotted around your location, with fading trails, heading triangles, and altitude-based colour coding.
- Tap to inspect — touch an aircraft to open a detail card with callsign, type, operator, registration, route, altitude, speed, and a photo. Pin one to keep tracking it.
- List & stats screens — swipe between the radar, a list of everything in range, and at-a-glance statistics.
- Tail-number watchlist — get a phone notification (via ntfy) whenever a specific aircraft flies over.
- Emergency squawk alerts — highlights aircraft broadcasting 7500/7600/7700.
- NTP clock & auto-dim — keeps accurate time and dims itself at night based on your local sunrise/sunset.
- Over-the-air updates — pulls new firmware automatically from GitHub Releases, so it stays current without plugging in.
- Configurable range & display — set your centre point and scan radius in km or miles, and toggle the on-screen elements you want.
The easiest way to build a Blipscope is to grab a kit. It includes the display module, the redesigned enclosure parts, and everything else you need in one box — no hunting around marketplaces for the right components, and the hardware is guaranteed to match the firmware and the enclosure.
Buying a kit is also the best way to support continued development of the project. Thank you 🙏
Blipscope's enclosure has been completely redesigned, so the build steps live in the project wiki rather than here in the README:
The wiki walks through the full build with photos. We recommend skimming the Setup & Usage section below before you start, so you can test the hardware before everything is closed up.
Kits ship with firmware already flashed, and the device keeps itself up to date over the air. For most people there's nothing to install.
If you want to build from source or hack on it yourself, the firmware is here in this repo:
- Install VS Code with the PlatformIO IDE extension.
- Restart VS Code and open this repository folder — PlatformIO pulls in the dependencies automatically.
- Plug the board in via USB-C and hit the upload button (→) in the bottom status bar.
If the board doesn't reboot into the new firmware automatically, hold the BOOT button, press RESET once, then release BOOT. If an upload fails, double-check the board selected in the status bar, try a different USB port, and make sure your cable supports data (some USB-C cables are charge-only). More on PlatformIO here.
On first boot, Blipscope broadcasts its own WiFi hotspot. Each device has a unique name like Blipscope-A1B2C3 — the exact name is shown on the screen during setup. Connect to that hotspot from your phone or laptop and a configuration page appears automatically (open a browser if it doesn't). Enter your WiFi credentials and hit save; the device restarts and joins your network.
If the hotspot doesn't appear straight away, give it a moment. If it still hasn't shown up after 30 seconds, leave the WiFi settings on your device and go back in to force a refresh.
Once it's on your network, the config page is reachable from any device on the same network at the address shown on screen — http://<device-name>.local (for example http://blipscope-a1b2c3.local).
There you can set:
- Location (latitude and longitude) — the centre point of your radar.
- Radar radius — how far the scan extends, in km or miles (capped at ~222 km / 138 mi to stay within data rate limits).
- Display options — toggle the on-screen elements and aircraft info fields.
- Watchlist & alerts — tail numbers to watch and the ntfy topic to notify.
- OpenSky credentials — your client ID and secret (optional, but recommended).
The config page is available any time the device is on WiFi, so you can tweak settings whenever you like.
Blipscope uses OpenSky Network's free API for flight data. It works without an account, but making one (it's free) raises your daily request limit from 400 to 4000, which makes the live view far more accurate. Grab your client ID and secret from your OpenSky account settings and enter them on the config page.
That's it — once configured, you'll have a live view of everything flying over your location. Enjoy
Blipscope is built on the wonderful Micro Radar project by Anthony Sturdy. Anthony designed and open-sourced the original device — the concept, the enclosure, and the firmware this project grew from. None of this would exist without his work, and we're hugely grateful he shared it with the world. Go give the original repo a star. 🌟
The original Micro Radar was itself inspired by therealhacksaw's desk radar.
Blipscope is maintained by Valar Systems.
Blipscope is released under the Open Community License (OCL v1) — see LICENSE for the full text. In short: as a non-commercial user you're free to use, copy, modify, and hack it however you like, and to share derivatives under the same share-alike terms. Commercial replication requires a separate business or repair license. The aim is to keep the project open and repairable while preventing straight commercial cloning. Learn more about the OCL here.