ESP32 Flight Tracker Shows ADS-B Data on a Green-Phosphor Apple CRT
A vibe-coded ESP32 flight tracker stands out by drawing its aircraft data on a vintage green-phosphor monitor from the Apple II era.
Source: Hackaday
The screen is the star of this project, which uses an ESP32-WROOM-32 to pull ADS-B flight data over wifi. The board fetches aircraft positions and flight details, including aircraft photos from Planespotters.net when they are available. What makes the build work is the chip's 8-bit digital-to-analog converter, which drives the composite input of an old Apple monitor. Not every member of the ESP32 family includes this feature, and the author notes that the range of differences between variants is large enough that ESP32 may be better thought of as a brand of microcontroller. Because composite video needs little power, the dev board is wired directly to the monitor.
The author openly says the software was vibe-coded with the help of an LLM. Flight tracking apps of this kind appear often in online posts about AI-generated code, but this one is notable for its display choice. The application also reportedly includes weather and local sensor readings, all controlled over wifi. The author does not plan to share the code, arguing that anyone can prompt an LLM to build something similar.
Composite output from the ESP32 family has appeared in earlier projects, which may explain how the model knew to use it. Still, the combination of modern wireless data and a glowing green CRT gives the project its appeal. The story was first covered by CircuitDigest.
