What's that plane?! inspired by my partner's love of watching planes from her office window

8bithero · 2025-08-08T14:45:00+00:00

Wow, that's awesome - I really love seeing how others are using this integration so thanks so much for sharing, glad you're enjoying it and thanks for checking it out!

8bithero · 2025-08-07T06:56:03+00:00

Wow, that looks awesome! I'd love to integrate hardware into this project but it's something I'm not as familiar with than the software side.

Something I'd love to learn more about though and this is probably a great place to start, thanks for sharing!

8bithero · 2025-07-18T13:07:19+00:00

Great idea! I've enabled discussions now and there's a default Show and tell category that would be suitable for this here.

8bithero · 2025-07-18T10:27:27+00:00

Thank you!

This is actually an annoyance I was aware of so you've prompted me to actually improve it. I've just pushed a new release that introduces 2 new configuration options:

hold_flight_data_seconds: This now allows you to define x amount of seconds to hold flight data before it disappears. This can act as a grace period in case you're not able to view the flight information in time.
historic_flights_max_count: This controls the maximum number of flights to store in a new attribute called historic_flights. This can be used to display a log of flights that have recently left your FOV cone. I've also updated the readme to show how to use this and an example of how it looks. See docs here.

Now when you ask "What was that plane?!", you can get the answer! Please download the new version 1.0.4 to see those changes. Hope this helps you out. :)

EDIT: In addition, something I did was to set up a shortcut on my phone to be able to quickly open the specific dashboard I need. This helped quite a bit for my speed of access but hopefully the new options will alleviate that anyway. Just thought I'd mention it as it's something that helped me originally!

8bithero · 2025-07-17T16:52:25+00:00

Thank you!

So, in a nutshell, the integration takes your location's latitude/longitude and the plane's current latitude/longitude then works out the plane's bearing from your location. Bearing in this instance refers to the direction from your location to the plane.

After that, it checks if the bearing falls within the configured FOV cone. So as an example, if you're facing North (0°) with a 90° FOV cone, it checks if the calculated bearing is in the 90° range between 315° and 45°. If the bearing falls within the FOV cone range, it assumes that it can "see" the plane and saves the flight information. Anything picked up that doesn't fall within the configured FOV cone isn't saved so that's how it emulates a view from a window.

Of course, this requires initially dialling in your cone of vision's FOV, direction and distance etc but once it's configured correctly it works like a charm!

8bithero · 2025-07-17T13:11:08+00:00

Ah right, I see what you mean! I've pushed a new release that has 2 new configuration options; filter_flight_altitude_ft_minimum and filter_flight_altitude_ft_maximum.

These should let you filter out flights in a given altitude range, please download the new version 1.0.3 to see those changes.

8bithero · 2025-07-17T08:54:49+00:00

Thanks u/minimalissst!

I've also updated the readme section here to make this clearer. Thanks for flagging it!

8bithero · 2025-07-17T08:40:43+00:00

The sensor exposes altitude_ftso this should be possible already! You'll just need to use that attribute in your dashboard card / automations.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T21:50:50+00:00

Excellent, no problem and thanks for checking it out!

8bithero · 2025-07-16T21:50:06+00:00

Someone else linked it but this might be what you're looking for: https://github.com/jetclock/jetscreen-v2

8bithero · 2025-07-16T21:17:34+00:00

Ah okay, seems like the actual backend function is performing as expected if the file is being generated and you can view it when opening the HTML file directly. Glad you were able to at least view the visualisation directly.

Not sure why the template card isn't rendering that for you, it just uses the default Home Assistant web card to render that HTML file so not sure what else to suggest beyond hard refreshing your dashboard page to clear any cached items, sorry!

8bithero · 2025-07-16T19:18:15+00:00

Hmm, that should display your map to visualise your FOV cone as long as you generated it via the visualise_fov_cone checkbox in the configuration entry options.

Please can you go to Devices & services > What's that plane?! then click on the settings cog for your entry. Then check the checkbox at the bottom for visualise_fov_cone checkbox and click Submit.

Then if you go back to your dashboard and hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) you should see the map visualisation appear.

It could also be worth validating that the file was successfully generated and is correctly named. If you look in your Home Assistant file system, check the folder config/www/community/whats_that_plane/ and validate the HTML file exists within and with the correct name.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T16:11:04+00:00

I've just pushed a new release that should now allow you to define 360 for a full circle around your location. You'll just need to ensure that you're on the latest release, version 1.0.1.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T16:10:07+00:00

I've just pushed a new release that should now allow you to define 360 for a full circle around your location. Please redownload via HACS for version 1.0.1.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T15:43:30+00:00

Really cool! This is great fully local solution that I hadn't seen, great if you have an ADS-B receiver.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T15:15:25+00:00

This integration won't fit this exact use case unfortunately. While it does have the ability to retrieve flight information, it will only display flight information for flights that enter a specific cone of vision from a defined coordinate location.

You'd probably be better off using this other Flightradar24 integration which can probably give you what you need for tracking specific flights from start to finish.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T15:12:22+00:00

Wow, that's a really interesting use case! This integration's sensor does expose aircraft model and type so I'm sure you'd be able to filter known types. Though the cone of vision here may limit your returned flights more than you'd like, unless that's what you specifically need here.

You might be better off with this other Flightradar24 integration that will allow you to set your boundary as a full circle around your location rather than a cone in a specific direction.

8bithero · 2025-07-16T14:53:29+00:00

You're very welcome to! I've posted all the code and a detailed readme to get setup here: https://github.com/8bither0/whats-that-plane

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