A real flight on the device: callsign, type, altitude/speed, route (Lisbon → Abu Dhabi) and the aircraft photo — all looked up automatically.
A live ADS-B aircraft radar for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.75 — a round 466×466 AMOLED with capacitive touch. It pulls nearby aircraft from a free online feed over WiFi and plots them on a touch radar scope centered on your location, with live flight details and selectable visual skins.
Visual reference: open
assets/plane_radar_2.0_mockup.htmlin a browser.
| Phosphor | Orb | Amber CRT | Military |
|---|---|---|---|
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Captured from the bundled desktop simulator (the device screen is round; the square corners are off-panel).
- Live traffic from airplanes.live, adsb.fi and adsb.lol (free, non-commercial), updated every couple of seconds. Each provider is paced independently, so one refusing or rate-limiting does not stop the feed. Memory-safe streaming parser with a hard aircraft cap. Note: airplanes.live is now contributor-only — if you run one of their feeders, your radar uses their API automatically from the same network (no keys, nothing to configure); otherwise it quietly falls back to adsb.fi / adsb.lol.
- Four themes (long-press the screen to cycle, or pick on the web; remembered across reboots):
- Phosphor — green-on-black radar scope: rings, animated sweep, aircraft glyphs rotated by heading and color-coded by altitude, fading trails, emergency halo.
- Orb — green gradient + grid scope: the 7 nearest aircraft as yellow orbs emitting waves, off-range traffic as edge arrows pointing its way, orange target rings.
- Amber CRT and Military — the same scope retinted (warm amber / night-vision green).
- Touch (CST9217): tap an aircraft → detail card (callsign, type, altitude, vertical speed, ground speed, distance, heading, squawk, and origin → destination looked up from adsbdb, cached in NVS). Double-tap to cycle zoom range. Swipe between Radar / List / Stats (circular layouts).
- Boot splash + alert pings (ES8311 speaker): a soft ping when a new aircraft enters range, an urgent double-beep for emergency/military — volume & mute on the web page.
- Smooth motion: aircraft glyphs glide between polls (interpolated) instead of jumping, using cheap partial redraws.
- Top HUD: WiFi status (amber if the data feed is failing), in-range aircraft count, NTP/RTC clock, battery % (charging bolt, red when low), and the date. The Stats view footer shows how to reach the config page (
capsuleradar.local+ IP). - Battery aware (AXP2101): shows charge level, warns when low, and slows the feed poll rate on battery to save power.
- Real-time clock (PCF85063): keeps the time/date across power loss, so the clock is right even before/without WiFi; re-synced from NTP when online.
- Smart brightness: configurable idle auto-dim (no touch), and face-down sleep (QMI8658 IMU — flip it over to turn the screen off).
- GPS auto-location (optional -G board variant): the Waveshare
-Gboard has an onboard GPS (Quectel LC76G). Turn it on from the web page and the radar sets its own center point automatically, with an on-screen satellite status icon (amber while acquiring, green once it has a fix). Standard boards simply enter their location manually. - Configuration web page at
http://capsuleradar.local/— center point (map picker), display range, theme, time zone (auto-detected from your browser), live brightness slider, sound, WiFi reset, and over-the-air firmware update. Settings persist in NVS. - First-boot WiFi setup via a captive portal (
CapsuleRadar-Setup).
The reference board is the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.75: ESP32-S3R8 (8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash), CO5300 AMOLED over QSPI, CST9217 touch, QMI8658 IMU, PCF85063 RTC, AXP2101 PMIC, ES8311 audio + speaker, microSD.
The Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.43 is also supported in-tree. Same SoC, same 466×466 CO5300 panel — but a completely different pin map, an FT3168 touch controller, and no PMIC or audio codec (so no battery readout and no alert pings; everything else works).
| 1.75 (reference) | 1.43 | |
|---|---|---|
| PlatformIO env | esp32-s3-amoled-175 |
esp32-s3-amoled-143 |
| QSPI CS / SCLK / D0–D3 | 12 / 38 / 4,5,6,7 | 9 / 10 / 11,12,13,14 |
| LCD reset | 39 | 21 |
| I2C SDA / SCL | 15 / 14 | 47 / 48 |
| Touch | CST9217 @ 0x5A | FT3168 @ 0x38 |
| Battery / audio | AXP2101 / ES8311 | not fitted |
Pin maps live in src/boards/, one header per board, selected by a -DBOARD_* build flag. They are taken from the vendor board definition and then confirmed on hardware — never guessed. Shared tunables stay in src/config.h.
The 1.75″ board is in a global stock squeeze right now (even Waveshare lists it on backorder), so availability moves week to week. The official store is the reference; the Amazon links are what is actually in stock as of this writing.
| Board | Waveshare official (ships worldwide) | Amazon (affiliate links) |
|---|---|---|
| 1.75″ standard — no case; the one the printed enclosure needs | product page (backorder) | 🇺🇸 .com · 🇪🇸 .es · 🇩🇪 .de · 🇬🇧 .co.uk · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr · 🇯🇵 .co.jp · 🇨🇦 .ca — official Waveshare listing, restocking |
| 1.75″ -G — adds GPS (auto-location, heading-up) | same page, pick the -G option | 🇺🇸 .com · 🇪🇸 .es · 🇩🇪 .de · 🇬🇧 .co.uk · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr · 🇯🇵 .co.jp · 🇨🇦 .ca — official Waveshare listing, restocking · 🇺🇸 third-party, in stock |
| 1.75″ -B — the same board inside Waveshare's own case. Works, but you must open that case yourself and its shell is not the printed enclosure | same page, pick the -B option | 🇺🇸 .com · 🇪🇸 .es · 🇩🇪 .de · 🇬🇧 .co.uk · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr · 🇯🇵 .co.jp · 🇨🇦 .ca |
| 1.43″ — the second supported board | product page, pick without case | 🇪🇸 .es · 🇩🇪 .de · 🇬🇧 .co.uk · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr · 🇯🇵 .co.jp · 🇨🇦 .ca — no US listing; use the Waveshare store there |
| Battery (optional) — 3.7 V LiPo, 1100 mAh, protection board, JST/MX1.25 plug (the one I run myself) | — | 🇪🇸 .es · 🇺🇸 .com · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr (DE/UK: that exact pack is not listed — search for a protected 3.7 V LiPo, ~1100 mAh, size 102540, 1.25 mm micro-JST plug) — |
| Printed-parts hardware — 6×2 mm disc magnets + M2×5 screws (counts per case variant on the MakerWorld page) | — | Magnets, the ones I used: 🇪🇸 .es — elsewhere search "neodymium magnets 6x2mm": 🇺🇸 .com · 🇩🇪 .de · 🇬🇧 .co.uk · 🇮🇹 .it · 🇫🇷 .fr · 🇯🇵 .co.jp · 🇨🇦 .ca. M2×5 screws: 🇪🇸 .es · 🇺🇸 .com |
⚠️ Do not buy the “1.75C” (ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.75C, aluminum case): despite the name it is a different board and this firmware does not run on it.
The Amazon links are affiliate links — as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. The Waveshare links are plain links.
pio run -e esp32-s3-amoled-175 -t upload # build + flash over USB-C (1.75)
pio run -e esp32-s3-amoled-143 -t upload # ...or the 1.43
pio device monitor -b 115200 # serial logThe boot log names the board it was built for (Capsule Radar boot fw … board …) — worth checking first if the screen stays black, since the wrong board's image drives the wrong pins.
On first flash you may need to hold BOOT then tap RESET. After flashing, on first boot connect your phone to the CapsuleRadar-Setup WiFi and enter your home network — real aircraft appear within seconds.
Makers can flash without installing anything using ESP Web Tools (Chrome or Edge on desktop):
- Open the web flasher (the project's GitHub Pages site).
- Pick your board (1.75″ or 1.43″) — the wrong image boots with a black screen.
- Plug the board in with a USB-C data cable and click Install.
The flasher is built and published automatically by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/webflasher.yml) on every push to main — enable it once in Settings → Pages → Source = GitHub Actions. Tagged releases (git tag v1.0.0 && git push origin v1.0.0) also attach a ready-to-flash CapsuleRadar-esp32s3.bin to a GitHub Release via release.yml. To preview the flasher locally:
./scripts/build_webflasher.sh # build + merge into web/flash/
python3 -m http.server -d web/flash 8000 # serve (Web Serial works on localhost)
# open http://localhost:8000The whole UI is portable LVGL and runs on your computer (SDL2) — great for iterating without hardware:
pio run -e native -t exec # opens a 466×466 window (needs SDL2: `brew install sdl2`)Mouse = touch · T = switch theme · close the window to quit.
Browse to http://capsuleradar.local/ (or the device IP) on the same WiFi to set the center lat/lon, display range, theme and brightness, or to reset WiFi. Saving restarts the device to apply.
src/
config.h pins + tunables (Dénia, Spain by default)
main.cpp tasks, WiFi/NTP, web config, brightness/IMU glue
display.* CO5300 (Arduino_GFX) + LVGL bring-up
radar_view.* the radar scope, aircraft, themes
ui.* views (radar/list/stats) + detail card + HUD
touch_cst9217.* capacitive touch driver
imu_qmi8658.* accelerometer (face-down sleep)
battery.* AXP2101 battery gauge
rtc_pcf85063.* PCF85063 real-time clock
adsb_client.* airplanes.live fetch + parse
route*.* route.* origin→destination lookup (adsbdb)
sim_main.cpp native SDL simulator (not flashed)
include/lv_conf.h LVGL config (v8)
web/flash/ browser web-flasher (ESP Web Tools) for makers
scripts/ build_webflasher.sh (merge firmware -> single .bin)
docs/ hardware / data-source / architecture notes
The reference board is the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-1.75, but other boards are welcome upstream: a port contributed as a pull request (its own PlatformIO env + board header in src/boards/) gets built by the CI on every release alongside the 1.75 — the in-tree 1.43 port is the worked example to copy, and the 2.1" port below is on that path. Ports that prefer to stay independent live as forks, linked here (MIT: fork away, and tell me so I can add yours).
- Capsule Radar for the Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-2.1 by @alexzogh (STLWarehouse) — a full port to the 2.1" round LCD (ST7701), plus new features: double-tap to track an aircraft (scope re-centres on it), a clock face on idle, and the busy-airspace query-radius fix now merged back into this firmware. Ships its own binaries per release (files with
lcd21in the name are the 2.1 builds). - Capsule Radar for the Waveshare 2.8" (non-touch) by @ijord — port to the 2.8" ST7701 panel, with a smoother sweep compositor and the PNG heap-corruption fix that shipped upstream in v1.3.28. Thank you!
- Skyglass by @SilentWolf75 — an independently evolved sibling (190+ commits): shaded OpenStreetMap basemap rendered on-device and ESP32-P4 support.
Firmware / code: MIT — fork and build on it freely (keep the notice). Aircraft data: airplanes.live (free, non-commercial / educational — exactly this project; be polite with request cadence). Routes: adsbdb.com (free). Personal/hobby project. The 3D-printed enclosure is published on MakerWorld (enclosure + this firmware).