{"id":1004,"date":"2026-06-02T11:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.we8chz.org\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2026-06-02T11:42:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T16:42:13","slug":"diy-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.we8chz.org\/?p=1004","title":{"rendered":"DIY Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi, my name is Kelly VandenBerg and I\u2019m a newer member of the MiRAT community from the Grand Rapids area. I hold a technician and GMRS license (KD8AIF \/ WSDI272). I\u2019m a retired Deputy Sheriff from Kent County and a huge aviation hobbyist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently completed two DIY projects that I was asked to make a post for the MiRAT community. The first project was a digital flight display board and the second was a scanner monitoring alert system. Disclaimer: I relied heavily on ChatGPT to help create both of these projects and because of that reliance, I feel like I cheated the learning process because I have no coding experience. But, from a DIY point of view, I couldn\u2019t be more happy with the way they turned out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital Flight Board<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I saw a post on social media (theflightwall.com) showing an addressable LED matrix panel that displayed real time flight information for airplanes within a certain radius of your location. I researched this and saw that the developers made their design plans open source on Github so I decided to try it on my own. The designs called for 20, 16×16 addressable LED matrix panels and an esp32 controller. After I wired power and data cables to connect the panels, here is where ChatGPT really brought this together. It wrote a script that uses a JSON file from my Raspberry Pi running ADS-B dump1090 software. The script was then uploaded to the esp32 controller and connected to wifi where it displays the JSON data. From there, the panels were configured to have an organized display of the data. There was alot of troubleshooting to format the panels. For example, the panels were displaying upside down and without a border which caused the data to be displayed in random areas. After many hours, I finally feel it’s where I want it to be. See pictures below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scanner Monitoring Alert System<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This system was developed to alert me anytime there is an emergency at the Gerald Ford Airport. Originally, I wanted only aircraft related emergencies but I ended up including events happening anywhere on the airport grounds such as medicals, fires, etc. I’m too far from the airport (without an adequate antenna) to reliably hear any radio transmission over the ATC channels so I use my Uniden SDS100 to monitor Police and Fire on the 800mhz MPSCS system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Software:<\/p>\n\n\n\n