SkyView AMOLED round 1.75

[Vlad Belayev]

Hi guys,
for those of you here who follow this development, a new version 006 is now available.
More details here

https://github.com/slash-bit/SkyView-AMOLED-round-1.75-TFT_eSPI/blob/main/Documentation/Release%20VB006.md
There are a few hardware related changes like new battery management, as well as Bluetooth changed to NimBLE stack.
There are also some UI improvements, such as external SoftRF device battery indicator.

Tested with Moshe MB163 T-Beam.

I am working on a complete documentation from start to finish , instead of parts in release notes. 

[Marco Zonca]

Hello,
I like a lot your Skyview, I started working on "T-Boom" project where is included your Skyview as probably you already read about it in another my post.
Today I had around 3h of paragliding tandem flight with it and a T-Echo. It worked but I have some things to say:

•  On SkyView I had NO ALARMS of possible collisions (with my LedRing I had more than some) ;
•  The distance on radar looks like is wrong (or on T-Echo is wrong, or both) I mean on T-Echo the distances are around  two time more, i.e. on T-Echo was 1200m and on SkyView 600m;
• Mostly of the time all paragliders (arrow aircrafts symbology) around me was RED, I think means "same" altitude as me; in reality they was not. I think the layers "below"=green, "same"=red and "higher"=blue are to be recalibrated with less differences;  from my point of view should be like these: > -50 && < +50 = same, <=-50 = below, >=+50 = higher; an intermediate layer would be even better as per:

  if (nmi_relVertical >= 150){
    schemaAlt="HIGHER";
  }
  if ((nmi_relVertical > 50) && (nmi_relVertical < 150)){
    schemaAlt=HIGHMEDIUM;
  }
  if ((nmi_relVertical >= -50) && (nmi_relVertical <= 50)){
    schemaAlt="SAME";
  }
  if ((nmi_relVertical < -50) && (nmi_relVertical > -150)){
    schemaAlt="LOWERMEDIUM";
  }
  if (nmi_relVertical <= -150){
    schemaAlt="LOWER";
  }

• On SkyView webpage setup I read "voice yes/not" but I guess no buzzer or loudspeaker are present on the AMOLED board.
• A few time I noted on radar view instead of "arrows" (aircrafts) I have seen a small circle with a point inside: what is it?
• Are other symbols that could be visible in some circumstances?

Thank you.
:-)

[Vlad Belayev]

Thanks for the feedback , Marco. Good that you tested it for extended amount of time.
In my testing on the ground and also in the air I didn't notice any issues with the distance reported either on Radar screen or info card.
In the early days of the project I have walked to known distance from the transmitting device and checked the distance and the direction to the target, it was always accurate. I daily see local ADS-B traffic on the SkyView and that's within expected distance to their  flight path .

There is no currently simulation of LEDring implemented as such, but did you see a red circle around the other aircraft and  a line from the center of radar to that aircraft? That's basically a warning, to something that is within a threat height difference and distance.
The height difference and distance depends on aircraft type. For paragliders it is closer , but for larger aircrafts is further away.

This is more of traffic awareness , rather than collision alerting.

There are several different icons for different aircraft types, please check the Release notes, there are a few screenshots of the different traffic scenarios.

The circle with a dot, as far as I remember was a default aircraft type ( if it can't identify) many versions ago, that was now replaced with the arrow. Are you on the latest version?
Lastly, there is  no speaker indeed on this board. I am planning to implement something, as I have found a small but powerful speaker that fits the case. The original implementation of Voice in SkyView is by using i2s. I tried to add i2s amplifier , but its clanky and doesn't fit well.

I like Moshe's version of analogue Voice in T-Beam with minimal components required. I would need to implement similar and  drive the speaker from PWM GPIO pins.

PS I will test the 50m vertical separation as colour coding. It may be a better option, currently its 150m.

Thanks,

[Moshe Braner]

"That's basically a warning, to something that is within a threat height difference and distance.  The height difference and distance depends on aircraft type. For paragliders it is closer , but for larger aircrafts is further away. This is more of traffic awareness , rather than collision alerting."

- The original SkyView had traffic advisories when an aircraft first entered the area, and nothing later (other than it being shown on the "radar" screen).  I thought that was terrible, since the main point of FLARM (and SoftRF) is collision avoidance.  So I modified SkyView to give warnings in response to the PFLAU sentences from FLARM/SoftRF.  I saw the SkyView as a display device, leaving the decision on what traffic is a threat to be made by FLARM/SoftRF.  SkyView's job is to display the information already in the PFLAU and PFLAA sentences.

- And, in SoftRF, the original algorithms for deciding what traffic is a collision threat were too simple, and not suitable for circling sailplanes.  I put a lot of work into an algorithm that projects circling (or straight) paths.  The decision on whether to issue a collision warning (PFLAU with alarm level > 0) is based on time to collision, similar to what FLARM promises to do.  Thus, a fast-moving airplane coming at you will generate an alarm from farther away than a slower aircraft.

- Regarding altitude separation, my algorithm takes into account that fast-moving gliders may zoom up (typically when entering a thermal).  It computes a rough approximation of the altitude it may gain by slowing down to (sailplane) thermaling speed.  Starting at 100 knots, for example, that can be significant.

Note that you can select my "latest" algorithm (separate from the "latest" protocol), or a simpler one based on distance or "vector" (straight-line paths), or none, but I recommend "latest".  My views may be influenced by my flying sailplanes, not paragliders. I hope my algorithm works for paragliders too, but let me know your experience.

[Marco Zonca]

I did today a ground test regarding distances displayed on radar view comparing T-Echo and Vlad's SkyView. Here 4 pictures will show clearly (to me) that T-Echo is wrong: on T-Echo every ring is 5km, the edge of the screen should be 10km (at that level of zoom), so the paraglider shown is around 6.2 km from my position. On SkyView the same aircraft is 3.1.km away, both text and radar screen; the confirm come from https://glidertracker.de/ viewer that confirm the paraglider is at 3.1km away from my station (where I am).

About Vlad's SkyView I would like it just work as "simple" display of SoftRF nmea PFLAU and PLAA sentences, including, of course, display alarms at the 3 levels etc. My last LedRing stand alone version works very well, it lacks of a sky view display (radar) I would like Vlad's SkyView does (my personal wish).

[Nick Bonniere]

On the standard SoftRF Skyview and T-Echo, the distance indicated is the width of the display, not the distance from the center. So the diameter is 10 km, not the radius, and the icon shown looks about right for 3 km. I didn't like this distance indication, so I re-compiled it for my version to show the range from the center which makes more sense to me.

https://github.com/lyusupov/SoftRF/wiki/Badge-Edition.-Screen-pages

Full scale of the radar screen is currently set to 4 km. Thus, the 'radar' coverage area is 2km left, 2 km right, 2 km ahead and 2 km behind - all relative to your SoftRF device location.

[Marco Zonca]

Thank you Nick, I understood what was going on.
I agree with you the distance indication of T-Echo is poorly intuitive, and it could be improved simply just changing shown numbers, maybe like Vlad's SkyView does...

[FrankT]

Yesterday I flew with the 006 firmware connected to Moshe Braner MB162 ADSB 'SoftRf'. I connected both SkyDemon with Wifi and the SkyView AMOLED 1.75 with BLE to it.

Both spot on, and worked great.

Frank

Op woensdag 6 augustus 2025 om 23:51:53 UTC+2 schreef Marco Zonca:

[Marco Zonca]

Hello,

today I had a few hours monitoring OGN/Flarm and ADS-B traffic receiving some tens of aircrafts and hundreds of paragliders. An helicopter was at 540, many airplanes over 1100, some between 4500 and 8000. I discover AMOLED shows no more than 4 numbers, so it could be "impossibile" to know if the airplane is i.e. at 10500m or at 1050m. Maybe I have to filter those over 10000m so I will no have this kind of Hamlet-like doubts...

In the air I had a visual alarm with the helicopter (green circle around it, green line connecting my position and the same circle) even if it was 400m below me with much more speed, far around 3km, so no chances to have a real collision with it I think.

During the same flight session I had today, I confirm I do not have visual alarms with no ADS-B aircrafts (paragliders), so no circles or lines similar the helicopter one. But I had many alarms directly from T-Beam buzzer and strobe, that I considered real collision situations.

Yes, it worked great.

[Vlad Belayev]

Nice, thanks for monitoring the traffic and feedback.
Yesterday, I was also trying to monitor "Air Force1" on my SkyView and ADSB, as they flew above my house , but missed it , they were definitely on ADS-B, but probably not transmitting frequently enough. :-) Oh well, next time.

I can see why SkyView is not displaying 5-digit altitudes correctly — the display sprite is not large enough. That’s easy to adjust. I also noticed it was showing altitude differences in feet, most likely because it is running in mixed units mode. This can be switched to meters by setting Units = Metric in the Web UI.

The visual alert (a blue circle with a radial line from the center) turns red as traffic gets closer. However, the current thresholds are quite broad: it triggers from 3 km horizontally and 1000 m vertically. This alert is not linked to the $PFLAU / $PFLAA alarm levels (since SkyView is not using them at the moment). Instead, it is a locally generated alert based on horizontal and vertical separation. It should therefore be considered more of an early traffic awareness alert than a collision alert.
I’m open to feedback on whether this type of alert is useful, and what you think would be reasonable distance thresholds.

Currently, this alert does not activate for paragliders. It could be enabled, and might be useful for non-paraglider pilots. But for PG-to-PG encounters, it’s less practical, as we often fly very close together and such alerts would trigger constantly.

I am also considering using $PFLAA as the trigger for visual alerts. I’d like your input on which display style would be clearer:

• A circle around the target aircraft with a radial line pointing to it from the center.

• A more “LED ring”-type indicator.

• Or possibly both.

One complication is that not all SoftRF devices present $PFLAA alarm levels correctly — particularly Linar’s version of SoftRF, which is widely used in paragliding on the Card (SenseCap) devices. These often set alarm levels too high without reason.
Since I maintain a fork of SoftRF for Card devices, I could work on improving this. My current plan is to have SkyView always trust the $PFLAA alarm level and display it accordingly.

I hope this explanation makes sense.

[Marco Zonca]

Hello,

your system for visual alerts (circle and line) is very good, I would not change it. But for sure should be linked to the $PFLAU / $PFLAA alarm levels so we could have all synchronised: visual (circle and line), buzzer (beeps or voice) and strobe light, for all kind of aircrafts including PG to PG.

You could make an option to exclude PG to PG alarms if you wish. I am a PG pilot and when I have a soaring flight with many other PG around I keep the instrument off (really not needed in that conditions) but when I have a tandem flight or a XC flight than I want to have any kind of alarm on regarding everything in the air...