SkyTraffic Radar – iOS TestFlight Beta for SoftRF

[Roland Emrich]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to share a small hobby project I’ve been working on for quite some time: SkyTraffic Radar, an iOS app designed to work directly with SoftRF devices via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

The main idea is to make it easy to use one or several SoftRF receivers with an iPhone or iPad and combine the received traffic into a single radar view.

Some technical highlights:

Connect up to 10 SoftRF devices simultaneously via BLE
Each connected device can be configured independently
Different supported protocols can be used on different receivers
Traffic from all connected devices is merged into one radar display
SoftRF configuration can be viewed and changed directly from the app via BLE
Designed for situations where multiple receivers/protocols are used in parallel

Here is a screenshot of the current app:

https://am-eisweiher.de/SkyTrafficRadar/App.jpg

I originally started this because I couldn’t find an iOS solution that matched what I wanted for my own SoftRF setup. It has been evolving in my own setup for roughly a year now.

I’ve now made the TestFlight beta available for free:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/Bm1CWYZP

The complete source code is also available on GitHub:

https://github.com/Adelsdorfer/SkyTraffic_Radar

At the moment this is still a hobby project and not intended to replace the existing SoftRF tools. I’m mainly interested in seeing whether it is useful for other SoftRF users as well.

If there is enough interest and feedback from the community, I may eventually release it publicly on the App Store.

I’d be very interested in feedback, especially regarding BLE compatibility, different SoftRF hardware configurations, protocols, and real-world use in flight.

Roland

[Moshe Braner]

Good work Roland.  Nice to have an iOS app.  But I wonder why you'd want more than one (or perhaps two) SoftRF devices in the same aircraft.  Given that the latest versions of my fork allow a single device to transmit and receive in more than one (up to 4!) protocols.  Although, doing that, the single device does have to listen to each protocol only part-time.