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README.md

Advisory Circular

This is a twitter bot that alerts you when any aircraft is circling. You can see it in action at @SkyCirclesLA.

![Example tweet](Screen Shot 2019-12-13.png?raw=true "Example tweet")

Prerequisites to running the bot

Set up a Pelias instance containing information for the geographical area you're interested in. See https://github.com/pelias/docker and if you're lucky the projects folder will have a predefined project that covers the area you want. I run one using the los-angeles-metro project.

Get an API key for adsbexchange.com. See https://www.adsbexchange.com/data/ If you have a receiver and feed them data, they'll give you a key for free. Alternately, find another data source of realtime (or not) aircraft data and massage it into a form that the bot can work with.

Get access keys for a twitter account. Follow the instructions at botwiki.

Running the bot

Put your adsbexchange.com API key and twitter keys in secrets.yaml.

Create an initial history database: echo '{}' > advisory-circular.db

Install node dependencies:

npm install

Compile the clojurescript:

npx shadow-cljs compile script

Run the bot:

node out/script.js --url https://adsbexchange.com/api/aircraft/json --lat <lat> --lon <lon> --radius <radius>;

Specify your geographical region of interest by specifying a circle at <lat>, <lon> with a radius of <radius> miles.

The bot will run once. The adsbexchange.com API only provides instantaneous positions, so the bot will have to run many times and collect some history before it's able to detect any circles.

while :
do
  node out/script.js --url https://adsbexchange.com/api/aircraft/json --lat <lat> --lon <lon> --radius <radius>
  sleep 10
done

Do not run the script with a large radius, or adsbexchange.com will ban your IP. I use a radius of 40 miles.
Do not run the script more ofen than once every 10 seconds, or adsbexchange.com will ban your IP.

To do

If we don't have neighbourhood or locality (just county), try to use the locality of a nearby venue. E.g. "2 miles from Glendale."
Solve the issue of needing a differently sized buffer zone for different airports--2 miles distance from LAX is still practically inside the aiport. Add list with custom airport coords and radii? Get access to OSM polygons and compute our own distances?
Lookup registration info. Possible sources: FAA, adsbexchange.com, janky-ass basestation.sqb's that have been passed around for a decade.
Add type information to tweet status, e.g. "Eurocopter AS350".
Use Wikipedia graph to rank landmarks? More inbound links to a page = higher significance?
Add support for Mastodon/ActivityPub.
Generate our own maps instead of using adsbx's? The adsbx map isn't always in sync with the data from the API.
Run at global scale!