NES Radar Turns a 1985 Nintendo Into a Live Air Traffic Scope
SMRTR summary
A 40-year-old Nintendo Entertainment System is now tracking live air traffic. Developer Levi Maaia's project, called NES Radar, lets you type any airport's four-letter code into an original NES controller and watch real aircraft appear as tiny 8-bit targets on your television screen.
The trick is that the NES doesn't connect to the internet itself. A nearby computer pulls live flight data from adsb.fi, trims it to a nine-nautical-mile radius, and feeds it to the console through a simple serial cable plugged into controller port two.
The screen can display up to eight aircraft at once, each showing altitude, speed, and descent rate. Type in a code for Los Angeles International, and that little ring fills up fast.
The project requires an NTSC NES, a flash cartridge, and a specific USB adapter. Everything, including the ROM, server code, and wiring diagrams, lives on GitHub, free for anyone curious enough to try it.
SMRTR provides this summary for quick context. The original article belongs to TechEBlog.
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