Phosphor-green radar vibes, powered by Lockyer Labs.
SkyWatcher was born out of wanting to know what aircraft was heading over low so I could get outside in time to see it! Its a Windows desktop radar tool for live plane spotting direct from your very own ADS-B feed.
It connects to your PiAware setup (dump1090 JSON feed), alerts you when an aircraft is inbound at low altitude,
and logs unique aircraft in a collector’s logbook style.
Designed to be simple, fast, and fun — just install, configure your feed, and look up!
- 🎯 Live radar view with phosphor-green styling
- 📡 Alerts for aircraft heading toward your location
- 📒 Logbook of unique aircraft you’ve spotted
- 🟢 Optimized for PiAware / dump1090 JSON feed
- 💾 Data can be exported as CSVs for easy keeping or further processing if required
- Support for other feed formats (Plane Finder, FR24, etc.) if people are interested.
- Currently I am limited to testing on PiAware with FlightAware, but will happily look to help support other JSON formats if I can get them.
- Download the ZIP from Releases, unzip anywhere writable (or your Desktop)
- Double-click SkyWatcher.exe. App data is stored in %LocalAppData%\Lockyer Labs\SkyAware Watcher. No admin rights required.
- Configure your PiAware IP in settings (the same IP as you’d use for your local FlightAware map).
- Add your longitude and latitude.
- Start watching the skies 🚀
- Built in C# / WPF
- Uses local writable data storage (logs)
- No spam/ads and none of your data leaves your computer
- Complementary data (like aircraft images, manufacturer info) is pulled from the internet
This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- The source code is not open source.
- Modification, decompilation, or reverse engineering is not permitted.
- Redistribution for commercial purposes, resale, or inclusion in other projects is prohibited.
- 2E0LCX - Big thanks for the help with testing.
- hexdb.io - Thanks for the great API that supplies data that isn't present on the ADSB signal.
© Lockyer Labs – All rights reserved.