Hi everyone,
A little background - I originally bought the Espressif EchoEar because I wanted to build an AI voice assistant. I followed several guides and managed to get the wake word, microphone, speaker, and Home Assistant Assist working.
Unfortunately, at least in my setup, the hardware and response time were not quite there yet. It took too long to receive a spoken response, which made it less useful to me as an everyday voice assistant. Rather than leave the device unused, I decided to repurpose it.
It is now a self-contained ESPHome real time flight radar. It displays nearby aircraft over a local map (centered around your home as defined in Home Assistant), smoothly updates their positions, and rotates each plane icon according to its heading. Tapping a plane or its label opens a details screen with its callsign, airline, route, aircraft type, altitude, speed, and flight times.
The range, units, runway visibility, screen brightness, battery status, touch inputs, and diagnostics are all exposed as Home Assistant entities.
The included configuration was written specifically for the EchoEar v1.1, although the project could be adapted to other ESP32 devices with screens.
GitHub repository with the YAML, installation instructions, screenshots, and hardware details:
The EchoEar device I used is available here from AliExpress
I’d be interested to hear your feedback, especially if anyone tries it or ports it to another display.
I’m especially interested if someone has an idea for what to do now with the speaker and microphone with this flight radar…