Indiana Medical Flight Tracking (IMFT)

Project to track medical helicopters in Indiana. Tweeting locations at https://twitter.com/IN_MFT. Website coming soon!

Version

0.5.0

Install

Install Python, MongoDB, and Node on your respective system. On Linux:
1. sudo apt install git python3-pip zip
2. Install node
  1. curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_19.x | sudo -E bash -
  2. sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
  3. Install MongoDB
    1. wget -qO - https://www.mongodb.org/static/pgp/server-6.0.asc | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/mongodb.gpg > /dev/null
    2. echo "deb [ arch=amd64,arm64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/mongodb.gpg ] https://repo.mongodb.org/apt/ubuntu jammy/mongodb-org/6.0 multiverse" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mongodb-org-6.0.list
    3. sudo apt update
    4. sudo apt install mongodb-org
    5. sudo systemctl start mongod
    6. sudo systemctl enable mongod
Install server directory. Inside the server folder run: npm install
Install client directory. Inside the client folder run: npm install
Install OpenSky
1. git clone https://github.com/openskynetwork/opensky-api
2. pip install -e opensky-api/python
Initialize database. From within the database directory run the following commands.
1. npm install
2. node src/make-hospitals.js
3. node src/make-faa.js
4. node src/make-faa-lid.js

Challenges

Limitations on free and paid ADS-B services:
- OpenSkies
  - New quotas!!!
    - Authenticated user: 4,000 pulls/day
    - Authenticated user that contributes with 30% up time: 8,000 pulls/day
    - Pull criterial
      - 1 credit: 0 - 25 (<500x500km) (Indiana!)
      - 2 credit: 25 - 100 (<1000x1000km)
      - 3 credit: 100 - 400 (<2000x2000km)
      - 4 credit: over 400 or all (>2000x2000km)
  - Old Quotas
    - Antonymous 100 / day
    - Signed in 1000 / day (~1 poll / 90 sec)
    - Can get your data from your sensor unlimited
  - Doesn't have good coverage of Northern Indiana
- ADS-B Exchange $10 / mo
  - 10,000 / mo (~1 poll / 4.32 min)
  - Best coverage in Indianapolis
- Flight Aware
  - $20 / mo
Aircraft can come into the airspace (from outside Indiana) and already be in flight
Helicopters can hover, so if vertical speed and horizontal speed are 0, you don't know if it's hovering or not
It is difficult to determine air/ground and location status

Ground or airborn status:

Determine if an aircraft is on the ground or airborne

Airborn (easier to tell than on ground) if any of the criteria are met
- Vertical speed > 1 m/s
- Horizontal speed > 1 m/s
- True altitude > 250
Grounded:
- on-ground is true
- Aircraft is within Zone 1 of a hospital: ~ 1000 ft radius and 500 ft vertical ceiling
  - Some exceptions like Eski and Riley
- Assume that helicopters won't hover
LOS (loss of signal): No updated data for 2 minutes or 5 intervals, which ever is less

Location status

Ideally a location is set under ideal conditions. For a departure that occurs when going from grounded to airborn and for an arrival that is going from airborn to grounded. However, aircraft may enter from outside the bounding box or have a signal lost near their landing site. Actually, this doesn't matter

ToDo

Add dynamic pull rates to ADS-B logic
- If the ADS-B controller knows the quota for a 24 hour period, then pull less at night (when helicopters are not flying) and pull more often during the day (when helicopters are flying)
- Variables used by controller
  - Night is between 7PM EST and 7AM EST
  - quota: the number of requests that can be made within a 24 hour period
  - current_rate: the current pull rate (in seconds)
  - mean_rate: the number of time (in seconds) between pulls if pulls were evenly spread out during the day so quota was used completely
  - min_rate: the largest time (in seconds) between pulls (highest number)
  - max_rate: the smallest time (in seconds) between pulls (smallest number)
  - day_mean_rate: the rate we should pull at to use the rest of the quota
- Pulling logic
  - At night: If an aircraft is flying then make a request using the mean_rate time. If no aircraft are flying, set the pull rate at each interval to current_rate += Math.ceiling((min_rate-current_rate)/2);
  - During day: If no aircraft are flying pull at day_mean_rate
Fix problem with multiple trips being created when aircraft isn't moving or from receiving bad data
Require x intervals for state to change
- Use next status in flights
Fix menu not highlighting text when on page
Dockerize
Views
- Hospitals
- Aircraft
Aircraft database upgrade
- Separate aircraft database from FAA lookup. Focused on Medical helicopters adn providing additional information
- Add medical_flight tag to aircraft
- Add faa display_name
Admin page to edit all this information
Remove aircraft that are not medical helicopters

BenSDuggan / IMFT