We highly believe that project Loon implementation can be greatly improved by using directional LTE atennas so we developed a Loon tracker and antenna tracker, with this you can get a DIY antenna tracker following the nearest balloon to your location, further improvemnts comming! Our software is open-source, so you can host your own loon tracker; however, we have deployed a public API to ease this system implementation.
The API we provide is hosted at Google Firebase, remember you need to create an API token first.
Create API token for using Google Loon antenna tracker API.
or
/createToken GET Request
https://data.pointaloon.com/[email protected]
Parameters required:
- email=mail to bind with the new token.
Response: JSON with registered mail and assigned token.
Example:
{"token":"-Kp_R2BLaamqXTruCE-o","email":"[email protected]"}
Tokens without activity in a long time period will be deleted, calling /point periodically will prevent that.
/point GET Request
http://data.pointaloon.com/point?t=-KpXzvOkApAjugM8GgWe&lat=-5.4&lng=-80.7&alt=75
Parameters required:
- t=API token
- lat=latitude of antenna location
- lng=longitude of antenna location
- alt= height in meters above sea level from antenna location
Response: JSON with desired azimuth and altitude data for atenna in degrees, distance to the nearest balloon, and object Loon with balloon data (callsign,altitude,speed,postion,track,etc).
Example:
{"ant_alt":-13.044651036040841, "ant_azm":314.3787496140375, "distance":2966056.5460053235, "loon":{"alt":15788.639494763536, "lat":-11.8075,"lng":-76.2704, "name":"HBAL941","seen":1500638350, "speed":15,"track":121} }
This also will update your token last activity.
For initial postioning you need to have a minimal connection to the network, the request size is as little as 500 bytes of data.
/loons GET Request
https://data.pointaloon.com/loons?t=-KpXzvOkApAjugM8GgWe
Parameters required:
- t=API token
Response: JSON with all objects Loon detected, each object include callsign,altitude,speed,postion,track,etc from balloon.
This also will update your token last activity.
Example:
{"HBAL020":{"alt":16093.439485009936,"lat":-6.3734,"lng":-78.456,"name":"HBAL020","seen":1500760514,"speed":7,"track":203}, "HBAL044":{"alt":17708.87943331586,"lat":-3.6557,"lng":-61.919,"name":"HBAL044","seen":1500760515,"speed":16,"track":119}, "HBAL051":{"alt":15819.119493788176,"lat":-0.478,"lng":37.6499,"name":"HBAL051","seen":1500760511,"speed":6,"track":270}... }
/update GET Request
http://data.pointaloon.com/update
Refresh balloons database from flightradar24.com
Deprecated since our server call it automatically.
- Arduino/raspberry code for a DIY Loon tracker
- Guide for a simple Loon antenna tracker with Arduino
- Hardware BOM suggestion
- Ready to use solution kit
- Flightradar24.com // Loon data provider
- Don Cross's Azimuth/Distance Calculator // Geodesical calculations package
- Google Project Loon Team for their amazing work
We are neither part nor supported by Google Project Loon; furthermore, we are pleased to work with everyone.
Any contribution will be welcommed