A personal
experiment
Lisbon Finals started as a simple question: could a Raspberry Pi on a terrace automatically photograph every plane that flies overhead — and post it to Instagram without any human input?
The answer, after months of iteration, is yes. What began as a weekend project became an independent autonomous station and citizen science project — local evidence, not official airport data — tracking noise levels, flight routes, airline patterns and atmospheric data from a Lisbon terrace facing the LPPT approach path.
Three layers,
zero human triggers
A small radio receiver picks up the signals every commercial aircraft is required to broadcast — giving us the flight number, altitude, speed and exact position in real time. A microphone simultaneously measures the noise level on the terrace. The system only triggers when both conditions are true: a plane is close enough, and loud enough.
A 4K camera continuously streams footage of the approach path. Every frame is instantly rated by an intelligent scoring system — only shots where a plane is clearly and sharply visible make the cut. The best frame is then paired with live flight data and sent to an AI to write the caption.
The chosen photo is processed by an AI image enhancer that reconstructs fine detail at 4× the original resolution — about 15 minutes on the station's small onboard computer. It is then automatically scheduled, avoiding quiet hours at night (11pm–7am). Everything goes live on @lisbon.finals with the AI-written caption and flight data — no human involved.
1090 MHz
decode
trigger
capture
scoring
validation
4K upscale
caption
Graph API
Hardware
in service
Upgrades
in progress
The station is continuously evolving. New sensors are still being integrated to capture even more — from live ATC communications to real-time air quality monitoring.
An environmental sensor will measure CO₂ and volatile organic compounds over the terrace in real time — correlating each aircraft passage with a concrete air quality reading. A first for a private monitoring station in Lisbon.
Environmental · SGP30A second radio receiver tuned to Lisbon tower's frequency will capture live communications between pilots and air traffic control — linking each aircraft to the exact instructions they received in real time.
RTL-SDR · 118.1 MHzOpen the record
to everyone
They talk
about us
«Eu acho que merecemos ter um pouquinho mais de transparência e de sossego.»
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Read the article →«Ολόκληρο το σύστημα είναι πλήρως αυτόνομο, λειτουργεί μόνο του.»
Read the article →"The measurements are completely neutral and I think the figures speak for themselves."
«O objectivo é esse: uma informação que está disponível para todos. Associações, cidadãos, apaixonados de aviação.»
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