An inventive open-source project called “NES Radar” now allows the original Nintendo Entertainment System console to display live flight traffic on your television. Developed by [k6lcm], the system uses a standard ROM cartridge and a carefully constructed cable to receive real-time aircraft position data from a nearby computer.
Transforming Classic Consoles into Live Trackers
The “NES Radar” project, which is open-source under the GPL on GitHub, repurposes the vintage Nintendo Entertainment System into a live air traffic scope. Despite its evocative name, there is no actual radio direction or range-finding involved on the console itself, nor any radio at all, as reported by Hackaday. Instead, the ingenuity lies in how data is transmitted to the 8-bit platform.
Users can input a four-letter International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) code, such as KLAX or KATL, directly on the connected controller. The software then displays aircraft actively flying near that airport as moving targets on the television screen. It functions for airports worldwide, allowing enthusiasts to observe approach traffic at their local field or monitor activity at busy hubs. However, the project is limited to displaying eight sprites, meaning highly congested airports like KATL, one of the world’s busiest, will not show all available traffic.
How Real-Time Flight Data Reaches the System
The core of the “NES Radar” functionality relies on an external computer rather than the console directly accessing the internet. According to XDA Developers, the nearby computer runs a Python script that fetches aircraft positions using Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) and free APIs. This script then sends the real-time flight details to the gaming machine.
The critical connection is established through the second controller port on the system, which is ingeniously used as a serial port. A specially constructed cable, equipped with a 5V FTDI USB serial interface, facilitates the transfer of data from the computer to the cartridge. This method avoids the need for hidden modern hardware like ESP32 or PicoW chips within the cartridge, a detail Hackaday noted as an initial suspicion. The project builds on creator [k6lcm]’s previous work, “c64u-radar,” which performed a similar data fetching trick but utilised the Commodore 64 Ultimate’s LAN port for connectivity.
