esp32 - support for paragliders in air

[chegewara]

I am currently working on cool project. Since we are in beta test stage and my client announced his product in social media i asked him if i can show what we are working on.

The project will help paragliders in the air to make decisions.
Paragliders are using thermals (hot air) to fly long time (sometimes many hours) and big distances, in Switzerland where there are pretty Alps this hobby is very popular. To do paragliding, paraglider pilots need current info about weather and wind which can change frequently.

In rare cases, weather patterns change and pilots will find situations when they have to land or change their landing spot because of meteorological conditions. Not realizing these weather changes can cause severe accidents.

Device we are working on is a ground station which acts as a gateway that will transmit current weather data with LoRa module to personal devices like skytraxx. Furthermore our ground station will receive position data from these devices with information like current position, speed, heading, climb/sink etc. Whenever we are receiving pilot position info, we will forward it to global network. This network is then used by other manufacturers, to transmit paraglider, sailplane and helicopter (and more) positions to other flying objects to support their decisions and help to avoid crashes.

Technologies used in this project:
- esp32 with specialized LoRa chip,
- http client to provide wifi credentials,
- https client to OTA update,
- aws-iot to send data to aws over mqtt,
- aws lambdas.

Here are screenshots from free arduino application that show our stations and pilots transmiting over it. First image shows flight path, and second shows distance of received pilot position information, and hard to believe it, about 50km from pilot to ground station.