Configuration

SensitivityAll flights that have trajectories that come within 1000 meters of the house are augmented with additional web data and logged; but which of these should actually make it to the screen?

Distance (ft)This is the forecasted minimum distance to the house if a plumb-line were to be dropped from the plane, based on the flight's first-seen trajectory; some forecasting is needed here so that enough time is available for the message to be displayed before the flight is directly overhead. Flights outside this distance will not be displayed.

feet
Altitude (ft)This is the altitude of the flight at the time it was first seen; flights higher than the selected altitude will not be displayed.

feet
Distribution of flights in dayAfter saving updated filter parameters on the distance and altitude, a histogram displaying the distribution (and quantity) of flights that might be expected throughout a typical day can be seen here, based on the last 7 days of data.

Sleep

Display Flight Messages
Turn On Time

Turn Off Time

Controls

Minimum time between screens (sec)When the messages are coming quickly - for instance, due to a histogram, or multiple interesting insights about a recently seen plane - this specifies the minimum time in seconds between subsequent screens, to account for both your time to read and the time for the screen to update. Note that this will be overridden if a new flight comes in within that time, since that needs to be displayed immediately for it to be useful.

sec
Estimate Time for Next FlightWe can optionally display a message about the expected time gap until the next flight.
Additional InsightsWith the past-logged flights, we can begin to see interesting tidbits about each flight: was it flown with a different plane last time, is it later than usual, and so forth. This allows you to indicate whether you want to see all those insights, just one randomly selected insight, or none.
Minimum Tracking Altitude (deg)Planes that are below this altitude will not be projected on the hemisphere.

degrees
Hemisphere modeIndicate whether hemisphere should be set to have only LED enabled, only laser enabled, or both (meaning that LED will dim when nearby flight is above minimum tracking altitude).
 LED Color
Gamma Color CorrectionA value of 1 means no correction; a value between 1.8 and 2.2 is typical.

Personal Message

Clear messageboardClears the messageboard with all empty characters.
Display Personal MessageInterleaves the personal message during selected times in between flight messages, if enabled.
Personal MessagePersonal message (of up to 6 lines, 22 characters per line); supported characters. Non-printable characters can be provided by surrounding character code with braces, i.e.: {63}.
Personal Message Turn On Time

Personal Message Turn Off Time

Arduinos

Enable RemoteWhen checked, a subprocess to connect via bluetooth with the Arduino controlling the remote control is initiated and maintained.
Test RemoteSend a test message to remote.
Enable ServosWhen checked, a subprocess to connect via bluetooth with the Arduino controlling the laser pointers and servo motors is initiated and maintained.
Servo Tests:
Ordinal TestPoint laser at each of 0, 90, 180, 270 and hold for a second with different colors.
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Sweep TestSweep red laser around 360 degrees.
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LED Color TestCycle thru LED colors.
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LED Brightness TestDim the selected color from 100% down to 0%.
Verbose Arduino LoggingRecord more details in arduino logs.
Log Serial TrafficRecord all data sent from / to RPi over Bluetooth connection, as seen by RPi.

Overall Logging and Restarting

Clear log filesCheck this box to reset the service verification, backup, and stderr log files; it will revert to unchecked once the reset has completed.
Rolling log file max line countMaximum number of lines to include in arduino and messageboard rolling logs.

lines
Uptime Report DaysNumber of (rolling) 24-hour periods to include in uptime report.

days
Log JSONsCheck this box to log all json files received by the radio into YYYY-MM-DD-dump_json.pk, and all FlightAware jsons into YYYY-DD-MM-fa_json.pk; logging allows later simulation for debugging and development, but shortens the life of the MicroSD card and slows the flight tracking main loop, so should only be done if needed.
End ProcessEnds the current process; a new instance will automatically start within a minute, so this provides an easy way to pick up new code.
Reboot RPiTriggers soft reboot of Raspberry Pi (so long as instance is still running to pick up this command).
Code ProfilingWhether to enable code profiling upon messageboard.py startup; for stats file to be produced, a "graceful" exit (rather than an unexpected exit) must be done. Profile can be found at splitflap/messageboard_stats-YYYY-MM-HHDD.profile

Histograms

Generate where?To which device should these histograms be displayed - the splitflap display, or the web interface?
Which histograms?Which of the many histograms would you like to see?
How much historyHow much history would you like to include? Note that in all cases, the time horizons are rolling; that is - "7 days" is actually 168 hours of data, so it might include partial days at the beginning and end.
Max screen count per histogramOnly relevant for the histograms displayed to the splitflap screen, this indicates how many of the potentially voluminous data elements of a histogram should be displayed. For instance, there might be over 100 different airlines; should we display just the top screen of those, or multiple screens? Elements that are culled are grouped together into an "Other" category.
Data summaryOnly relevant for the histograms displayed to the splitflap display, should the histogram include a line describing about all the data included in the histogram?