Ever looked at your ceiling and thought, "You know what this room needs? The entire night sky."
Well, someone actually built it.
Meet Skylight, a beautiful open-source DIY project that transforms an ordinary ceiling into a living window to the sky above your home.
Not a prerecorded star animation. Not another decorative galaxy projector.
The actual sky above your location, recreated in real time.
And the result is absolutely mesmerizing.
Here's what Skylight can do:
Live aircraft tracking: Watch planes flying over your home, leaving glowing trails across your ceiling.
Real stars and constellations: See the night sky calculated for your exact location.
Moon and planets: Follow their positions as they move across the sky.
Satellite tracking: Watch satellites, including the International Space Station, pass overhead.
Flight information: Discover aircraft details and where passing planes are heading.
Customizable visuals: Adjust colors, brightness, orientation, and the information displayed.
Phone controls: Configure everything directly from your smartphone.
And here's the really interesting part.
When an actual aircraft passes over your house, its corresponding light moves across your ceiling.
You can hear the plane outside, look up, and watch its virtual counterpart glide overhead.
So how does it work?
The hardware is surprisingly simple.
1. Raspberry Pi
A small computer runs Skylight and renders the sky visualization.
2. An upward-facing projector
Projects the generated sky onto your ceiling. A relatively inexpensive 1080p projector is sufficient for a dark room.
3. Optional USB radio receiver
An RTL-SDR receiver picks up ADS-B signals transmitted by nearby aircraft.
This allows Skylight to track planes directly, without relying on an internet flight-tracking service.
Don't have a radio?
No problem. Skylight can use a free online aircraft data feed instead.
4. Your smartphone
Once the software is running, open its control panel on your phone.
Set your location, calibrate the projection, choose what to display, and enjoy your very own indoor observatory.
And the best part?
Skylight is completely free and open source under the MIT license.
No subscriptions. No proprietary hardware. No expensive smart-home ecosystem.
Just a Raspberry Pi, a projector, and a little curiosity.
The project also includes optional camera tracking for automatically following aircraft, although that requires additional hardware.
Why do I love projects like this?
Because it's technology doing something wonderfully unnecessary and beautiful.
Nobody really needs a real-time visualization of the International Space Station slowly crossing their bedroom ceiling.
But once you've seen it, an ordinary white ceiling starts to feel like a terrible waste of space.
And imagine falling asleep while the actual stars, planets, and airplanes above your home quietly move across the room.
We spend so much time staring down at screens.
Someone finally gave us a good reason to look up.
Now I just need to find a ceiling I'm willing to sacrifice to another DIY experiment.
Explore Skylight and see the real demonstration:
https://skylightceiling.com/
Source code and installation guide:
https://github.com/cpaczek/skylight
Raspberry Pi setup instructions:
https://github.com/cpaczek/skylight/blob/main/pi-setup/README.md
#Skylight #RaspberryPi #DIYProjects #OpenSource #NightSky #FlightTracking #CreativeTechnology
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