Overhead

A whole observation deck for the sky — on a $12 touchscreen.

Overhead turns a Cheap Yellow Display (ESP32-2432S028R) into an always-on air-&-space situational-awareness dashboard: satellites passing overhead, rocket launches, nearby aircraft, aviation & space weather, the solar system, a live star map, and a tonight-at-a-glance agenda — all location-aware, with an "Intelligent Focus" director that surfaces the thing worth looking at right now. Its heart: putting the awe of far-away missions on a kid's bedside table, updating in real time — "look, the ISS goes over our house in 4 minutes."

Flash it from your browser

Plug the board in over USB, pick your board variant, then click Install and choose its serial port. Flashing takes ~1 minute and erases the device.

Your browser can't do Web Serial — use desktop Chrome or Edge. Serial access was blocked — allow it and retry.

Targets: the ESP32 2.8" CYD (ILI9341) or the 5" Crowpanel Advance (ESP32-S3, 800×480). On a CYD, not sure which? Flash CYD2USB first; if the screen is sideways/portrait, upside-down, or the colours look wrong, either reflash Elegoo or fix it live in Settings → Screen (rotation / invert / R–B order). For the big panel pick Crowpanel Advance 5in. The Crowpanel 7in classic is community-tested — display, touch, WiFi and storage all verified on real hardware. The Crowpanel Advance 7in and Crowpanel HMI 5in / 502727 options are still experimental (factory-driver pins/timing, not yet hardware-verified) — flash those only if you're helping bring them up. (Not sure which 7in you have? The Advance says "Advance" on the box/silkscreen and has the metal-shielded module + STC8 backlight; the classic is the older plain "CrowPanel 7.0".) After flashing, join the Overhead-setup Wi-Fi to enter your network.

Board
ESP32-2432S028R "CYD" (2.8" ILI9341, resistive touch). ~$10–15.
Browser
Desktop Chrome or Edge (Web Serial). Won't work on Firefox/Safari/mobile.
Cable
A data USB cable + the CH340 driver if your OS needs it.

What you get

Solar System sky-dome
Solar System — what's up tonight. Sun/Moon/planets by az/el with naked-eye visibility, moon phase, rise/transit/set and the closest conjunction.
Aviation map
Aviation Wx — the sky's weather. Each airport dot is coloured by pressure (inHg) and its code by flight category; layers cycle category / cloud / wind / pressure, and zooming reveals per-field barbs + readouts.
Satellite pass
Satellites — catch the pass. Polar az/el trajectory with AOS/LOS, max elevation, a "✱ VISIBLE to eye ✱" verdict, live Doppler, and tap-chips per tracked bird.
Launches card
Launches — what's going up. Next launch with a big T- countdown, vehicle/mission/pad, and a visibility verdict ("see it from here?").
Star map
Star Map — the whole sky. ~1500 stars, constellation figures, Messier markers, planets & the ecliptic; tap to zoom, plus saved "memory skies".
Moon view
Moon — near & far side. Phase, distance, landing-site map and day/night terminator, with a hand-kept mission timeline.
Agenda sky window
Agenda — tonight at a glance. A 24h sky-window timeline (darkness, cloud, moon-up bands + event ticks), the clear-&-dark verdict, and what's coming.
Space weather
Space Wx — is the Sun acting up? Kp with history, SFI, aurora chance for your latitude, and an HF band-condition table.
Quick-jump grid
3×3 quick-jump. Every tile shows a live token (next AOS, T-minus, nearest METAR, Kp, health) — tap the status dots to open it.

Then what?

On first boot it opens a Wi-Fi setup portal; after that it geolocates, syncs time, and starts pulling live feeds. Tap the status strip to switch AUTO/MANUAL, tap a page title for its views menu, and reach the full web UI at the device's address (/ settings, /remote live screen + control, /update OTA).

Runs real HTTPS feeds on a no-PSRAM board — heap-floor-aware TLS that serves stale instead of crashing, a serialized non-blocking net task, a Wi-Fi watchdog, and a remote debug/automation API. See the repo for the engineering write-up.

Companion hardware: the Overhead Rotor — an alt/az pointer that physically slews to whatever the dashboard is tracking (flash it from here too).

Thanks: @dustinsterk — CrowPanel 7in classic bring-up (field-testing that pinned four firmware bugs) + the busy-airspace memory fix (PR #1).

Source, hardware guide & backlog: github.com/JamesDavid/Overhead · Free for personal/non-commercial use (PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0). · DE KE7AQA