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Helipad Buddy — Aviation Sensor & Weather Console
An open-source Android app that demonstrates MSK Developers' capability in aviation UX, sensor fusion, meteorology, and field-ready mobile engineering.
Challenge
Pilots and drone operators need fast situational awareness using device sensors, but many apps are cluttered, ad-supported, or unsuitable for operational context.
Solution
Helipad Buddy v2.2 delivers GPS with EGM96 MSL altitude, QFE/QNH, GNSS health, a live compass, VSI, turn and load, METAR or Open-Meteo weather, winds aloft, runway and wind calculators, sun and moon tools, widgets, and CSV logging in an iOS-style cockpit interface with no ads or tracking.
Engineering Highlights
- Calculation audit. Pressure altitude, QNH, and density altitude moved onto the ICAO Standard Atmosphere; MSL altitude now uses the real EGM96 geoid, checked against NGA reference points to within half a metre.
- QFE on every phone. A source resolver falls back from the phone barometer to the nearest METAR and then to model surface pressure, and labels every value with where it came from.
- One weather source at a time. Pilots choose Open-Meteo or METAR; every tile, the QNH order, and density altitude follow that choice.
- Winds aloft. ICON, GFS, ECMWF, and GEM pressure-level data interpolated to 1,000 ft steps, with freezing level and an icing cue.
- Camera sky finder. Picks the main lens, measures its field of view from live frames, and removes compass bias with a one-tap alignment.
- Verified. Unit tests against published references (atmosphere tables, geoid, 2026 equinoxes and eclipse), lint, and stress testing on the signed release build.