-->September 6th, 2025<--
Thank you to GolfCharlie and Claude Code for fixing the code to work with the newly changed FAA API! They have saved a lot of time. A new image has been created and will be uploaded today and available later tonight. If you don't want or need the image, you can visit https://github.com/markyharris/livesectional and incorporate the changes into your board now.
--->September 5th, 2025<--
There has been another change to the FAA API which has again broke the map. We are currently working on this. Check back for fix. If you have the fix please post it. - Mark
I'm building two maps right now - a small one as practice and a dress rehearsal for a much larger one that has my home area.
- Just take the TIF file from the FAA and print it exactly how you want. I used uPrinting.com, and found their price was pretty good. It seemed like it wasn't that much more than buying two pre-printed sectionals and trying to mount them together. I could load the TIF at 300 dpi and set my crop box for what I wanted. uPrinting asks for 1/8" of bleed at the edge of the pages, so if you want a side that's 30 inches, you just have that side be 30.25 (30 + 0.125*2). They will give you a PDF preview with the cut line. When you approve, it is sent to your door already cropped and rolled up.
- I mounted my sectional on foam core board. To punch holes in the foam core for the LEDs, I used a Forstner bit in my hand drill. The Forstner bit is designed to cut a flat hole. It has a sharp edge that edges the circle, and a sharp ramp that flattens out the bottom. There's a small spike to center. Push the spike into the center of the airport and press slightly. Make sure to have spoil material below it. (With quarantine going strong, I had a ton of shipping boxes.)
Now I have to trace down the squirrelly ground on my breadboard. To avoid trial and error with breadboard sockets, I bought a solderable breadboard, which is hopefully going to be a bit more solid once I solder everything in place.
Sounds awesome! Please send pics of your build and certainly of the final products. We'd love to see them.
Thanks - Mark
Well, I'm at an intermediate step. There was nothing particularly interesting in the build log - I was punching holes with my Forstner bit, and I used grommets as a visual differentiator for an airport. Everything is just hot glued into place.
I did have to chase down one squirrely problem with the electricals - my LA sectional uses one 25-light strand; the NorCal sectional required two strands because I wanted to cover down from Monterey in the south up to Tahoe in the north. What I found is that I couldn't get solid enough breadboard connections in a regular breadboard, I had to use a solderable one.
Not hanging up yet, but they're working well enough to show a completed-ish build. (I do have one question I'll be asking before I have finished products, and I can shoot closeup shots of some of the slightly novel aspects of my build.)
Wow those are pretty. Nice job! Thanks for the pics. - Mark
@markyharris I'll try to reverse engineer a build log for you. I didn't take that many pictures along the way because I was using a combination of other people's work. Rough steps so far (without pictures):
- Printing, which I outsourced.
- Attaching the sectional to foam core, which was spray-on adhesive. I watched 3 or 4 photo tutorials, and did a solo version of this one from Adorama: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wIfED-zZ7Q . I didn't buy the foam cutter tool, I just used a metal ruler to get it right on the theory that a slightly ragged edge from the utility knife would disappear into the frame.
- The Forstner bit punches through foam core easily, and it was only $7.
- I mounted LEDs with hot glue and grommets around them, as described here: https://led-sectional.kyleharmon.com/ (it's an Arduino-based project, the LiveSectional software seems to have more features)
- The frame was also as recommended in #4. PictureFrames.com will custom make you a frame to 1/4" dimensions, so I made my sectional printouts to 1/4" increments. The frame is super-deep and should easily contain the electronics.
- Lots of fiddling with breadboards to run 50 LEDs with auto-dimming. I found that soldering is required.
- Clean everything up and hang it on the wall.
As soon as I clean up the wiring to my satisfaction, I'll post some pictures with the journey.
