This is a reliability firmware release, not a flashy scene release. The goal is to make the existing tracking path steadier before the next bigger backend step lands.

What changed:

• More tolerant API path - the box handles provider hiccups, stale responses, and partial flight data more gracefully.
• Stronger flight lookup - callsigns that change shape, delayed route data, and upstream disagreements are less likely to knock tracking off course.
• Steadier individual flight tracking - tracked flights should get stuck less often and recover better when a provider sends old or incomplete data.

The free individual flight tracker backend is the next bigger step and is coming in v1.07. v1.06 is the cleanup release that makes that path more dependable.

Mostly under-the-hood work this week. v1.05 isn't about new visible features — it's the foundation that makes the next few releases possible. You'll feel it as faster data, fresher routes, and fewer ghost disconnects.

What changed:

• Faster overhead data — the Overhead Scanner now updates in near-real-time instead of waiting on a fixed refresh interval.
• Redundant data path — a secondary feed is wired up alongside Airplanes.live so the box keeps tracking if the primary has a hiccup, with smarter handling when sources disagree.
• Cleaner tracked-flight rendering — leaner data on the wire frees up cycles for the matrix.
• Smarter route lookups — the box self-corrects when a flight's route info goes stale.
• Fresher route cache — flight numbers and route metadata update more often.
• Tighter network hygiene — fewer false disconnects, faster pickup of new patches.
• More resilient first-boot — the handoff from the production flasher is sturdier.

What this isn't: v1.05 doesn't add new user-visible scenes. The bigger feature work (live mode for tracked planes, night mode, alerts, specific plane alerts, most-tracked view) is in active development — see the Roadmap cards below — and is targeted for v1.07+.

v1.05 has shipped through OTA. If your box has not picked it up yet, use Settings → Firmware → Check for update.

Patch for the issue a few of you reported in the Hangar — Departure Board would briefly blank for ~10 seconds when the upstream feed returned an empty response. The renderer now treats empty responses as "hold last frame" instead of clearing the matrix.

• Fix: empty schedule responses no longer clear the display
• Fix: small wrap issue on long flight callsigns
• Improvement: lower memory footprint in Departure Board scene

OTA goes out tonight — your box will pick it up automatically.

The Mach 2 is officially in production. To say thanks to the early supporters, the first 20 boxes ship at $369 — code BVJ00HHNBPHJ auto-applies if you click through the promo bar at the top of the site.

Once those 20 are gone the price returns to standard. No countdowns, no fake urgency — just a real limit because each box is built by hand.

Goal: a scene that pulls whichever aircraft the global tracking community is watching most right now and renders its position on your matrix — not just what's overhead, but what the world is collectively curious about.

How you'll see it: the top tracked aircraft rotate through your matrix on a configurable dwell, with a small callsign + altitude readout in the corner.

What it feels like: a search-and-rescue heli over the BC coast, a delayed transcontinental that picked up a thousand watchers mid-flight, the occasional head-of-state jet. A tiny window onto whatever's holding humanity's attention in the sky right now.

Scene will be opt-in and disabled by default — turn it on when you want a quieter version of "the news through pixels". Targeting a later firmware release.

Big update. The Overhead Scanner now smooths motion between data updates, which makes traffic feel like it's actually moving across the sky rather than teleporting.

• Smoother motion between updates
• New altitude-band color ramp (configurable)
• Filter by aircraft type from the dashboard (jet / prop / heli)
• Fixed: rare crash on certain callsigns

If you already own an original FlightTrackerLED box, the Drop-In is the upgrade path: keep your maple enclosure, swap the brain. You ship me back the old controller, I ship you a new Mach 2 board pre-flashed with the latest firmware, and you pop it into the same frame.

How the swap works, briefly:

• Order the Drop-In from the store (verification at checkout — original-owner only).
• I email a prepaid return label for your old controller.
• Your new Mach 2 board ships within ~3 business days, pre-paired with your account so it boots straight into setup.
• Open the back panel, unscrew two M3s, lift out the old board, drop in the new one, reconnect the matrix ribbon. ~5 minutes.
• Run through the browser setup wizard once and you're on the latest firmware (currently v1.06) with OTA updates from there.

No new enclosure, no new sale price — just the parts that needed updating.

Goal: follow individual aircraft. Add tail numbers (N12345) or callsigns (UAL2293) to a per-box watchlist. The matrix flashes a small marker and — if you've got Alerts on — pings your phone when a watched aircraft enters your overhead window.

Tail number vs callsign:

• Tail number reliably identifies a specific aircraft across days, routes, and pilots. Use this if you want to catch one particular plane.
• Callsign identifies a scheduled flight on a given day. Use this if you want any flight on the route, regardless of which physical aircraft happens to be assigned.

Real-world uses already coming up in the Hangar: catching a partner's inbound, watching a vintage warbird based at the local field, or just following a route that's been a quiet curiosity for years. Watchlist will be per-device at launch; multi-box sync is on the longer list.

Goal: get a notification when something interesting happens overhead, without having to babysit the matrix.

What you'll be able to subscribe to:

• Emergency squawks (the standard aviation distress codes)
• Military traffic
• Watchlist hits — your own tail numbers and callsigns (see the next card)
• Rare-bird flags — vintage props, custom-tagged jets, and other oddities worth looking up for

Channels (planned): web push, email, and an on-matrix flash. All independently togglable per category. Default state will be off — alerts only fire when you've explicitly opted in to a category.

Configuration will live at Settings → Alerts.

Goal: a brightness curve that follows local sunrise and sunset, plus an optional "quiet hours" window where the matrix sleeps regardless of light level. Set it once, the box manages itself.

What you'll see: brightness eases through twilight into the dark hours and back up to dawn — no hard cutoffs, no jarring transitions.

Quiet hours: optional override (e.g. 22:00 → 07:00) where the matrix dims to off regardless of where the sun is. Useful if your box lives in a bedroom or you just don't want a glow at 3am.

Thanks to everyone in the Hangar weighing in on the curve shape — leaning toward the soft easing over linear and stepped variants. Configuration target: Settings → Display → Night mode.

Small one. Some routers were taking long enough to come back up after a power blip that the box would give up reconnecting. It's now more patient — backs off and keeps retrying through extended outages.

Goal: keep what's on your matrix matched to what's actually overhead in near real-time, instead of refreshing every minute or so.

Rollout strategy: rather than gating Live mode behind an opt-in toggle, the plan is to ship it on by default for every Mach 2 — no fallback, no toggle, no settings hunt.

What you'll notice when it ships: overhead traffic will feel alive. Aircraft that currently "pop" between snapshots will glide. Departure Board will update the moment a flight pushes back, not on the next refresh tick.

Status: the v1.05 infrastructure release laid the foundation this depends on. v1.06 strengthened the API and lookup path, and the next backend step is targeted for v1.07.

Cleaned up the policy page with plain-language order processing times, return windows, and what to do if your box arrives damaged. Nothing changed materially — just easier to read.

Subtle but nice — Departure Board now tints the flight number with a per-airline accent, so a row of UAL flights looks visually distinct from a row of DAL flights at a glance. Configurable from the dashboard if you want to override.

Right now Departure Board pins to one airport. The plan is to let you cycle through up to 3 airports on a configurable rotation — useful if you live between two hubs or want to keep tabs on a destination.

Status: scoped, designed, not started. Coming after the v1.05 and v1.06 reliability work — most likely v1.07 or later.

The foundation. v1.00 is the firmware that powered the very first Mach 2 boxes off the bench — every box now ships with the latest firmware (currently v1.06) and OTA-updates from there, but this is where the line started.

Scenes shipped at launch:

• Overhead Scanner — live aircraft data from Airplanes.live, rendered to your local sky window
• Departure Board — flight number, gate, and status feed for one configurable airport
• Individual Flight Tracker — pin a specific flight and follow it across legs and days

Setup: browser-based wizard at setup.flighttrackerled.com. No app, no account required. Up and running in just a few minutes.

Connectivity: Wi-Fi with auto-reconnect after router reboots. OTA update channel established for everything that comes after.

Controls: brightness, scene rotation, and per-scene config from the on-device dashboard.

v1.00 is the version that started it all. Everything in the log above is built on top of this.