Balloon Flight Visualizer

A real-time web app that tracks and visualizes global weather balloons using Leaflet.js. This project fetches live balloon data, clusters markers, and overlays flight paths and heatmaps to enhance visualization.

🚀 Features

• Marker Clustering: Groups nearby balloons for better map readability.
• Flight Paths: Displays balloon movement history with red polylines and directional arrows.
• Heatmap: Highlights dense balloon regions using color gradients.
• Weather Overlay: Cloud coverage layer from OpenWeatherMap.
• Automatic Map Adjustment: Ensures optimal zoom and centering based on balloon distribution.

Check out the live deployment: https://skysight-m86u.onrender.com/ — already hosted on Render! It takes a few seconds each time you reload to fetch new data.

🔧 Setup

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/your-username/balloon-flight-visualizer.git
cd balloon-flight-visualizer

2. Install Dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Run the Application

python app.py

By default, the Flask app runs on http://127.0.0.1:5000/.

🌍 Live Data Source

Balloon data is fetched from https://a.windbornesystems.com/treasure/. The API retrieves snapshots from the last 24 hours, identifying and grouping balloons based on proximity.

🛠️ Technologies Used

• Flask (Backend)
• Leaflet.js (Map Visualization)
• OpenWeatherMap API (Weather Overlay)
• Leaflet.heat & MarkerCluster (Heatmaps & Clustering)

📸 Global View

🤝 Contributing

Got ideas? Found a bug? Feel free to fork this repo and submit a pull request!

📜 License

MIT License