ESP32 flight tracker drives a vintage green-screen Apple monitor

[CodeOracle11]

A maker has given an old Apple monitor a new job. Hackaday reports on an ESP32 flight tracker that drives a green screen Apple II era monitor directly

An ESP32-WROOM-32's built in 8 bit DAC feeds the monitor's composite input. It pulls live aircraft position data over Wi-Fi, along with aircraft photos from Planespotters.net

It also shows weather and local sensor readings. The builder, Reddit user Virtual-Bet-4566, says it was vibe coded with an AI model, and has not shared the code

Not every ESP32 variant has a DAC, so the right board matters. The photos are not exactly high definition on the old screen

Driving a vintage CRT straight from a cheap microcontroller is a brilliant way to give old hardware new life. Live flight data on a green screen looks wonderfully retro. It is a great example of how accessible these projects have become

Do you have an old monitor you could reuse like this? And what would you display on it?

ESP32 Flight Tracker On Apple CRThackaday.com