Airwaves OS — Website

The marketing site for Airwaves OS — a free, open-source operating system that turns a Raspberry Pi and a software-defined radio into a complete aviation & maritime listening station. Flash it, plug in an SDR, and decode ACARS, VDL-2, HFDL, ADS-B, satellite and ship traffic out of the box.

Features

• Cinematic, layered hero — procedural SVG night/day "listening station" scene with scroll- and pointer-driven parallax (no raster art, crisp at any resolution).
• Live SDR spectrum waterfall — a canvas-rendered spectrum display that retunes as you hover the signal list.
• Scroll-driven airband tuner — the nav frequency readout sweeps the VHF airband (118.000–136.975 MHz) as you scroll, beside a live UTC clock and a decoded-traffic ticker.
• Light & dark themes — defaults to the visitor's system preference, with a manual toggle; accents drawn from the Airwaves logo gradient.
• Real content — the seven signal families (ACARS, VDL-2, HFDL, ADS-B, SATCOM/Inmarsat, SATCOM/Iridium, AIS), the open decoder toolkit (xng, acarsdec, dumpvdl2, readsb, rtl_airband, and more), data-aggregation network, and supported hardware.
• Early-access modal — collects signups (email, experience level, comments) via Netlify Forms.
• Polished, responsive, accessible — scrollspy navigation, full mobile layouts, and prefers-reduced-motion support throughout.

Tech stack

• Next.js 14 (Pages Router, static export — output: 'export')
• React 18
• Plain CSS with custom properties (no UI framework); fonts via next/font (Archivo, Instrument Serif, IBM Plex Mono)
• Canvas + SVG for all motion graphics — zero animation libraries

Development

npm install      # install dependencies
npm run dev      # start the dev server at http://localhost:3000
npm run build    # static export to ./out

Project structure

components/   HeroScene, Waterfall, SiteNav, SiteFooter, Ticker, EarlyAccessModal
lib/          useFx (scroll/parallax/theme hooks), fonts, gtag, earlyAccess
pages/        index.js (home), about.js, _app.js, _document.js
styles/       globals.css (the full design system)
public/       logos, icons, OG image

Deployment

The site is a static export hosted on Vercel and served at airwavesos.com.

vercel --prod    # deploy the production build

The early-access form posts to Netlify Forms (the collector lives on a companion Netlify deployment); submissions appear in that site's Forms → early-access dashboard. Point NEXT_PUBLIC_FORMS_ENDPOINT at a different collector to change where they land.

License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 for now — the final license is still being chosen.

About

Airwaves OS is created and sponsored by Airframes, the open aviation & maritime data platform. Aviation and maritime are first on the dial; the long-term goal is every radio hobby. Contributions welcome — open an issue or PR.