panpancoucou

About the project

The project

panpancoucou is an autonomous sky surveillance station. It detects, records and automatically classifies everything crossing its field of view — aircraft, satellites, birds — to isolate and objectively document unidentified aerial phenomena.

No sensationalism. No hasty conclusions. Just a camera, algorithms, and a methodical approach.

Who am I

Web and desktop application developer, I strive to design and build highly intuitive specialised tools to meet each person's specific needs. This mini-station system allows me to hunt down the unexplained (using legitimate data) and help everyone become familiar with the concept of UAP.

A collective endeavour

panpancoucou is part of a worldwide movement of instrumented sky surveillance:

  • Galileo Project (Harvard) — academic network of multi-spectral sensors led by Prof. Avi Loeb
  • Sky360 — Austrian open-source project for automated all-sky stations
  • Sentinel News — French-language media for rigorous UAP/PAN reporting

panpancoucou is not affiliated with any of these projects, but shares the same philosophy: observe, measure, document. Source code, data and methods are transparent.

How it works

Wide-angle camera pointed at the sky, 24/7

A weatherproof WiFi camera continuously films the sky. The field of view covers about 104° — a wide section of sky.

Automatic motion detection

An algorithm analyses the video feed in real time. Any moving object triggers a recording and automatic classification (bird, aircraft, satellite, or unknown).

Cross-referencing with databases

Each detection is checked against OpenSky (real-time air traffic), Celestrak (satellite orbits), and weather data. If an object matches a known aircraft or satellite, it is automatically identified.

Star and planet overlay

A sky map is overlaid on the live video feed, allowing visual verification of whether a light matches a known celestial body.

Daily human review

Every event is manually reviewed: validated or rejected. Only events confirmed as unexplained are kept and documented.

Secure infrastructure

The station runs autonomously. Data is synced to a central server via an encrypted tunnel. Access is by invitation only.

The daily workload

The system detects and records continuously, but it can't filter everything on its own yet. Every morning, I manually sort through dozens of events — birds, aircraft, reflections, clouds — to keep only what truly matters. Meanwhile, I develop new features (real-time overlays, satellite correlation, advanced classification). Here's what would lighten the load:

The entire project is self-funded — development, hardware, hosting. If you want to help move things forward:

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