Hisense A5 e-Ing phone

Hi,

Has anyone run TopHat on one if those?
Or anything else like xcsoar etc..

S

Someone else just posted about this. Sounds interesting but proof is in the pudding....

Some guys in my club are running XCSoar on the Yotaphone 2. It is no longer made and the company went bankrupt but it was an interesting phone because it had a regular LCD screen on one side, and an e-ink screen on the other. It was configured to be able to mirror which meant the e-ink side could be used like any android phone (just a different screen.) The Yotaphone 3 was also a dual screen phone but it wasn’t a true mirror set up so the e-ink side was more limited. There are a couple of e-ink phone manufacturers with Hisense - a Chinese company - being the leader (I think they were involved with Yotaphone - a Russian company - for manufacturing) I have seen XCSoar running on the Yotaphone and the performance is very good because the screen quality is better than a typical e-reader, the processing power of the phones are much better, and asa result there isn’t as much of the screen refresh slowness and ghosting typical of e-ink screens. Another one introduced this year but I don’t think on sale yet is called the Onyx and it features capabilities to adjust screen refresh rates. I also posted about the new one from Hisense - with a colour e-ink screen. A little colour is all we need for XCSoar so I think it will be ideal. In fact, any of these e-ink android phones are just the ticket compared to modding Kobos and the like. As a bonus, they are not expensive compared to other cell phones.

On Thu, 07 May 2020 15:32:42 -0700, Stephen Szikora wrote:

I also posted
about the new one from Hisense - with a colour e-ink screen. A little
colour is all we need for XCSoar so I think it will be ideal. In fact,
any of these e-ink android phones are just the ticket compared to
modding Kobos and the like. As a bonus, they are not expensive compared
to other cell phones.

Interesting. Do you know if anybody sells these e-ink (either monochrome
or colour) for use with a RaspberryPi? THAT would be very interesting
indeed. I have a 4" diagonal TFT colour touch screen with 480 x 320 res
that I'll put on a RPi when I get a round tuit. I'm planning to run XK8000
on that, but a colour or monochrome eInk touch screen would most likely
be more readable in the cockpit.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

I don’t know about that but I’ll do some searching. One thing I forgot to mention is that the Hisense phones don’t have Google Play. The Onyx one does. Not a big deal because you can load XCSoar directly and anything else you need directly also. I should highlight that these phones all have GPS (making it easy to get up and running compared to a Kobo) but none of the ones I mentioned have a barometric sensor.

On Friday, 8 May 2020 11:19:03 UTC+12, Martin Gregorie wrote:

Interesting. Do you know if anybody sells these e-ink (either monochrome
or colour) for use with a RaspberryPi? THAT would be very interesting
indeed. I have a 4" diagonal TFT colour touch screen with 480 x 320 res
that I'll put on a RPi when I get a round tuit. I'm planning to run XK8000
on that, but a colour or monochrome eInk touch screen would most likely
be more readable in the cockpit.

Check this out:

https://github.com/lyusupov/SoftRF/wiki/SkyView-Pi

It's not completely what you're after, but it's getting there.
--
Phil Plane

On Fri, 08 May 2020 13:51:29 -0700, Phil Plane wrote:

On Friday, 8 May 2020 11:19:03 UTC+12, Martin Gregorie wrote:

Interesting. Do you know if anybody sells these e-ink (either
monochrome or colour) for use with a RaspberryPi? THAT would be very
interesting indeed. I have a 4" diagonal TFT colour touch screen with
480 x 320 res that I'll put on a RPi when I get a round tuit. I'm
planning to run XK8000 on that, but a colour or monochrome eInk touch
screen would most likely be more readable in the cockpit.

Check this out:

https://github.com/lyusupov/SoftRF/wiki/SkyView-Pi

It's not completely what you're after, but it's getting there.

Agreed! This one is even better:

https://www.waveshare.com/4.2inch-e-Paper-Module-B.htm

and this is better still, though not e-Ink:
https://www.waveshare.com/product/ra...-oled/4.3inch-
dsi-lcd.htm

It is dual colour (black/red on white) and the size is pretty much ideal.
Ideally I'l find a screen thats almost the same size ad thr Medion (3.5"
screen but wide bezel (4.4" x 3.2" - 80 x 105mm) Its mounted on a flexi
mount in front of my panel. Anything bigger than that and I start to
loose sight of my radio and backup vario behind it. I fly a Libelle, so
having stuff mounted where it sticks out past the panel edge is not an
option.

However, to control LK8000 (or XCSoar) I could really do with a touch
screen. So far, the best screen I've seen is this:

Pimoroni HyperPixel - 4.0"
https://thepihut.com/collections/ras...cts/hyperpixel

.... I got one to experiment just before they went out of stock in early
March and AFAIK haven't yet reappeared, but that may be COVID rather than
lack of interest in making any more.

BTW both XCSoar and LK8000 have been ported to the RaspberryPi, which is
why I keep banging on about that hardware, and Pimoroni do some very nice
addons, such as a PSU board that supplies 5v regulated from a 1S LiPo
battery and can charge it from an external 5v supply while also driving
the Pi.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

Don't want to offend anyone or step on any toes, but you guys have heard of a Naviter device called a OUDIE haven't you?

Works GREAT
Not too expensive

Full of goodies
Nick
T

On Thu, 07 May 2020 19:55:00 -0700, Nick Kennedy wrote:

Don't want to offend anyone or step on any toes, but you guys have heard
of a Naviter device called a OUDIE haven't you?

Works GREAT Not too expensive

Still, AFAIK, based on WinCE which has been obsolete & unsupported by M$
for a long time now.

FWIW I'm currently flying with LK8000 running on a Medion S.3747. Its
also WinCE based, but has a transreflective display, barograph and GPS
and, as a nice touch, an easily swappable battery, but its going to die
sooner or later.

Hence my interest in the bits needed to build a replacement.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

On Friday, 8 May 2020 16:21:41 UTC+3, Martin Gregorie wrote:
Still, AFAIK, based on WinCE which has been obsolete & unsupported by M$
for a long time now.


Oudie users do not care about the operating system, because it is hidden from the user. If it is obsolete and unsupported, so what? It works, day after day, year after year.