iPhone in a glider?

Has anyone thought about applications for the iPhone 3G platform in a
glider? It has an excellent sunlight readable screen with touch
interface that causes no loss of image quality. It has an
accelerometer built in, a GPS that is probably better than spot,
wireless for speech commands, remote interfaces, etc. fast processor,
lots of ram for large maps and gesture recognition for panning,
zooming, etc. Web access (where available) for a quick weather update
before launch. Seems like an opportunity waiting to happen...

Come up with some good ideas, and maybe I will implement one!

Matt Herron
GlidePlan Inc.
http://www.glideplan.com

Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Has anyone thought about applications for the iPhone 3G platform in a
glider? It has an excellent sunlight readable screen with touch
interface that causes no loss of image quality. It has an
accelerometer built in, a GPS that is probably better than spot,
wireless for speech commands, remote interfaces, etc. fast processor,
lots of ram for large maps and gesture recognition for panning,
zooming, etc. Web access (where available) for a quick weather update
before launch. Seems like an opportunity waiting to happen...

Come up with some good ideas, and maybe I will implement one!

It's something I've given some thought to. I don't have an iPhone and
don't want to pay for the expensive subscription, so I was hoping that the
second version of the iPod Touch would include GPS. Unfortunately it
didn't, so the iPhone is still the only one with that.

As for functionality, seems like it would be great to have a moving map,
glide amoeba, thermal finder, and any other goodies that could be stuffed
in there. I agree that it packs a great deal of power and would be a very
capable machine.

Unfortunately Apple has some heavy restrictions on what you can do with
the platform, including one that says "Applications may not be designed or
marketed for real time route guidance". I don't know if that would cover
this sort of software or not. From what I hear it's extremely difficult to
get a definitive answer about these things out of Apple without simply
building the app and trying to get it approved. It is possible to work
around these limitations and bypass Apple for distribution, but it tends
to be more work and limit your audience, making it kind of risky.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On Sep 18, 8:59*am, Michael Ash wrote:
Matt Herron Jr. wrote:

Has anyone thought about applications for the iPhone 3G platform in a
glider? *It has an excellent sunlight readable screen with touch
interface that causes no loss of image quality. *It has an
accelerometer built in, a GPS that is probably better than spot,
wireless for speech commands, remote interfaces, etc. fast processor,
lots of ram for large maps and gesture recognition for panning,
zooming, etc. *Web access (where available) for a quick weather update
before launch. *Seems like an opportunity waiting to happen...

Come up with some good ideas, and maybe I will implement one!

It's something I've given some thought to. I don't have an iPhone and
don't want to pay for the expensive subscription, so I was hoping that the
second version of the iPod Touch would include GPS. Unfortunately it
didn't, so the iPhone is still the only one with that.

As for functionality, seems like it would be great to have a moving map,
glide amoeba, thermal finder, and any other goodies that could be stuffed
in there. I agree that it packs a great deal of power and would be a very
capable machine.

Unfortunately Apple has some heavy restrictions on what you can do with
the platform, including one that says "Applications may not be designed or
marketed for real time route guidance". I don't know if that would cover
this sort of software or not. From what I hear it's extremely difficult to
get a definitive answer about these things out of Apple without simply
building the app and trying to get it approved. It is possible to work
around these limitations and bypass Apple for distribution, but it tends
to be more work and limit your audience, making it kind of risky.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

I just took my new 3G for a flight. gpstracker application works very
well to track flights on google earth. Also gives Long/Lat speed as
well as altitude every 5 seconds. Check it out.

In article writes:
On Sep 18, 8:59 am, Michael Ash wrote:
Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Has anyone thought about applications for the iPhone 3G platform in a
glider? It has an excellent sunlight readable screen with touch
interface that causes no loss of image quality. It has an
accelerometer built in, a GPS that is probably better than spot,
wireless for speech commands, remote interfaces, etc. fast processor,
lots of ram for large maps and gesture recognition for panning,
zooming, etc. Web access (where available) for a quick weather update
before launch. Seems like an opportunity waiting to happen...

Come up with some good ideas, and maybe I will implement one!

(trimmed)

Unfortunately Apple has some heavy restrictions on what you can do with
the platform, including one that says "Applications may not be designed or
marketed for real time route guidance". I don't know if that would cover
this sort of software or not. From what I hear it's extremely difficult to
get a definitive answer about these things out of Apple without simply
building the app and trying to get it approved. It is possible to work
around these limitations and bypass Apple for distribution, but it tends
to be more work and limit your audience, making it kind of risky.

Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

I just took my new 3G for a flight. gpstracker application works very
well to track flights on google earth. Also gives Long/Lat speed as
well as altitude every 5 seconds. Check it out.


It might be fun, but it is also quite illegal.


47 cfr 22.925 states:

22.925 Prohibition on airborne operation of cellular telephones.

Cellular telephones installed in or carried aboard airplanes,
balloons or any other type of aircraft must not be operated while
such aircraft are airborne (not touching the ground). When any
aircraft leaves the ground, all cellular telephones on board that
aircraft must be turned off. The following notice must be posted on
or near each cellular telephone installed in any aircraft:

The use of cellular telephones while this aircraft is airborne is
prohibited by FCC rules, and the violation of this rule could result
in suspension of service and/or a fine. The use of cellular
telephones while this aircraft is on the ground is subject to FAA
regulations.


The FAA prohibits the use in flight in 91.21, but that generally doesn't
apply to VFR flight in small aircraft. (It essentially forbids use in airliners
and IFR flight.)

The FCC prohibits use in any aircraft when airborne.

The iPhone is being "operated" when it is updating map data. It is even
being operated when it is turned on and talking to cell towers.

To be legal, turn it off, or put it in airplane mode, before takeoff ---
and leave it that way until back on the ground.

Better to save the battery to make a call if you land out.


Alan

On Sep 19, 5:19*pm, (Alan) wrote:
In article writes:
* The FAA prohibits the use in flight in 91.21, but that generally doesn't
apply to VFR flight in small aircraft. *(It essentially forbids use in airliners
and IFR flight.)

* The FCC prohibits use in any aircraft when airborne.

* The iPhone is being "operated" when it is updating map data. *It is even
being operated when it is turned on and talking to cell towers.

Yeah, and no one in a small place ever broke that one.

But it doesn't matter. Any specialized gliding program can easily be
written to preload the relevant maps before takeoff. You do have 8 GB
or 16 GB of storage for such things. That's the equivalent of 10 - 20
CDs of data.


* To be legal, turn it off, or put it in airplane mode, before takeoff ---
and leave it that way until back on the ground.

The GPS and accelerometer and so forth will work just fine in airplane
mode. Unfortunately they both turn off if the screen turns off (by
hitting the button on the top, or after a timeout if you haven't
disabled it).


* Better to save the battery to make a call if you land out.

Operating the GPS continuously eats the battery. Any serious gliding
application will want to run the iPhone off the glider's battery in
any case.

Alan wrote:
I just took my new 3G for a flight. gpstracker application works very
well to track flights on google earth. Also gives Long/Lat speed as
well as altitude every 5 seconds. Check it out.


It might be fun, but it is also quite illegal.


47 cfr 22.925 states:

22.925 Prohibition on airborne operation of cellular telephones.
[snip]

Aside from the use of "airplane mode", I seem to recall a discussion about
this a while ago wherein it was concluded that modern mobile phones don't
meet the FCC's definition of a "cell phone". The reasoning behind this
regulation is that using a cell phone in flight plays merry havoc with the
cell network due to seeing towers farther away than the network is
designed for. But modern networks work differently and are immune to this
problem, and I *think* the conclusion was that the regulation does not
apply to them.

Anyone know more about it? I'd like to know more than my patchwork
memory....

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:25:42 -0500, Michael Ash wrote:


Anyone know more about it? I'd like to know more than my patchwork
memory....

In the UK, anyway, the base station transmission patterns are quite flat
which can stop you getting a signal in the air.

A year or two back I wanted to annoy a friend with the "ring him and hold
phone by the audio vario" trick, but at 3000ft over Huntingdon, i.e.
above a flat bit of Cambridgeshire, there was no signal at all. I was
using a GSM phone, so the radiation pattern was evidently flat enough the
exclude not only Huntingdon masts but also those further away (Cambridge,
Northampton). This makes sense to me. Why should a telco waste
electricity transmitting a hemispherical pattern when a pancake pattern
will give a better signal strength for less radiated power throughout its
service area.

IIRC this has been noticed and commented on in the USA too.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Sep 19, 8:25*am, Michael Ash wrote:
Alan wrote:
I just took my new 3G for a flight. gpstracker application works very
well to track flights on google earth. Also gives Long/Lat speed as
well as altitude every 5 seconds. Check it out.

*It might be fun, but it is also quite illegal.

*47 cfr 22.925 states:

* * 22.925 * Prohibition on airborne operation of cellular telephones.

[snip]

Aside from the use of "airplane mode", I seem to recall a discussion about
this a while ago wherein it was concluded that modern mobile phones don't
meet the FCC's definition of a "cell phone". The reasoning behind this
regulation is that using a cell phone in flight plays merry havoc with the
cell network due to seeing towers farther away than the network is
designed for. But modern networks work differently and are immune to this
problem, and I *think* the conclusion was that the regulation does not
apply to them.

Anyone know more about it? I'd like to know more than my patchwork
memory....

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon


As pilot in command of a non-IFR flight I grant myself permission to
use all kinds of electronic toys in flight. So that gets rid of FAA
concerns. However my belief is that 47 CFR. 22.925 does apply to the
iPhone since it is quad-band GSM that uses the GSM 850MHz band in the
USA. If you have say a different brand PCS phone that exclusively uses
1800MHz then this would not apply to you.

There is a wiki entry about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phones_on_aircraft

In reality I turn my phone off to save battery life and distractions
like the phone ringing while I'm on final (it's happened).

So would I really want some new soaring software running on an iPhone?
Sure I could see lots of neat UI things that could be done (Cocoa is a
lovely UI to develop for) and the platform is powerful etc. The screen
is a bit more visible in sunlight than most PDA screens, but it is
still not really great. The downside of that is I'm set in my ways
with SeeYou, so if Naviter wanted to port across SeeYou keeping some
of it's core behavior/feature but offering an updated Cocoa UI/feel
then I might be interested. Except for a few issues...

I'm not going to use anything that does not talk to an external flight
computer, e.g. for extended NEMA sentences for improved wind
calculations etc. and I want to be sure my IGC logger is working OK so
getting the GPS from it is a way to test this. Also I really don't
want to mess with my iPhone as the display device in my glider, it's
my phone that gets messed with a lot. But I'd be happy to dedicate an
iPod Touch to this - in which case since it has no GPS you really need
an external interface. Unfortunately the iPhone SDK does not give
access to the serial port, and even if you had access to the serial
port you will need some RS-232 line driver hardware to shift voltages
to interface with a real RS-232 serial port in the GPS. The fact that
Apple did not include that in the iPhone makes me think they really
don't want to expose the serial port. The iPhone has bluetooth but
does not support a serial profile, so you can't connect to a
bluetooth GPS, or try to run a serial-bluetooth convertor on a flight
computer serial port etc. over bluetooth. And it's just a USB slave
(like a PDA) so you can't use a USB to serial translator. Then there
is the issue of no way to use a CF or SD card or USB dongle etc. for
flight log transfers and there is no third party code to run on it to
download flight traces from loggers etc. Sure something like ConnectMe
could be ported over (oops if there was just access to that danged
serial port), oh and opps there is no file management UI in the iPhone
so doing things nice and easily with log files etc. will be clumsier
than it should). You could use or implement something like FileMagnet
or DataCase and transfer log files over WiFi (of course that requires
a WiFi setup), or email the file, otherwise you are going to stuck
emailing file attachments or having to sync the iPhone to get off any
log files.

As it currently stands Apple's iPhone SDK license agreement has the
restrictions mentioned already in this thread "Applications may not be
designed or marketed for real time route guidance; automatic or
autonomous control of vehicles, aircraft, or ..." (it is the real time
route guidance that likely gets us, the "aircraft" stuff is irrelevant
since we are not talking about an automatic or autonomous control".
This restriction is in the SDK agreement, not just the iTunes store,
so the only way around this is to use a non-Apple SDK with a jail
broken phone. Then you are (questionably) violating other agreements.
For anybody to put serious effort into developing such software, even
if they wanted to open source it or give away binaries I doubt there
is a significant enough "market" in jail broken 3G iPhones and their
owners who want to put up with this. And while distributing through
the AppStore is neat, it has some serious pain in the ass issues for
higher end applications, starting with customer support say worthy of
0.99c applications. If somebody was serious and could get around the
serial I/O and other issues then they could try talking to Apple, they
might agree to modify route guidance restriction for a specific
application (but don't hold your breath).


Darryl

Alan wrote:

It might be fun, but it is also quite illegal.

47 cfr 22.925 states:

What the hell is 47 cfr 22.925???

The FAA prohibits the use in flight

And what the hell is FAA???

Oh, I see! You've just forgotten that there's life outside the USA.

In article John Smith writes:
Alan wrote:

It might be fun, but it is also quite illegal.

47 cfr 22.925 states:

What the hell is 47 cfr 22.925???

The FAA prohibits the use in flight

And what the hell is FAA???

Oh, I see! You've just forgotten that there's life outside the USA.

No, I just quoted the rules where I am, and where a large number of
the participants are.

I did, however, forget for a moment that the iPhone is now available
out there, too.

Now, if you can tell where *you* are, and provide the links to the
regulations there, we can check if it is legal there.

Alan