The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"NW_Pilot" wrote:


The CPU speed in my cell phone is faster then that of the G1000 no
telling what they are using in the 496. So anyone have about $90K they
want to toss to the Korea/HongKong to reverse engineer the 496 and then
make it better and knock them off for only a few hundred dollars? Hell I
could crack/dump their their os in a few days and would give me an excuse
to get my SMT rework / device programming equipment out of the attic.


It's amazing that you're the only one to think of this. Congratulations!

I expect to see your $300 Garmin beater at OSH next year!

--
Dan

"Don't make me nervous when I'm carryin' a baseball bat."
- Big Joe Turner


I have sent out many 6 and 8 layer boards to be ripped apart and copied
layer by layer, trace by trace, solder pad by solder pad, all it take is
money and anything can be copied. If it has a published schematic you can
program/scan it in to Altium (protel), Eagle (cadsoft.de), or many other cad
programs. All to need to do is input in the Schematic arrange the board lay
out make some Gerber files upload to a board house. I believe
pcbexpress.com, ezpcb.com, PCBnet.com are still around they do up to 6
layers quick turn prototypes no questions asked. Once you get the prototype
the way you want on to injection molding and manfacture.

I have been out of the industory for few years now and many companys in the
U.S. have gone out of biz (Want a Good American Job Move To China)

A place to have a schematic drawn up of simple devices this guy is an old
timeer now and may be a little slow but only about $20.00 an hour. I sent
these guys lots of Cable TV equipment back in the day when I did not have
the time to do it myself.
http://www.bomarc.org/home.php

Some others:
http://www.delectrol.com/reverse_engineering.htm

http://www.mitsi.com/PCB/reverse_engineering.htm

http://www.armisteadtechnologies.com...ineering.shtml

http://www.isensortech.com/PCBreverse.htm

List of Some Production House's, The First one listed Circuitone is my #1
recommended I have done business with them in the past many times. They can
do modern composite laminating have much better than FR4 Fiberglass "don't
crack as easy" and they have reasonable pricing only about a dime more per
sq-in. They source the best parts possible and have very good test
facilities for quality control.

Circuitone Ltd
Room 702 Westley Square
48 Hoi Yuen Road
Kwun Tong
Kowloon
Hong Kong SAR
Tel: (852 ) 23500360
Fax: (852 ) 22422544
-------------------------------------------
Tahoe Industries Ltd
2F No. 388-1
Jen Ai Road Section 4
Ta An District
Taipei
Taiwan 106
Tel: (886 2) 27044235 (886 2) 27044236
Fax: (886 2) 27049044
-------------------------------------------
UNI Precision Industrial Ltd
Unit 604, Harbour Center Tower II
8 Hok Cheung Street
Hunghom, Kowloon
Hong Kong SAR
Tel: (852 ) 23565800 (852 ) 23565817
Fax: (852 ) 23649336
-------------------------------------------
Ehua Co. Ltd
9F, No. 776
Chung Cheng Road
Chung Ho City
Taipei
Taiwan 235
Tel: (886 2) 82282042
Fax: (886 2) 82282043
-------------------------------------------
Topscom Precision Industry Co Limited
Shenzhen Office: 2nd Building East
Sege Science & Technology Park
Futian District
Shenzhen
Guangdong
China 518030
Tel: (86 755) 8376 8879 Ext : 8808 (86 755) 8376 8867 Ext : 8814
Fax: (86 755) 8376 8890

"NW_Pilot" wrote:

I have sent out many 6 and 8 layer boards to be ripped apart and copied
layer by layer, trace by trace, solder pad by solder pad, all it take is
money and anything can be copied.

So why hasn't anyone come out wth a half-price 496 knock-off?

Should be easy, according to you, and I guarantee you there's a big market.

--
Dan

"The future has actually been here for a while, it's just not readily
available to everyone."
- some guy at MIT

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...

"NW_Pilot" wrote:

I have sent out many 6 and 8 layer boards to be ripped apart and copied
layer by layer, trace by trace, solder pad by solder pad, all it take is
money and anything can be copied.

So why hasn't anyone come out wth a half-price 496 knock-off?

Should be easy, according to you, and I guarantee you there's a big
market.

--
Dan

"The future has actually been here for a while, it's just not readily
available to everyone."
- some guy at MIT



Yea, there is a big market I estimate about $90K could produce a really
really good knock off. Then about 1-2 million to get in to mass production.
If I had the capital I would be visiting Hong Kong and gettin it started.
South Korea has some benefits also but workmanship is not as good.

-Only way we can travel to another planet that can support life is to
control time, but if we can control time we don't need to go anyplace!

On 2007-07-06, NW_Pilot wrote:
and knock them off for only a few hundred dollars? Hell I could crack/dump
their their os in a few days and would give me an excuse to get my SMT
rework / device programming equipment out of the attic.

If you want to make a better GPS, Sparkfun Electronics sells all the
parts with handy breakout boards for prototyping. An ARM7 based mcu
should have enough power and even in quantites of 1 is around $10 or so.

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

On Jul 7, 12:18 am, "NW_Pilot"
wrote:
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message

oups.com...



Now that my son is taking flight lessons, I'm letting him fly in
(Read: Mary is relinquishing) the front seat more often. This plants
him squarely in front of our panel-docked Garmin 496, the latest-and-
greatest portable GPS from Garmin.

We've flown behind this unit since OSH '06, and he has heard us
discussing its quirks and limitations, but he's never had any first-
hand experience programming it. Remember, the boy is 16 years old,
and has almost literally grown up with a Playstation/X-Box/PC game
controller in his hands. His thumbs are highly over-developed, from
10 million hours of video-game playing, and he is turning into an
absolute whiz with computers.

In short, he is an expert on all things that use graphics.

After working the 496 for a few flights, with all of its bizarre
hiccups (I.E.: The screen completely disappears when you slew the
cursor across the screen) and horrible graphics (displayed on a
postage-stamp-sized screen), his priceless comment was:

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."

And you know what? He's absolutely right. We pilots were so
desperate for in-cockpit weather that we willingly paid $3000 (!) for
a $250 dollar unit that performs worse than a video game.

BTW: If you've never played with an X-Box, or a Sony Playstation game
platform, this post won't make any sense to you -- which is precisely
what Garmin was counting on. Go out and borrow your kids (or grand-
kids) game unit for a couple of hours, and see what REAL graphics
capability looks like. (And if you want to see how hand-held
graphical displays *should* perform, borrow their PSP handheld
Playstation unit.)

I sure hope Garmin steps up to the plate, performance-wise, with their
(much anticipated) new product at OSH...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Hummmm.... I think I said something like this in the 596 thread that a
Korean knock off would be faster and better quality hahahahaha... Garmin is
banking on a Name not quality. Some say they are the leader in GPS
technology they may be but they will fail if they keep using poor quality
parts and 5+ year old technology in their displays. I can hand solder SMT
devices better then what they do on the inside of their devices.

The CPU speed in my cell phone is faster then that of the G1000 no telling
what they are using in the 496. So anyone have about $90K they want to toss
to the Korea/HongKong to reverse engineer the 496 and then make it better
and knock them off for only a few hundred dollars? Hell I could crack/dump
their their os in a few days and would give me an excuse to get my SMT
rework / device programming equipment out of the attic.

I'm in...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
Now that my son is taking flight lessons, I'm letting him fly in
(Read: Mary is relinquishing) the front seat more often. This plants
him squarely in front of our panel-docked Garmin 496, the latest-and-
greatest portable GPS from Garmin.

[ snip]

His comments are on the money.

Of course the problems a
certification and development cost.
Real Estate space ( how big/bulky do you want you hand held) (How much panel
space are you wanting to give up)
I'd like to see a way to display the output on a larger yoke mounted
display.
The user interface is terrible on all GPS units I've seen or read about.
And ,of course, are the units sellin? They are then why change a good thing?

Jay,

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."


They did, comparatively.

Have your son try Anywhere map.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

"Thomas Borchert" wrote in message
...
Jay,

"If Microsoft built the X-Box the way Garmin built the 496, they'd
have sold about five of them..."


They did, comparatively.

Have your son try Anywhere map.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Thomas,

Presumably you've used both the Garmin and Anywheremap products. What is
your opinion of their relative merits?

KB

Kyle,

Presumably you've used both the Garmin and Anywheremap products. What is
your opinion of their relative merits?


I have more experience with the Garmin. The Anywheremap is "nicer" in that
it shows more cool stuff. Thus, I thought Jay Jr. might like it better. But
I don't care for the stylus interface in a plane much - and I've had Windows
Mobile crash just too often.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

I have more experience with the Garmin. The Anywheremap is "nicer" in that
it shows more cool stuff. Thus, I thought Jay Jr. might like it better. But
I don't care for the stylus interface in a plane much

AnyWhereMap is cool, and has some neat features, but there is no way
I'm using a stylus in the plane. Running it on a touch-screen solid
state PC would be great, but was too pricey when we were shopping last
year.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"