Flight navigation/moving map software for Android System

Rob.Russell wrote:
I have never seen person or team accomplish that kind of task
adequately for my needs, including multi- million-dollar corporate
attempts.

Actually, that is no surprise. The primary goal of corporate projects
is to maximize monetary profit, and our primary goal is technical
perfectionism just for the fun of it.

We can take paths that no company can afford. It doesn't cost us a
single dollar, and doing only a mediocre software doesn't increase our
profit.

Knowing that, is it surprising that there is no Android/MeeGo port of
any commercial glide computer? I talked to one vendor recently, and
the representative insisted that Windows CE is still a future-proof
platform... (even though Windows Phone 7 is not compatible)

Max

On Jan 3, 3:40*pm, Max Kellermann wrote:
Rob.Russell wrote:
I have never seen person or team accomplish that kind of task
adequately for my needs, including multi- million-dollar corporate
attempts.

Actually, that is no surprise. *The primary goal of corporate projects
is to maximize monetary profit, and our primary goal is technical
perfectionism just for the fun of it.

We can take paths that no company can afford. *It doesn't cost us a
single dollar, and doing only a mediocre software doesn't increase our
profit.

Knowing that, is it surprising that there is no Android/MeeGo port of
any commercial glide computer? *I talked to one vendor recently, and
the representative insisted that Windows CE is still a future-proof
platform... (even though Windows Phone 7 is not compatible)

Max

I found an Android app for soaring called "gaggle". I have not used it
nor had a chance to play with it much. Might be worth a look.

On Jan 1, 11:24*pm, "Rob.Russell" wrote:
On Dec 26 2010, 11:48*am, Darryl Ramm wrote:

The Galaxy is interesting but does not run Honeycomb (the upcoming
Android release aimed at tablets) and personally I would hold off on
buying an Android tablet until they do. Once Honeycomb is out you will
likely see a more interesting tablets and market for software. How
many tablets will be a form factor suitable for cockpits well see.

I'm not too sure that Honeycomb is going to make a difference here.
Honeycomb's not going to really change the kernel or operating system,
it's basically just UI optimizations for larger screens --
optimizations that make no difference at all when you're running a
full-screen app. *Most of Honeycomb is still secret, so we could both
end up being wrong.

The only significant soaring software folks publicly playing with
Android seem to be XCSoar. They have a (free of course) version on the
Android Market, I've not played with it and I don't know what devices
it works on (and the only Android device I have is an old G1 phone I
use for testing web content).

XCSoar was built to be an Open Source (Free as in Free Speech as well
as in Free Beer) solution for WinCE/Mo devices, and at that it was
great. *It's now undergoing a "port" to run on Linux, which will
include both MeeGo (formerly known as Maemo, the Linux OS from Nokia)
and Android. *Because this is a stable WinCE/Mo application, a port to
Linux is fraught with difficult challenges and is a significant
technical undertaking. *The internal design of the application will
have been architected based on Windows philosophies, and I've had
nothing but terrible experiences with other Windows applications
ported to Linux.

That being said, I wish nothing but success to those heroes that are
investing their time, talents and energies in this effort.

Four years ago, I gave up on Windows CE/Mobile because every single
interaction with the hardware and operating system cranked up my blood
pressure. *As a 12-year Linux professional, I just couldn't take it,
flying was supposed to be for fun.

So I got a Nokia N800 running Maemo (now called MeeGo), and I
installed the Cumulus application fromhttp://kflog.org/cumulus/--
and I gotta say, that was WAY BETTER than using Windows. *I've found
that this solution is incredibly rare in North America, but there are
a few.

As soon as Cumulus was working on Android, I started shopping for an
Android device. *I went out in December and bought an HTC Desire Z
(same as a T-Mobile G2, but with a different cellular radio chip).
Because Cumulus was designed and written for Linux from Day 1, it
didn't really have to be ported to Android, just recompiled. *I
haven't tried it in the air yet, but it seems to be working great for
me on the ground.

XCSoar is by no means the only game in town for Android, and I've no
doubt that XCSoar on Android might even get better than Cumulus on
Android in 6-24 months because of their current userbase and momentum,
I'm mostly just delighted to see two open-source soaring applications
on an almost-open platform.

You can read about the Android version of Cumulus athttp://www.draisberghof.de/android/cumulus/

I just installed XCSoar 5 minutes ago on my Desire Z to check it out.
My first impressions are that it's clunky and slow, putting extra
horsepower in to emulating windows buttons instead of using android
buttons/menus in the UI. *That being said, I'm going to load up the
maps and airspaces in a few weeks and give it a fair shot at winning
me over from Cumulus -- but that won't be easy.

Windows Mobile and Windows CE need a mercy killing. Now if we just get
a real daylight visible Android tablet...

I hear the Dell Streak tablet is great in sun, and at 5", it might be
a better fit for the cockpit than a 7" or 11" tablet. *The Coby tablet
can be had for $150 if you hunt around enough.

Honeycomb is going to make a significant difference as its the enabler
for a whole Android tablet ecosystem and it makes sense for Android
developers to target that platform. The only reason not to now is
Honeycomb is not in their hands. And developers may well want to take
advantage of some of the Honeycomb goodies in future... but yes there
is nothing core per-se that prevents porting to non-Honeycomb
platforms today but compared to what is expected to arrive soon I
would skip the current stuff in a hearbeat...

Darryl

On Jan 3, 4:47*pm, Westbender wrote:

I found an Android app for soaring called "gaggle". I have not used it
nor had a chance to play with it much. Might be worth a look.

Gaggle seems mostly geared to hang gliding pilots, and seems to depend
on being connected to the cell networks to continually download google
maps. Still, worth a shot to play around with!

Much more interesting, from the same folks, is the "GeoSMS" app, which
will send out text messages with your coordinates, similar to SPOT,
but over cell networks instead of satellites. It will receive a text
message from a SPOT device, and plot out directions -- so it seems an
ideal app for retreive crews of pilots with SPOT devices. It might
not be a full SPOT replacement, as it requires cell connectivity
instead of satellite, only sends messages when told (not every 10min),
and only goes to your contact instead of to SAR.

I'd be delighted, though, if XCSoar and Cumulus could support a once-
per-10min location update via Yahoo Fire Eagle, or even by SMS to
twitter.

On Jan 3, 4:56*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Honeycomb is going to make a significant difference as its the enabler
for a whole Android tablet ecosystem and it makes sense for Android
developers to target that platform. The only reason not to now is
Honeycomb is not in their hands. And developers may well want to take
advantage of some of the Honeycomb goodies in future... but yes there
is nothing core per-se that prevents porting to non-Honeycomb
platforms today but compared to what is expected to arrive soon I
would skip the current stuff in a hearbeat...

I'd love to know where you're getting that information from --
everything I've heard from Google employees has been that Honeycomb is
just the codename for 2.4, and that the core apps (messaging,
contacts) will be de-coupled from the OS and put in the market so that
there can be a phone version and a tablet version of each.

Cheers,

Rob

On Jan 3, 4:40*pm, Max Kellermann wrote:

Actually, that is no surprise. *The primary goal of corporate projects
is to maximize monetary profit, and our primary goal is technical
perfectionism just for the fun of it.

You're right -- and the worst example of a corporate porting failure
was the Corel Wordperfect fiasco. They had a perfectly workable Linux
version of Wordperfect, and instead of updating it, they decided to
port the Windows version over with WINE. The only team I've seen do
that kind of stuff well was Mozilla, but that was more of a cross-
platform development effort from the start, and even moreso when they
started over.

Knowing that, is it surprising that there is no Android/MeeGo port of
any commercial glide computer? *I talked to one vendor recently, and
the representative insisted that Windows CE is still a future-proof
platform... (even though Windows Phone 7 is not compatible)

It's reasonably future-proof for running legacy code, and so long as
they want to work in that marketspace, that's fine -- I think the
bigger disappointment is how mobile OS vendors have been shying away
from making this stuff possible. There's no real reason to keep these
kinds of apps off Win7, off iOS, off WebOS.

On Jan 3, 9:26*pm, "Rob.Russell" wrote:
On Jan 3, 4:56*pm, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Honeycomb is going to make a significant difference as its the enabler
for a whole Android tablet ecosystem and it makes sense for Android
developers to target that platform. The only reason not to now is
Honeycomb is not in their hands. And developers may well want to take
advantage of some of the Honeycomb goodies in future... but yes there
is nothing core per-se that prevents porting to non-Honeycomb
platforms today but compared to what is expected to arrive soon I
would skip the current stuff in a hearbeat...

I'd love to know where you're getting that information from --
everything I've heard from Google employees has been that Honeycomb is
just the codename for 2.4, and that the core apps (messaging,
contacts) will be de-coupled from the OS and put in the market so that
there can be a phone version and a tablet version of each.

Cheers,

Rob

Mmm ultimately there should be one version of apps (at least apps as
simple as contacts etc.) across both phone and tablet devices. One of
the publicly announced features of Honeycomb is "fragments" so
applications can refactor themselves to run on a tablet or phone
format device.

Given how tightly Google seems to have contained Honeycomb development
and third party access I'd be fairly surprised if Google employees are
giving lots of factual information to folks.

And yes "Honeycomb is just the codename for the next release of
Android" but the devil will be in the details of what's offered in
that release. Honeycomb is the release targeted at tablets, and is
obvious that the tablet manufacturers are scrambling to support
Honeycomb and that is where developers will want to move to. Stay
tuned to CES announcements. Google already sneaked a look at the
Motorola tablet (Honeycomb development reference) and Toshiba
announced their Honeycomb tablet today and CES has not even started.

Darryl

On Jan 4, 1:05*am, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Mmm ultimately there should be one version of apps (at least apps as
simple as contacts etc.) across both phone and tablet devices. One of
the publicly announced features of Honeycomb is "fragments" so
applications can refactor themselves to run on a tablet or phone
format device.

Yes, that's going to be added to the Java APIs, and unlikely to be
very useful for the C/C++ apps like we're talking about here. Those
apps are unlikely to run much differently on a Honeycomb 10" tablet
from a Froyo 10" tablet, save for the fact that Honeycomb tablets are
likely to come with faster smaller cooler hardware.

Given how tightly Google seems to have contained Honeycomb development
and third party access I'd be fairly surprised if Google employees are
giving lots of factual information to folks.

They're not leaving their prototype phones in bars (badum-ching), but
I'm willing to bet a beer on the reasonable accuracy of my sources.
The placement of the core apps in the market is to primarily address
the fragmentation concerns -- it will make it easier for the core apps
to get updated instead of relying on hardware makers and carriers to
ship new builds. It may or may not make it in to Honeycomb, though.

On Jan 4, 1:05*am, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Honeycomb and that is where developers will want to move to. Stay
tuned to CES announcements. Google already sneaked a look at the
Motorola tablet (Honeycomb development reference) and Toshiba
announced their Honeycomb tablet today and CES has not even started.

Well, I didn't notice much news about how Honeycomb would change how
full-screen non-Java apps work on Android, but I did see mention of an
Android tablet with a barometric pressure sensor!

http://gizmodo.com/5729599

Cheers,

Rob

On Jan 10, 7:01*pm, "Rob.Russell" wrote:
On Jan 4, 1:05*am, Darryl Ramm wrote:

Honeycomb and that is where developers will want to move to. Stay
tuned to CES announcements. Google already sneaked a look at the
Motorola tablet (Honeycomb development reference) and Toshiba
announced their Honeycomb tablet today and CES has not even started.

Well, I didn't notice much news about how Honeycomb would change how
full-screen non-Java apps work on Android, but I did see mention of an
Android tablet with a barometric pressure sensor!

http://gizmodo.com/5729599

Cheers,

Rob

I was not talking about NDK vs SDK, you were.

My point was Honeycomb is changing the tablet landscape/eco system.
The Motorola Xoom and similar products with Honeycomb makes exiting
Android tables look pretty pathetic from hardware features and
horsepower and yes from capabilities in Honeycomb as well. That may be
more than the typical cockpit needs today but it is a dramatic move
forward for Android as a platform and I expect shows where all Android
tablet developers will be aiming for. If I was a software developers
wanting to be ahead of the curve I'd be working to get my hand on a
Xoom as soon as possible (the Xoom is the Honeycomb reference/
development platform at Google). I will be buying one.

I am not convinced at all that soaring apps should be full NDK apps.
There are lots of arguments for doing much of the UI using the
standard SDK and there is lots of opportunities for somebody who wants
to do something really compelling. One day the world needs to move on
from having stuff look and behave like Windows CE crap running on a
resistive touch screen. A really modern UI in a soaring app (e.g.
multitouch and other bells and whistles) would be much more
compelling. Play with Google Maps on an iPad or Xoom and then compare
that to what passes for a UI on Windows Mobile PDA apps... and don't
get me started about the awful UI on several soaring flight
computers.

Darryl