Re: iPhone in a glider?

On Sep 18, 12:32 am, "Matt Herron Jr." <m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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!

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

I've already complained about lack of any way to communicate with an
external GPS but I'm enjoying this so lets bash this a bit more.

I'm not sure what a SPOT satellite messenger and a 3G iPhone GPS have
to do with each other but lets tackle that anyhow... The GPS in the
iPhone 3G is an Infineon PMB2525 Hammerhead II GPS with a really small
antenna (see http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2261&page=2). The
antenna will be facing the pilot if in a usual PDA type cradle, gee it
might work but it is not a good place for high quality GPS reception
in a glider.

The SPOT Messenger uses a - Nemerix NX2 GPS Chipset (maybe they've
upgraded to the NX3?) with a larger GPS antenna than the iPhone, and
it's antenna is on the top of the device so if placed as intended the
antenna will have a good view of the sky. Both chipsets are similar
and both are aimed at the same market of intelligent devices like
cellphones requiring low power consumption, both chipsets are amazing
for what they can do. So I'd disagree with the comment on the iPhone
GPS being better the SPOT. Not that the comparison is relevent. A
modern GPS receiver that I'd want to use in an aircraft for navigation
purposes with a traditional large antenna correctly oriented to the
sky should do much better than the iPhone GPS, but I'll point out that
many flight computers etc. are doing fine using very old GPS engines,
but it's the antenna location/orientation that can be really
important.

Then there is the CoreLocation API that the iPhone SDK exposes. I'd
not want to try to develop an aviation navigation package on top of
the rudimentary services it exposes. OK so you can get basic info
including altitude, but that's it. Want to look at any low level
settings or status like how many satellites are in view in, etc. you
are SOL. Oh yes and that pesky iPhone SDK agreement prohibits hacking
into any lower level (GPS) interfaces. And there is the supposed
blacklist/killswitch inside the CoreLocation API that allows Apple to
shut off acces to applications using that service they don't like. Try
to use this to navigate an aircraft (if they don't like the route
guidance part), try to bypass the App Store, they might still be able
to get you with the CoreLocation kill switch. So seems if you want to
go that far you might as well jailbreak the phone.

And I think somebody already mentioned that the internal GPS is turned
off when the phone is in Airplane mode. So you'll need to leave the
GSM phone on, violating that FCC rule, but more importantly sucking
power and putting out heat. So you'll definitely need to power the
iPhone from the ship's battery. I have no problem with that but wonder
how hot the iPhone will get in direct sunlight in a hot cockpit and
whether it will handle this any better than the two iPAQ 4700 I own
that suck when they get hot.

So where does that leave us? As I see it the iPhone is pretty piece of
jewelry that as it stands today is unlikely to be useful for a soaring
navigation/display unless you want to jailbreak and hack the phone and
I just don't see the effort/reward there. It is however a damn nice
iPod to take along on flights and handy for finding the nearest
steakhouse for that tired ground crew.

Darryl
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