Re: Crusoe and Mobile Linux for in flight computing...

[Ole Barnkob Kaas <admin@tet.dk>]

Hello John, on 03-Feb-00, you wrote:

>   Has anyone seen any 3rd party products yet? I guess these internet
> appliances will run from ROM. Anybody seen any chatter about products
> that can run other applications? (ie: your own cool stuff). This would
> be just the ticket for glider applications where batteries are your
> only power source. Useful for power planes as well of course.
> 

I planning such projekt. The problem is that the hw isn't ready yet - but I
hope it will be soon. The hw is an Open Source microcontroller board - Linux
In A Box (LIAB)
http://www.liab.dk

Background:

Some 18 month ago my gliding club installed 2 DX50FAI flight logger in our
Ls-4b and DG300. It's so easy to accomplish a task with those computers and
you allways know if you're in gliding range of the home base. But they aren't
wery good for club usage - eg. changing the pilot name with the push buttons
is a real pain in teh butt. Using a pc is easier, but the sw really suck and
is ms-dos only. The price for the DX50FAI is around $1600+tax - my guess is
that the liab (~$250) + display (320x200 b/w), some pressure transducers, gps
reciever and stuff can be acquired at half the price.

Possible features to implement:

- Logging (obvious)
- Computing glidepath and other stuff (obvious)
- Pilot recognition by keycard (can be made very simple)
- Using packet radio to send position back to ground (150 km radius)
- Displaying glider position on screen on ground (with packet radio)
- A logger in all the club gliders => eliminating writing start-list on ground
- Collect all tracks in sql database and make statistics
- Display an exact copy of the logbook on screen showing *exactly* where you
should write the data.
- Your own cool app that will double /your/ glide range ;-)
- More...

While I'm waiting for the main hw to be made available, I try to get someone
interested in this project and maybe find someone to finance it :-). As soon
as the the project starts, there will be a CSV server available (found one
for free :-). First it might be nice with a discussion of how to implement
all these features. Should it all be made in C or should it only be the basic
and the rest made in eg python? What other tools should be used?
 
          Regards/
                /Ole Kaas

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