Idea for Openmoko application: Tide updates
Stroller
stroller at stellar.eclipse.co.uk
Fri Sep 19 17:48:28 CEST 2008
On 18 Sep 2008, at 13:52, Denis Galvão wrote:
> ...
> Is this possible to use the actual GTA_02 hardware version to do:
> - Compass ?
> - Altimeter ?
This would be really cool for glider (hang-glider, paraglider) pilots.
They usually carry a combined altimeter / variometer instrument
(commonly called a "vario", short for vario-altimeter) which, as well
as absolute height, indicates rate-of-climb with a (LCD) needle and an
audible beep. It can be impossible at height to distinguish if you're
going up or down, so pilots rely on this to find thermals in which to
climb.
It's been a few years since I got my feet off the ground, but back
then combined GPS / altimeter units were not common at all - the first
one or two models were only just being introduced and were still
expensive. But such a combination does allow *accurate* calculation of
the best speed to fly against a headwind (or with a tailwind),
allowing the pilot to reach the next thermal "trigger
point" (geographic feature which may be expected to kick off a
thermal) with the best height and the best chances of catching lift
there.
Meanwhile all vario units were proprietary software and most premium
models appeared to be identical hardware to the cheapest ones, so this
would be an excellent opportunity for the Open-Source community to add
features.
Stroller.
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