Hi Folken,
well it's winter, time to think about how to optimize the cockpit. ;O)
The Mirasol display you mention looks very very similar to the Qi display the
Adam android tablet is expected to ship with, and after I watched all their
footage on the Mirasol web site I cannot confirm that there will be colour
display whilst in sunlight mode. They do not explicitly say so, but it's
suspicious that in all situations where they show outdoor use in sunlight,
there is no colour displayed on the device. Are there similarities with the
Pixel Qi displays?
That said, I think that readability is worth more than colour you can't see.
I'd be okay with a greyscale display, if it was crisp, and the power drain is
really a point here.
I have a few e-ink display samples in the office, all grayscale, they don't
give away the coloured ones just like that. I have once taken one on a flight
(displaying a hi resolution map I loaded beforehand), to see how it does, and
it's very good. Even the older e-ink displays are fast enough for our purpose,
though they are not capable of video display. Our moving map display is slow
enough not to pass as video as long as we use them north up (anything else
gives me vertigo anyway..).
I am currently working on a project where a curved (or rather flexible) e-ink
display is being used. While that is basically just for aesthetical reasons, it
might provide means of fitting it in crowded environments like we do have in
cockpits.
I think that this technology is already good enough to substitute LDC display
in the standard instruments like vario and the like. If there was kind of a CPU
built in behind the panel, these displays could just be stuck to the panel
surface and connected. I am not sure about life expectancy in high UV
environment, but a simple real life test I ran by sticking it behind a car
windscreen and leaving it there for a year showed no noticeable wear.
The Craggy aero display with external trackball unit is not a bad idea either.
It is true that most touch overlays ruin sunlight visibility, at least if they
are resistive, requiring at least two layers over the display surface. The
capacitive ones are already much better (E.G. iPhone). I like the display in
the panel, as the balljoint mounted ones always get in the way when getting in
and out of the cockpit and also during flight. Having a track input device on
the stick handle might be okay, then, maybe even advantageous when in rough
air.
Also, Mike Rose's tablet is nice, especially regarding display size. Does it
really hook right into the Flarm? Simplicity is a factor.
PC Engine's ALIX boards are nice, but then we're entering the scene of built-in
Aivionics. With the mobile device used in a glider, I like the possibility to
take it home for software updates and the like, which you can't (easily) do
with an LX7000, and for it's autonomous operation on internal battery, at least
for a while. That's hard to match. We'd have to put together a portable device
from a Pixel Qi, an ALIX, and some input device, then. Would it justify the
effort?
So it seems the android market is indeed very interesting for us. Many of the
devices have no internal GPS, though. I have been talking to a car nav guy
yesterday and he says android is likely to get more share in the PNA market,
too.
BTW.: In the shop, I saw a Falk V700 PND which appeared to have a very bright
display, though they say it was transmissive. Unfortunately, here was no
sunlight available for testing, yesterday.
Also, in the same shop I saw a 5" Navigon70plus PNA, which was low priced and
had a less impressive display contrast, but another interesting feature: There
was proximity detection, so that when your finger comes close to the display,
UI input elements become larger, improving the accuracy of hitting them right.
That's one feature I can well imagine having in the cockpit.
Yet another interesting device is the Falk IBEX outdoor PNG. I has only a small
screen (3,5") like all outdoor or motorcycle devices apparently have, though a
transflexive one with good sunlight readability, has a good GPS, internal
barometric sensor, and internal compass. Also, it is waterproof (IPx7), quite
rugged and runs WM. It is said it runs up to 8hrs on internal power, too.
Martin
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