Phones can't communicate with each other, they communicate with the cell
towers. This communication is designed to be one to one, not one to many
which is what is required. Also the Cell tower aerials are designed to
communicate with phones at grund level, not phones in the air. This means
that the phone gets unreliable above a few thousand feet.

There are two things that FLARM does, peer to peer communication of
position data and collision warning.

There are a number of other systems that provide peer to peer
communication, PilotAware, ADSB in/out and others. They provide
situational awareness but not collision warning.

FLARM is the only one that provides collision warning, to do that the
position data is analysed. The algorithms to do this are complex,
especially for gliders where they are circling rapidly and pilots don't
want continual warnings about gliders that are close but not an imminent
danger.

In theory it would be possible to separate the position data and collision
warning functions of FLARM. But most of the cost of FLARM is in the
collision warning. This software is difficult to write and maintain,
especially as it needs to work reliably and run on a fairly low performance
processor.

A phone would have the power to do this but the cost of the app to do this
would not be low. It could easily be several hundred dollars.

Chris

At 08:12 03 May 2018, Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Wed, 02 May 2018 20:20:44 -0700, son_of_flubber wrote:

Do Android or Ios operating systems and the hardware that they run on
(smartphones) even support real time computing? If somebody sends you
a
text while you're in a gaggle, does your collision avoidance app hiccup
at a critical moment?

Anything written in Python is most probably not fit for real-time
execution. Recent articles in The Register (UK-based IT industry news
website) shows that the "AI" boys may prototype algorithms using Python,
but they are translated to C for use - and these guys are using big iron,

not phones, to run their stuff.


--
Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org