The Garmin 496...a teenager's review

So can you load the 496 software onto your ARM board ?

There is nothing sacred about the 496's software. As I said, any
given month I hand A complex menu user interface to one of our mid-
level programmers and expect something cool back in three days to a
week (Far in excess of what you would need in a mobile device- Smooth
scrolling, live sprite elements, etc), all switchable so that we can
hit the full range of handsets without difficulty (and designed with
relative references to work on any screen size from 96x74 on up)

The 'hard' part is the GPS interface, and even that is growing more
and more trivial, with SiRF and others now offering integration
directly into an onboard embedded operating system with a runtime
library (rather than formerly having to process the analog signal to
digital and parse the data yourself).

Just go to your local electronics shop and see how trivially available
in-car GPS's are now, from every manufacturer... The technology is
_NO_ different (not even more reliable).

Hell, the 'truly' hard part for any device I would want to build would
be the 3d engine, and even those are coming available for some of the
wider-supported embedded platforms... If not, I'm good friends with
the gentleman who did the 3d engine for Commanche and several other
mid-90s products, so worse comes to worse I could do my own. (I'm
very interested in 'virtual-forward' views and perspective terrain).

The map data itself is fairly trivial... a bit of licensing expense,
that's all.

It actually strikes me more and more that, I will bet you dollars to
donuts that the only reason Lawrence and Avmap don't have XM weather
is an exclusive contract with Garmin that Garmin is paying good money
to maintain... (that's how things work in my industry, its not about
the technology, its about the Licenses... its not what do you make,
its who do you have). Why take the risk on designing a new project
when for a stipend per month you can have the whole market to
yourself?

I have _NO_ evidence of this of course... But its standard fare
business practice in my industry, and frankly I would be surprised if
that _wasn't_ the case.

EridanMan wrote:

It actually strikes me more and more that, I will bet you dollars to
donuts that the only reason Lawrence and Avmap don't have XM weather
is an exclusive contract with Garmin that Garmin is paying good money
to maintain... (that's how things work in my industry, its not about
the technology, its about the Licenses... its not what do you make,
its who do you have). Why take the risk on designing a new project
when for a stipend per month you can have the whole market to
yourself?



How many dollars you got because I can come up with a lot of donuts?

http://www.xmradio.com/weather/hardw...lutions_av.xmc

"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in message
...
EridanMan wrote:

It actually strikes me more and more that, I will bet you dollars to
donuts that the only reason Lawrence and Avmap don't have XM weather
is an exclusive contract with Garmin that Garmin is paying good money
to maintain... (that's how things work in my industry, its not about
the technology, its about the Licenses... its not what do you make,
its who do you have). Why take the risk on designing a new project
when for a stipend per month you can have the whole market to
yourself?

[Where in hell do people come up with this stuff?]



How many dollars you got because I can come up with a lot of donuts?

http://www.xmradio.com/weather/hardw...lutions_av.xmc
Snicker!!

(Oh, is that a copyright infringement on the Mars Company?)

--
Matt Barrow
Performance Homes, LLC.
Cheyenne, WY

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become
dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest
authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."
-- Omar Ahmad, Chairman Emeritus, Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR).

"EridanMan" wrote in message
ups.com...

So can you load the 496 software onto your ARM board ?

There is nothing sacred about the 496's software. As I said, any
given month I hand A complex menu user interface to one of our mid-
level programmers and expect something cool back in three days to a
week (Far in excess of what you would need in a mobile device- Smooth
scrolling, live sprite elements, etc), all switchable so that we can
hit the full range of handsets without difficulty (and designed with
relative references to work on any screen size from 96x74 on up)

The 'hard' part is the GPS interface, and even that is growing more
and more trivial, with SiRF and others now offering integration
directly into an onboard embedded operating system with a runtime
library (rather than formerly having to process the analog signal to
digital and parse the data yourself).

Just go to your local electronics shop and see how trivially available
in-car GPS's are now, from every manufacturer... The technology is
_NO_ different (not even more reliable).

Hell, the 'truly' hard part for any device I would want to build would
be the 3d engine, and even those are coming available for some of the
wider-supported embedded platforms... If not, I'm good friends with
the gentleman who did the 3d engine for Commanche and several other
mid-90s products, so worse comes to worse I could do my own. (I'm
very interested in 'virtual-forward' views and perspective terrain).

The map data itself is fairly trivial... a bit of licensing expense,
that's all.

It actually strikes me more and more that, I will bet you dollars to
donuts that the only reason Lawrence and Avmap don't have XM weather
is an exclusive contract with Garmin that Garmin is paying good money
to maintain... (that's how things work in my industry, its not about
the technology, its about the Licenses... its not what do you make,
its who do you have). Why take the risk on designing a new project
when for a stipend per month you can have the whole market to
yourself?

I have _NO_ evidence of this of course... But its standard fare
business practice in my industry, and frankly I would be surprised if
that _wasn't_ the case.


Wish I had the cash to play with a 496 and clone it's TSOP if it has one. 3m
the 496 hahahaha!!! 1 Weather sub for all.

"EridanMan" wrote in message ups.com...
Ok, as a 25 year old "Senior" Mobile Framework engineer with a dozen
mobile games under my belt and an 200mhz ARM reference board I play
around with at work, not to mention 2 years experience with GPS and
Location services, I think I know something about this.

And Jay is right on the money... seriously.

Given capability of the hardware and the maturity of the embedded
platforms at this point, the current crop of avionics (handheld and
otherwise) isn't just substandard, its a downright embarrassment, and
it smacks of _ZERO_ effort on the part of the current producers.

I think you all underestimate the extent to which aviation has
completely fallen off the radar of the younger generation. There is
the sense that it is a dying market, and as a dying market, its not
worth investing in, so the fact that a trivial investment is all
that's needed to break into it doesn't matter. The young tech-dork
generation is all chasing after youTube and Google and social
networking and 'the next big thing'. That's how they'll (we'll) make
our cool hundred million and join the ranks of the Sillicon Valley
elite. A small side business in a 'dying' industry simply isn't what
they're watching.

BTW, the reason I have that embedded board is because of this very
topic... Although I was focusing more on PMA instrumentation
replacement, not handheld GPS's.

"EridanMan" wrote in message ups.com...
Ok, as a 25 year old "Senior" Mobile Framework engineer with a dozen...

BTW, the reason I have that embedded board is because of this very
topic... Although I was focusing more on PMA instrumentation
replacement, not handheld GPS's.




Do you have any stock?

On Jul 11, 2:22 am, "Blueskies" wrote:
"EridanMan" wrote in oglegroups.com...
Ok, as a 25 year old "Senior" Mobile Framework engineer with a dozen...

BTW, the reason I have that embedded board is because of this very
topic... Although I was focusing more on PMA instrumentation
replacement, not handheld GPS's.

Do you have any stock?

LOL...

Nah, currently I'm just a tech dork learning Embedded system digital
signal processing in my spare time.

I've got ideas of where to go with it, but before I go convincing
anyone else, I need to convince myself it's practical.

"EridanMan" wrote in message ups.com...
On Jul 11, 2:22 am, "Blueskies" wrote:
"EridanMan" wrote in oglegroups.com...
Ok, as a 25 year old "Senior" Mobile Framework engineer with a dozen...

BTW, the reason I have that embedded board is because of this very
topic... Although I was focusing more on PMA instrumentation
replacement, not handheld GPS's.

Do you have any stock?

LOL...

Nah, currently I'm just a tech dork learning Embedded system digital
signal processing in my spare time.

I've got ideas of where to go with it, but before I go convincing
anyone else, I need to convince myself it's practical.



http://www.grtavionics.com/efis_horizond_series_1.htm

On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:43:43 -0700, Jay Honeck wrote:

But I truly hope they eventually do something about the screen refresh
rate, cuz all of us -- Mary, me, and now Joe -- want to punch the panel
while we're waiting for that stupid screen to refresh after slewing the
cursor to the next METAR reporting station... --

Refresh rate relates directly to power. Ideally, the box would offer
options (ie. rapid refresh, more power consumption vs. slow refresh,
longer battery life). That may be a "didn't think of it", I suppose, but
I'd be surprised since this is standard in laptops.

But I believe that inertia weighs heavily at Garmin. I asked once whether
they'd ever have the IFR-friendly flight plan entry of the 480 on the
430/530 line. I was told that they'd probably not do this as it was
considered "more difficult".

Another place where having an option (ie. waypoint entry or airway entry)
would be a Good Thing.

Still, I'm suspicious that none of the other vendors have leaped past
Garmin. That suggests that there's a part of this equation I'm missing.
Perhaps the development costs to "get it completely right" would render
the unit too expensive given the small audience?

I presume that all those little game-box things sell well more than
aviation GPS units.

- Andrew

Refresh rate relates directly to power. Ideally, the box would offer
options (ie. rapid refresh, more power consumption vs. slow refresh,
longer battery life). That may be a "didn't think of it", I suppose, but
I'd be surprised since this is standard in laptops.

What's especially sad is that every, single one of the "way cool"
aviation features of the 496 are impacted by this problem. Here's how
it goes:

1. You're cruising along on a 100 mile x-country flight. This is
typical for us.

2. You've got the screen zoomed into the 30 mile range, so that you
can see any details at all (like towers) on the little screen.

3. You want to check the runways at your destination airport, which is
NOT displayed. (Remember, you're zoomed in so that you can see stuff.)
The 496 has the runways stored in its database -- all you have to do
is put your cursor on the desired airport and hit "enter" to see them
all.

4. In order to click on the desired airport, you must "slew" the
cursor off the edge of the screen in order to find it. This means
hold the arrow button down, slew to the edge of the screen -- wait
three seconds while the screen disappears and reappears -- and
continue.

The REALLY bad thing is that the cursor doesn't stop moving when the
screen disappears, so that in those three seconds you can easily WAY
over-shoot your target airport. (I've even ended up in a different
state during the time it's blank.)

5. Repeat ad nauseum.

This process must be performed in order to see ANY of the good stuff,
including accessing the AOPA restaurant/hotel guide, radio
frequencies, field elevation, airport diagrams, METAR and TAF weather
-- you name it, you've got to put your cursor on the airport and push
"enter" to activate it -- which means slewing.

My son just laughed when he first used it...until I told him it cost
$3,000.00.

Then he just laughed at *me*... (Until he figured out that it had come
from his future inheritance...)

;-)

Still, I'm suspicious that none of the other vendors have leaped past
Garmin. That suggests that there's a part of this equation I'm missing.
Perhaps the development costs to "get it completely right" would render
the unit too expensive given the small audience?

Yep, me too. Lowrance -- the world leader in nautical GPS -- has been
"promising" weather for over two years -- and STILL nothing. It must
be a lot harder than we think it is...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"