Future of Electronics In Aviation

In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
Usery occurs at all levels, for both rich and poor. We used to joke
about customers shrieking at outrageously exhorbitant prices for a
large hardware company near Boston. Their salesman standard reply
was..."But it comes with mints!"

It's spelled "usury", and this is not it. Usury refers to the specific
practice of charging illegally high interest (orignially, to charging
interest at all) on loans.

It's grating when the functionality is there but disabled because you
haven't paid for activation, but on the other hand if they couldn't get
extra money for the fancier features then they might not develop them at
all. If they did, then they would probably simply charge the full price
for the unit so you'd be out the same amount of money in the end, just
without the option to spend less for fewer capabilities.

I heard frrom a friend who worked a Certain Computer Corporation that
back in the 1980's? they cleverly achieved price stratification for
their new line of mini-computers. They were selling each machine for
about $42,000. They discovered, long after market planning and device
design and just before release that there was an unanticipated market,
customers who wanted the machine at $30,000, but not much more. But
there were already customers willing to pay $42,000, and to make a
seperate product would have taken too long. Instead of redesigning the
machine, they sold the same $42,000 machine, but just before it was
shipped, opened each and filled some of the expansion slots with an
insulating undissolvable glue to prevent expansion-card upgrades by
lower-paying customers. Not very pretty, but it worked.

Now imagine if this option had not been available to them for whatever
reason. What would happen? Would the $30,000 customers still get their
machine? Not likely! Instead they would have simply left that market be,
and the $30,000 customers would have had less choice.

As I said, it's annoying and crappy when it's done to you, but ultimately
it results in more choice. The stuff would be more expensive, not cheaper,
if it weren't done.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon

On Jun 25, 7:35*pm, Michael Ash wrote:
In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

Usery occurs at all levels, for both rich and poor. We used to joke
about customers shrieking at outrageously exhorbitant prices for a
large hardware company near Boston. Their salesman standard reply
was..."But it comes with mints!"

It's spelled "usury", and this is not it. Usury refers to the specific
practice of charging illegally high interest (orignially, to charging
interest at all) on loans.

Realized that just after I hit the ENTER key. dsloppy/dt 0
definitely monotonically increasing function of t when it comes to
typing.

It's grating when the functionality is there but disabled because you
haven't paid for activation, but on the other hand if they couldn't get
extra money for the fancier features then they might not develop them at
all. If they did, then they would probably simply charge the full price
for the unit so you'd be out the same amount of money in the end, just
without the option to spend less for fewer capabilities.

I heard frrom a friend who worked a Certain Computer Corporation that
back in the 1980's? they cleverly achieved price stratification for
their new line of mini-computers. They were selling each machine for
about $42,000. *They discovered, long after market planning and device
design and just before release that there was an unanticipated market,
customers who wanted the machine at $30,000, but not much more. *But
there were already customers willing to pay $42,000, and to make a
seperate product would have taken too long. Instead of redesigning the
machine, they sold the same $42,000 machine, but just before it was
shipped, opened each and filled some of the expansion slots with an
insulating undissolvable glue to prevent expansion-card upgrades by
lower-paying customers. *Not very pretty, but it worked.

Now imagine if this option had not been available to them for whatever
reason. What would happen? Would the $30,000 customers still get their
machine? Not likely! Instead they would have simply left that market be,
and the $30,000 customers would have had less choice.

As I said, it's annoying and crappy when it's done to you, but ultimately
it results in more choice. The stuff would be more expensive, not cheaper,
if it weren't done.

True.

I was just pointing out the highly desirable benefit of price
stratification from vendor's point of view, as even the marketing
people had not previously had any intention of addressing the newly-
sprung market, and at $30,000 they were still making a profit.

Incidentally, had dinner tonight with a friend who is salesman for
company that makes all kinds of electronic surveillance equipment. He
showed me a device that can be used to check if someone is spying on
you with a CCD camera.

He also showed me a miniature camera with 700+x400+ (forget exact
resolution). Cost was about $100. I asked him if such a device could
be mounted on GA aircraft, and it turns out that company has entire
line of cameras for aviation, including police surveillance. The
equipment is in excess of $1000, and in some several $1000's for what
was essentially the same $100-$200 unit. We got into discussion about
whether they were repackaging same equipment that they sell for cheap
(they are), and what justification for higher pricing, and in the end,
I said, "So basically, it's the same unit, same technology, made in
Taiwan, different case, different manual, and differnt power
connector, which probably costs less than $50 I'm guessing, and the
real reason that you are charging so much to pilots is because you
can."

And he says,

"Well..yeah, right, that's the idea, isn't it?"

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
He also showed me a miniature camera with 700+x400+ (forget exact
resolution). Cost was about $100. I asked him if such a device could
be mounted on GA aircraft

If it's small duct tape will do as a mounting :-) I've used a similar
camera (it's about the size of a large thing of lipstick, hence is
called a 'lipstick camera') on planes and racing motorcycles.

Some examples (although the quality will be somewhat degraded by
youtube):
http://www.youtube.com/user/74HC138

I also now have a completely self contained camera which cost (in US
money) about $70. Records to an SD card. It's not as good quality as the
lipstick camera, but it weighs only 35 grams and fits on a radio
controlled helicopter.

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

On Jun 26, 6:05*am, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

He also showed me a miniature camera with 700+x400+ (forget exact
resolution). *Cost was about $100. I asked him if such a device could
be mounted on GA aircraft

If it's small duct tape will do as a mounting :-) I've used a similar
camera (it's about the size of a large thing of lipstick, hence is
called a 'lipstick camera') on planes and racing motorcycles.

Some examples (although the quality will be somewhat degraded by
youtube):http://www.youtube.com/user/74HC138

74HC138? You EE too?

I also now have a completely self contained camera which cost (in US
money) about $70. Records to an SD card. It's not as good quality as the
lipstick camera, but it weighs only 35 grams and fits on a radio
controlled helicopter.

Well, I watched all your YouTube videos over breakfast this morning.

I guess you already know that you could have probably had a career as
a movie director.

Very very nice!

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
74HC138? You EE too?

No, nothing so grand - merely a hobbyist, although I do some fairly
advanced hobbyist stuff (the current hardware project is an ethernet
card for one of my old 8 bit computers, the hardware is done and works -
all fine pitch SMD on a 4 layer PCB. But the real engineers did all the
hard work packaging a MAC and PHY in a chip, I just had to lay out the
PCB well enough, along with some glue logic and memory).

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

On Jun 26, 11:19*am, Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:

74HC138? You EE too?

No, nothing so grand - merely a hobbyist, although I do some fairly
advanced hobbyist stuff (the current hardware project is an ethernet
card for one of my old 8 bit computers, the hardware is done and works -
all fine pitch SMD on a 4 layer PCB. But the real engineers did all the
hard work packaging a MAC and PHY in a chip, I just had to lay out the
PCB well enough, along with some glue logic and memory).

Hah...what a coincindence. I have been reading the 802.11-2007 spec
for past few nights.

I am about to buy this:
http://us.zyxel.com/web/product_fami...No=PDCA2007080
Turns a PC into instant access point, which I will need to recreate a
DHCP-like server for new type of addressing scheme that is different
from IPv4 and IPv6 using a standard PC. Otherwise, would have to hack
WRT54G from Linksys and port my software to Linux or run two Wi-Fi
adapters in ad-hoc mode, which would have worked, but since would have
had to buy an adapter in addition to the one I already have...

Your computer sounds very compact. What are the specs? Which chip?
Zydas? Prism? OS? I am always interesed to see how spartan
requirements get for such devices.

I am particularly interested in knowing the delays for association and
reasociation. I read yesterday:

http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.co...le.php/3600486

...that re-association from one acess point to another by a moving
node can be as low as 68 milliseconds, which is not bad, but
obviously, the lower the better. [This is for MAC/PHY only, not higher
layers like DHCP] I need ultra-low-handover-delay to help solve the
mobility problem in computer networking. I will probably buy 5 of
these dongles, and set them up in a line spaced 100 meters apart, then
walk with laptop in hand and check that a streaming-video session from
hard disk of one of the computers is not broken as laptop moves 500
meters as it associates and reassociates with the 5 pseudo-access-
points.

-Le Chaud Lapin-

On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
Your computer sounds very compact. What are the specs? Which chip?
Zydas? Prism? OS? I am always interesed to see how spartan
requirements get for such devices.

It's wired ethernet (100baseTX and 10baseT autonegotiation) rather than
wireless. The chip is the Wiznet W5100 which is aimed at 8 bit/embedded
applications. It includes a TCP/IP offload engine too - it's a pretty
flexible chip - it gives you the option of using as much of its inbuilt
stuff as you want - you can write your own stack and talk straight to
the MAC, or you can just use its IP layer, or use the whole thing.

The old 8 bit machine it's for is one of these, which were enormously
popular over he

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zx_spectrum

Quite a lot of the work is software. It's different to write a DHCP
client in Z80 assembler :-)

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

Dylan Smith wrote:
On 2008-06-26, Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
He also showed me a miniature camera with 700+x400+ (forget exact
resolution). Cost was about $100. I asked him if such a device could
be mounted on GA aircraft

If it's small duct tape will do as a mounting :-) I've used a similar
camera (it's about the size of a large thing of lipstick, hence is
called a 'lipstick camera') on planes and racing motorcycles.

Some examples (although the quality will be somewhat degraded by
youtube):
http://www.youtube.com/user/74HC138

I also now have a completely self contained camera which cost (in US
money) about $70. Records to an SD card. It's not as good quality as the
lipstick camera, but it weighs only 35 grams and fits on a radio
controlled helicopter.

Could you post a link? One of those would
probably fit inside the wing tiedown eyebolt
on my plane.

On 2008-06-26, Jim Stewart wrote:
Could you post a link? One of those would
probably fit inside the wing tiedown eyebolt
on my plane.

It's called the FlyCamOne - you can probably get one at your nearest
hobby store that deals in RC. Google will find you a supplier on your
side of the world if you want to do it online; all my links for it are
European (I got it from http://www.heliguy.com)

--
From the sunny Isle of Man.
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.

In rec.aviation.student Le Chaud Lapin wrote:
It's grating when the functionality is there but disabled because you
haven't paid for activation, but on the other hand if they couldn't get
extra money for the fancier features then they might not develop them at
all. If they did, then they would probably simply charge the full price
for the unit so you'd be out the same amount of money in the end, just
without the option to spend less for fewer capabilities.

I heard frrom a friend who worked a Certain Computer Corporation that
back in the 1980's? they cleverly achieved price stratification for
their new line of mini-computers. They were selling each machine for
about $42,000. ?They discovered, long after market planning and device
design and just before release that there was an unanticipated market,
customers who wanted the machine at $30,000, but not much more. ?But
there were already customers willing to pay $42,000, and to make a
seperate product would have taken too long. Instead of redesigning the
machine, they sold the same $42,000 machine, but just before it was
shipped, opened each and filled some of the expansion slots with an
insulating undissolvable glue to prevent expansion-card upgrades by
lower-paying customers. ?Not very pretty, but it worked.

Now imagine if this option had not been available to them for whatever
reason. What would happen? Would the $30,000 customers still get their
machine? Not likely! Instead they would have simply left that market be,
and the $30,000 customers would have had less choice.

As I said, it's annoying and crappy when it's done to you, but ultimately
it results in more choice. The stuff would be more expensive, not cheaper,
if it weren't done.

True.

I was just pointing out the highly desirable benefit of price
stratification from vendor's point of view, as even the marketing
people had not previously had any intention of addressing the newly-
sprung market, and at $30,000 they were still making a profit.

Sure, I just wanted to point out the highly desirable benefit of price
stratification from the *buyer's* point of view. With this kind of
"underhanded" technique, the $30,000 buyers suddenly had a product.
Without it, they would not have had the opportunity to purchase it at all.
Net win for them.

Also, "still making a profit" is extremely misleading. In electronics, and
especially software, design costs are enormous. Those engineers don't come
cheap, but they get paid the same amount no matter how many units you
sell. It is entirely possible to make a profit on each unit but still lose
money overall.

Incidentally, had dinner tonight with a friend who is salesman for
company that makes all kinds of electronic surveillance equipment. He
showed me a device that can be used to check if someone is spying on
you with a CCD camera.

He also showed me a miniature camera with 700+x400+ (forget exact
resolution). Cost was about $100. I asked him if such a device could
be mounted on GA aircraft, and it turns out that company has entire
line of cameras for aviation, including police surveillance. The
equipment is in excess of $1000, and in some several $1000's for what
was essentially the same $100-$200 unit. We got into discussion about
whether they were repackaging same equipment that they sell for cheap
(they are), and what justification for higher pricing, and in the end,
I said, "So basically, it's the same unit, same technology, made in
Taiwan, different case, different manual, and differnt power
connector, which probably costs less than $50 I'm guessing, and the
real reason that you are charging so much to pilots is because you
can."

And he says,

"Well..yeah, right, that's the idea, isn't it?"

If you don't want to pay the outrageous price, come up with your own
mounting!

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon