PowerFlarm Update?

On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 11:06:55 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike wrote:
What do the Swiss regard as "early March"?

Mike

I would agree that collision avoidance or gliders represents a rather small market. But my thoughts only begin with soaring. Real time collision avoidance technology is applicable to many situations and industries. While Flarm boasts of 30K aviation installations, when you stop to consider other industries such as mining, construction, public transportation, shipping and others (basically anywhere there is an opportunity for traditional "see and avoid" tactics to fail resulting in financial loss), then the aviation industry and gliding in particular effectively becomes just a "tip of the iceberg" thing.

But then again, I'm a rather selfish bloak who's simply looking to leverage my way into a wildly profitable business relationship to support my continually growing addiction to soaring.

On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 5:58:48 PM UTC-5, Mike Schumann wrote:

The obvious alternative is an ADS-B based system.

No, Mike, it isn't. For all the reasons that have been explained to death before.

Kirk
66
Happy PF owner, who is not concerned with such a trivial task as updating software occasionally.

Thanks, Kirk.
As previously pointed out, ADS-B will not react well to things like a glider on tow or worse yet in a gaggle. It is designed more for IFR separations, and alarms will go off for what you'd consider a non-event in a glider.
With ADS-B, circuit breakers will be your friend. Do not install without a circuit breaker!
Wings won't fall off just because "April Fools Day" - an interesting coincidence - might come without a completely functional update.
How many countries are now selling RF frequencies that used to be open to the public? This is part of the problem.
I hope Herb found a good night's rest, with such a horror story unfolding.
Jim

On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 6:05:52 PM UTC-7, kirk.stant wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 5:58:48 PM UTC-5, Mike Schumann wrote:

The obvious alternative is an ADS-B based system.

No, Mike, it isn't. For all the reasons that have been explained to death before.

Kirk
66
Happy PF owner, who is not concerned with such a trivial task as updating software occasionally.

QRP Nimbus C wrote on 3/12/2015 5:13 PM:
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 11:06:55 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike
wrote:
What do the Swiss regard as "early March"?

Mike

I would agree that collision avoidance or gliders represents a rather
small market. But my thoughts only begin with soaring. Real time
collision avoidance technology is applicable to many situations and
industries. While Flarm boasts of 30K aviation installations, when
you stop to consider other industries such as mining, construction,
public transportation, shipping and others (basically anywhere there
is an opportunity for traditional "see and avoid" tactics to fail
resulting in financial loss), then the aviation industry and gliding
in particular effectively becomes just a "tip of the iceberg" thing.

If you dig a little bit deeper, you will find the FLARM folk do supply
collision avoidance devices to mining companies and probably other
ground based vehicles, in addition to gliders and helicopters.

--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to
email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1
- "Transponders in Sailplanes - Feb/2010" also ADS-B, PCAS, Flarm
http://tinyurl.com/yb3xywl

On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 8:17:53 PM UTC-7, JS wrote:
Thanks, Kirk.
As previously pointed out, ADS-B will not react well to things like a glider on tow or worse yet in a gaggle. It is designed more for IFR separations, and alarms will go off for what you'd consider a non-event in a glider..

ADS-B does not react to anything, it is fundamentally a protocol for transmitting aircraft identifying information (including the type of aircraft, of which 'glider' is one possible type), positions, and velocity vectors. Any 'alarms' that may be triggered are solely a function of the receiving equipment. FLARM has several advantages over ADS-B, not the least of which is the ability to enforce updates to its protocol every few years (rather than being stuck with update cycles measured in decades), which, strangely enough, is precisely what people were complaining about. But, there is nothing preventing implementation of more glider-appropriate ADS-B traffic warning capability, if someone was interested enough in doing so.

Marc

Its up now.
http://flarm.com/support/firmware-up...-version-6-00/

Thanks!
Installed.
Jim

On Friday, March 13, 2015 at 12:49:31 PM UTC-7, Dave Leonard wrote:
Its up now.
http://flarm.com/support/firmware-up...-version-6-00/

There is no more competitor for Flarm. They have the monopoly of collision
avoidance systems.
The other company has ceased distributing products as far as I know.
They never obtained any kind of support, of course, from Flarm.

OGN (open glider network) glidernet.org is working on a OGN tracker, and
the base stations as a consequence are being obscurated by flarm through the
release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.
Beside, the new software must still run on 2004 - 2005 early units that have
a miserable cpu and ridicolous memory. This means that functionalities are
not really changing for safety.

This is an old movie for me. Already seen happening here.


"Tim Newport-Peace" wrote in message
...

At 18:30 12 March 2015, wrote:
On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 2:23:34 PM UTC-4, QRP Nimbus C wrote:
On Tuesday, March 10, 2015 at 11:06:55 AM UTC-7, Mike the Strike wrote:
What do the Swiss regard as "early March"?
=20
Mike
=20
To me, this is the very definition of "Having you by the short hairs!"
U=
nlike the flight navigation computer domain where there are multiple
vendor=
s competing with one another to stimulate a robust development and
support
=
environment, I'm quite surprised that there is no other entity to have
take=
n up the torch for this worthy cause (especially here stateside) to
encoura=
ge the same. For the most part, some healthy competition keeps all the
pla=
yers engaged, honest and focused. Maybe it's time for some healthy
discuss=
ion about an alternative.

With a market as small as this one, dividing it and trying to create a
comp=
etition to get to the financial bottom makes very little sense to me.=20
UH

There was a competitor once. I believe they tried to force Flarm to release
the protocols. Their web site seems to be closed.

Am Freitag, 13. März 2015 23:25:39 UTC+1 schrieb pcool:

release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.


There IS another reason: privacy. Those OGN-Guys could track everyone without a working opt-out. That caused a lot of furore, especially in Germany.

It seems impossible that an opt-out could not be made, it is a trivial thing
to do, a matter of a list of flarm ID opt-outs and a filter.
I cannot read german, so I cannot follow any discussion about it. Can you
please enlight us?


wrote in message
...

Am Freitag, 13. März 2015 23:25:39 UTC+1 schrieb pcool:

release of v6.0 that changes the protocol they could still read thanks to
Hiram Yaeger. Flarm is now entering the business of online tracking,
apparently, and the first thing to do is get back monopoly on the data
transmission, just to be sure.
There is no other reason to change the protocol and not keep it backward
compatible.


There IS another reason: privacy. Those OGN-Guys could track everyone
without a working opt-out. That caused a lot of furore, especially in
Germany.