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Shrinking the Brain Bag....

Doug:

I read your note below and was hoping for some more information.

You say that the Sony only displays 4 levels of color yet the specs say that it has an 8 level gray scale panel. I am by no means an expert on displays, but it sounds like you may have taken a look at an older model? Or perhaps I don't quite follow what an 8 level gray scale panel means.

Second, you note that some of the grays on the NACO charts may be mapped to white. Are you saying that they may not be mapped at all? I don't follow how a grayscale display can display white. Even if the case is that the grays are not mapped at all, isn't all critical info. on a NACO chart displayed in either black or dark gray? The only things I can think of off the top of my head that wouldn't display if light gray isn't visible are the outer rings of an NDB or perhaps the ramp or taxiways on an airport diagram. Can someone think of something else that is missing?

Antony

rainsux said:
Paul,

I looked at the Sony eBook Reader long ago ... and determined that it was not
satisfactory for *my* purposes. I was curious what others thought about it,
so I kept my yap shut to avoid biasing the discussion.

The Sony & Kindle use the same screen ... both are limited to four [count'm 4]
levels of color (black, dark grey, light grey & white). NACO is authoring the plates
to use more levels - dunno how many. Hypothesis: Some of NACO's greys are
being mapped to white by the Sony.

> smoking your own computer ...

No problem. I was curious if the residential cablemodem (1.544Mbps upload cap) was
discouraging usage. It was ...
Click to expand...
 
Sony eBook Reader

The Sony eBook Reader(s) uses a display from eInk. The first-gen (model 500) is limited to four colors.

- Black
- Dark gray
- Light gray
- White

The second-gen (model 505) is limited to eight colors. This example lists only seven in order to keep it from getting
absurdly out of hand:

- Black
- Dark-dark gray
- Dark gray
- Gray
- Light gray
- Light-light gray
- White

The NACO charts have a lot more than four (or eight) levels of gray. Whenever
NACO uses something between Light, Light Gray and White ... some of those lighter,
light-light grays will be mapped to white (ergo, invisible).

Additionally; I found that their PDFviewer was so sluggish as to be an unwanted
nuisance/distraction in *my* cockpit. Everyone gets to decide this matter for
themselves ... I am not seeking to start a food-fight.
 
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I have an e-ink ebook reader that I snagged about six months ago for the purposes of trying to make a chart tablet, and I came to the conclusion that e-ink just isn't the technology for it. As noted above, it's too slow! I wasn't thrilled with the clarity of it.


I've got some other charting ideas in the works... I should probably get back on them
 
tmbg said:
I have an e-ink ebook reader that I snagged about six months ago for the purposes of trying to make a chart tablet, and I came to the conclusion that e-ink just isn't the technology for it. As noted above, it's too slow! I wasn't thrilled with the clarity of it.
Click to expand...


I don't disagree with you that it is far from perfect - but it is far better than trying to juggle too many approach plate books in a Tandem cockpit. The processor is definitely slow, but if you stay ahead of the game, and know what you are looking for, you can have the plate that you want when you need it. It is a positive step in the right direction, but not a place to stop development, for sure.

I have also loaded the AIM, AC 43.13, etc on mine....and while it is OK if you want to read pages in consecutive order, it is too slow for "random access", in my experience.

Paul
 
The Irex Illiad

Has anyone tried the iRex Illiad as a reader? It's more expensive and a little heavier than the Sony models, but has more screen resolution and 16 gray scale colors.
 
The iRex Illiad has much better screen resolution, but has a PDF viewer that is
charitably described as brain dead. It's the same unit that ARINC tried peddling
as the eFlybook.
 
Sony Reader - VFR Charts?

I apologize for being so dense, however, I am unable to tell if the Sony reader can accommodate the digital vfr charts. Is this possible, and if so, how do they look?

Thanks,
Jay Martin
 
N616LM said:
I apologize for being so dense, however, I am unable to tell if the Sony reader can accommodate the digital VFR charts. Is this possible, and if so, how do they look?

Thanks,
Jay Martin
Click to expand...

I doubt it - it is black and white, with a few shades of gray. You can't scroll - it only shows PDF's. I find it adequate for my purpose - a way to carry ALL the approach plates in a compact form, primarily as a backup to plates I print out for a specific trip - but I expect another generation of hardware/software will be required before you could do useful VFR stuff.

My opinion, of course,

Paul
 
The problem with the Kindle is that it will only display 4 levels of gray. You end up the problem that rainsux brought up; some colors on the plates may not display correctly.

In looking into this a few weeks ago, I came across this comparison chart of e-Book readers.
 
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EFB

Ok,

Thanks... I am just looking for a simple non windows based display unit to show the terminal procedures.

I'll keep looking...

Jason
 
If you don't want to break the bank, the way to go is the Hanlin Jinke V3. It has some number of greys which I will verify when I get a chance (the same 16 shades of grey display as the others) for a very attractive price. And they promise that the MobiPocket software will "work good soon", if that's important to you (I mostly read books from Gutenburg, so it isn't for me).

It should cost you around US$300 to get the V3 here. See if they'll throw in a free leather case (they were for a while, but I'm not sure if you can swing it).

If they're was an interest, I'd bet that Jinke would do a group rate on 10+ units.

~ Christopher
 
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RV7Factory said:
Price is certainly right, but their web site says only 4 shades of gray, not 16? :confused:
Click to expand...

I quick edited my earlier post. I believe that it does have 16 (or at least 8) shades of gray, but follow what the website says until I have a chance to dig mine out and actually do a test.

I'll see if I can get some "gray bars" and take a picture.

~ Christopher
 
Hmm tempting

As long as we can be assured of a website where all the plates can always be gotten in one lump..Or two..

Nice

Frank
 
Let us know

I am very interested in getting one of these readers if it will show approach plates. Please let us know what you find...

Jason
 
rainsux said:
The iRex Illiad has much better screen resolution, but has a PDF viewer that is
charitably described as brain dead. It's the same unit that ARINC tried peddling
as the eFlybook.
Click to expand...

I originally bought an EFlyBook and was not impressed with the EFlyBook software. In my experience it was simply too unreliable to be usable. They convert the charts to djvu format and use their own viewer - all that work but a poor result! Also, their software required the pen to enter airport IDs, so if you dropped the pen the Iliad became a paperweight.

I decided to see what could be done to make the Iliad work with NACO charts. I came up with a solution that works on the Iliad, is reliable and does not require the pen. Screenshots of the interface at http://www.flypaperless.com/screenshots.htm
The A/FD is also integrated and you don't have to search through pages of the A/FD or the Alt Minimums or the TakeOff Minimums. It always shows you the correct page for the airport. The PDF viewer may be brain-dead but on single page charts it works fine.

I also have the Sony eReader and have looked at charts on it - but 800x600 pixels is too small in my opinion for approach charts. Maybe my eyes are too old!

Dave Chalmers
 
I played around a bit today with both the AOPA and NACO download sites. Of the two, the AOPA one seems to be particularly well guarded against the possibility of downloading everything using an automated script.

However, both of their searches will allow you to simply put in the value % (percent symbol) in the City (AOPO) or Airport Name (NACO) while leaving everything else blank. This returns everything in the database - all on one screen for AOPA (list of airports, with links to details) and across many pages for NACO (every document listed separately).

On the NACO site, this yields page 1 of 474, with a link to advance to the next page. On the page itself are direct links to airport minimums and each procedure, STAR, or SID. The table also includes City, Airport, Identifier, Volume, Flag(?), Type, and Procedure Name.

Given this information (and provided they don't modify their pages), it should be possible to build a script which extracts this information into a database table and then use the table to generate a download script that grabs one item at a time. You can also filter based on what has changed, so that you don't have to bring down everything each time. Finally, some clever person ought to be able to spin the entire thing into an html page and display it on their tablet PC as an index with links to the individual documents.

I lack the expertise in HTML / string parsing to turn this into a click-and-go operation - perhaps someone else could generate this script for us so that you can simply leave your computer on over night and download everything?
 
> provided they don't modify their pages

NACO modifies their pages every 28 days.

Download scripts are available on my website, updated every
28 days.

PDF bundles are available on my website, updated every 28 days.
My PDF bundles include a TOC for easy navigation.

What I won't do, is convert NACO's native data (PDF) to another format.
The conversion utilties do not adequately document how they handle
the boundary conditions ... and those that I have tried, worry me.

Also; converting PDF to HTML will DRAMATICALLY increase the file size.
Bad plan.
 
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> Has anyone tried using the kindle to display approach plates?

Yes. The PDF --> Kindle conversion utility mangles approach plates. It
is designed to convert text documents, not compound documents.
 
rainsux said:
> provided they don't modify their pages

NACO modifies their pages every 28 days.

Download scripts are available on my website, updated every
28 days.

PDF bundles are available on my website, updated every 28 days.
My PDF bundles include a TOC for easy navigation.

What I won't do, is convert NACO's native data (PDF) to another format.
The conversion utilties do not adequately document how they handle
the boundary conditions ... and those that I have tried, worry me.

Also; converting PDF to HTML will DRAMATICALLY increase the file size.
Bad plan.
Click to expand...

Didn't know about your scripts, will look into that. Like your big PDFs, but they take a long time to download - seems like it would be easier to have a script that just downloads those that have changed.

I wasn't considering an HTML file containing the plates, just an XML / HTML file to act as an index for navigation to the appropriate plate. I really prefer the PDFs because you can zoom in / out easily.

It is truly annoying that the FAA has all of this information and refuses to make it easy to access. The law requires them to make it "accessible," and they have clearly followed the letter of the law while perverting the spirit.
 
> ... your big PDFs ... take a long time to download

It all depends upon the speed of your connection and the load on the server ...

It'll take the scripts ~24 hours to pull *everything* from the FAA website. Downloading
from the NACOmatic site is considerably faster. Nonetheless; if you need a lot of
states ... then NACOmatic downloads are not a reasonable solution.

A couple of corp/charter guys have asked for everything on a DVD - I am considering
their requests. It seems that the existing NACO and Sportys DVD offerings are
considerable kludges ... so I *might* offer DVDs w/everything for those willing to pay.

> seems like it would be easier to have a script that just downloads those that have
> change

Easier for who? <g>

The FAA site does let you search by only what's-new since the last cycle ... but you
still have to download one page at a time.

This is a good candidate for a RSS feed ... but the last time I tried RSS feeds I got badly
burned because a few too many idiots configure their RSS readers to check for updates
every N-seconds. If RSS provided a mechanism to filter-out the idiots, I would consider it.
 
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Enroute Charts Avail as PDFs

For those that don't subscribe to FAASafety.gov notifications:

Effective with the September 25, 2008 airspace cycle, the Federal Aviation Administration will offer digital versions of all Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) Enroute Charts as e-commerce digital downloadable files.

All conterminous U.S. and Alaska High and Low Altitude Enroute Charts will be available through the NACO website: http://naco.faa.gov - select ?Online Ordering? then navigate to ?Digital Products? on our e-commerce site. These charts will be packaged just like our paper charts are packaged. For example: ELUS1 and ELUS2 will be packaged together with their associated metadata files into one zip file. Individual chart format will be Portable Document Format (PDF). These PDF files are not geo-referenced. Downloadable Enroute charts will be available 14 days prior to their airspace effective date.* The download price for each zip file will be $1.60.* No subscriptions will be available.

The new Product IDs will be exactly the same as our paper products with one exception; they will be proceeded by a ?D? (i.e. DELUS1, DELUS3, DEHUS1, DEHUS3, DELAK1, DEHAK1, DAREA, etc.).

The current associated paper charts will continue to be available as a one-time purchase or via a subscription.* Purchase of a paper enroute chart does not entitle the customer to the corresponding downloadable chart or vice versa.

If you have any questions concerning these products, please contact the FAA/NACO Distribution Team at 1-800-638-8972 (toll free in the U.S.) or 301-436-8301 between 8:00 am and 4:30 pm Eastern Time or via e-mail at [email protected].
 
One of the members on the CPA website has taken delivery of the ReaderPlates
solution. His initial observations are not complimentary ...

"Charts are a little less readable then the already horrendous NACO plates. I'm
an old Jepp guy. I'll be flying with it later this week and will post a full review."

"I'm really having doubts about keeping the reader."
 
Last edited:
dtaylor said:
So how do you download your charts???

I assume you use your pay service right???

There is no easy way to download from the FAA yet. You have to download them one at a time currently, right?

Does anybody know anything different??

David T.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I am very late to this thread. Not knowing about this capability separately I tripped across a service that does the same thing, albeit not for free. I have been using it for a few months now.

I subscribed to the service mentioned before in this thread at http://readerplates.com/. The reader you use is the same Sony unit shown above and I concur that the readability is extremely high. Since the equipment is identical, there are 3 (maybe 4 - but I haven't used the this version so I do not know) differences that I can see:

1. The Reader Plates (RP's) service is 9.99 a month. Clearly free is better ;)
2. RP's has a service that puts the entire US plates on one 2G card that is updated by simply clicking an icon on your desktop. Click, walk away and come back in about an hour or so. They compress it somehow to fit it all in and the organize it as chapters by state. You can get to any plate in 10 seconds or less.
3. Reader plates worked on shrinking the margins around the entire edge of the plates so the plate is able to be zoomed to be marginally larger. Makes it a tad bit easier to read.
4. This is the one I am not sure of, but I think its unique to RP's. In RP's you can press the right center button and focus only on the top half of the plate. If you press it again you get only the bottom half. The lettering then is proportionally larger and quite a bit easier to read. With a modern GPS like a 430 you need the bottom mainly, so thats what I use. Then if you page up (or down) the unit will reverse contrast (black background, white lettering) and it can be very helpful in some lighting situations.

All in all I have been very pleased with RP's. Still, I might fool around with the free version and see if I want to save the 10 bucks a month - that would be cool. Otherwise I carry paper in the cockpit of my planned destinations, but this is my source for plates if my plan changes. It works well...

I would post pictures, but you can see all of this on their website. I am not affiliated with the company in any way, but I have been impressed with it. YMMV...
 
Last edited:
rwhittier said:
Sorry, I am very late to this thread. Not knowing about this capability separately I tripped across a service that does the same thing, albeit not for free. I have been using it for a few months now.

I subscribed to the service mentioned before in this thread at http://readerplates.com/. The reader you use is the same Sony unit shown above and I concur that the readability is extremely high. Since the equipment is identical, there are 3 (maybe 4 - but I haven't used the this version so I do not know) differences that I can see:

1. The Reader Plates (RP's) service is 9.99 a month. Clearly free is better ;)
2. RP's has a service that puts the entire US plates on one 2G card that is updated by simply clicking an icon on your desktop. Click, walk away and come back in about an hour or so. They compress it somehow to fit it all in and the organize it as chapters by state. You can get to any plate in 10 seconds or less.
3. Reader plates worked on shrinking the margins around the entire edge of the plates so the plate is able to be zoomed to be marginally larger. Makes it a tad bit easier to read.
4. This is the one I am not sure of, but I think its unique to RP's. In RP's you can press the right center button and focus only on the top half of the plate. If you press it again you get only the bottom half. The lettering then is proportionally larger and quite a bit easier to read. With a modern GPS like a 430 you need the bottom mainly, so thats what I use. Then if you page up (or down) the unit will reverse contrast (black background, white lettering) and it can be very helpful in some lighting situations.

All in all I have been very pleased with RP's. Still, I might fool around with the free version and see if I want to save the 10 bucks a month - that would be cool. Otherwise I carry paper in the cockpit of my planned destinations, but this is my source for plates if my plan changes. It works well...

I would post pictures, but you can see all of this on their website. I am not affiliated with the company in any way, but I have been impressed with it. YMMV...
Click to expand...

$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.
 
breister said:
$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.
Click to expand...

Sorting by identifier would be a better way to go. Didn't know the other one sorts that way - haven't played with it yet.

I thought RP's interface was pretty easy - frankly about the way you would look it up in a Jepp book. Go by state, then city. Then each city with IAP's are sorted alphabetically and the identifier is shown.

I will play with the other one to compare - but right now my canopy fitting is taking my extra time...
 
breister said:
$10 / month is not much, but I REALLY don't like that you cannot simply search on Identifier. C'mon, almost EVERYONE has GPS these days and clicking on the airport gives you four short letters to search by.

I'll vote for the slower download / better interface.
Click to expand...
Obviously a personal choice. The product works well and the price is right so I don't want to sound like I am complaining about a free product, because I am not - I just didn't know it existed when I signed up for Reader Plates. Somebody is doing us one heck of a service providing this for free.

This evening I had a chance to play with this download. Frankly the identifier issue you mention is a pretty minor difference IMO. Both list it in the chapter line and you can't search on it anyway as the Sony reader does not have input capability. So really I do not see an advantage of either one in this respect. YMMV.

You did comment on ease of download (which is important to me because I download every 28 days), but did not comment on those other differences like zooming in on the top or bottom half and the ability to reverse the contrast - they do differentiate the two products although its a personal thing how much you value those.

In the end, both offer a great paperless chart capability and one should go with what they are comfortable with. Cheers.
 
GPS position overlay?

So has anyone besides Control Vision-Anywhere Map come out with a portable device of this sort that uses a GPS overlay to position your plane along the approach? Sounds like their real world readability makes their's near useless.

If I read correctly the 696 will only display the plate, not your position on it.....
 
cawmd82 said:
So has anyone besides Control Vision-Anywhere Map come out with a portable device of this sort that uses a GPS overlay to position your plane along the approach? Sounds like their real world readability makes their's near useless.

If I read correctly the 696 will only display the plate, not your position on it.....
Click to expand...

I assume it's a legal issue. My 11 year old Garmin 195 would show approach overlays, that todays units won't.

L.Adamson
 
You people with flying rv's go on an on about such things.

I think it would be cool to load a reader up with all the build plans....
 
rwhittier said:
Obviously a personal choice. The product works well and the price is right so I don't want to sound like I am complaining about a free product, because I am not - I just didn't know it existed when I signed up for Reader Plates. Somebody is doing us one heck of a service providing this for free.

This evening I had a chance to play with this download. Frankly the identifier issue you mention is a pretty minor difference IMO. Both list it in the chapter line and you can't search on it anyway as the Sony reader does not have input capability. So really I do not see an advantage of either one in this respect. YMMV.

You did comment on ease of download (which is important to me because I download every 28 days), but did not comment on those other differences like zooming in on the top or bottom half and the ability to reverse the contrast - they do differentiate the two products although its a personal thing how much you value those.

In the end, both offer a great paperless chart capability and one should go with what they are comfortable with. Cheers.
Click to expand...

Ah, sorry - actually I was complaining about both in general on the search feature. And, I have no experience with either - yet.

What I really want is a 696 with lifetime updates for $100!

:D
 
Rainsuxs

I have not tried your service yet but plan to as soon as my Sporty's subscription expires.

I just wanted to say a HUGE Thankyou for what your doing for the community!

Cheers

Frank
 
Noticed today

That there are two sellers on Ebay selling the Sony 505 model..One ofr 279 the other for 272 including shipping.

The 279 priced one comes with a soft cover and an USB cable, couldn't see if the 272 was the same.

Incidently..How are these units powered?..Does one need a cigarette power adaptor?

I'm going to wait till January to hopefully pick one up cheaper..

Frank
 
frankh said:
That there are two sellers on Ebay selling the Sony 505 model..One ofr 279 the other for 272 including shipping.

The 279 priced one comes with a soft cover and an USB cable, couldn't see if the 272 was the same.

Incidently..How are these units powered?..Does one need a cigarette power adaptor?
Click to expand...

Frank - they charge up on the USB port, and will last for a week or so of book reading on a charge.
 
Anyone using the 505 as primary? If so, how do you like it?

How hard is it to dial up the correct plate on a bumpy night?
 
PRS 505 Unsuitable

I spent 1.5 hrs in Borders playing with the 505. They were good enough to let me plug in my SD card with the approach plates on it.

I found.
The display to be too small to be able to read the plates easily.
Some of the leters were not readable.
It could be changed to landscape and the plate shown in two parts but this did not increase the size of the information on the plate.

It was very slow to change from plate to plate (refresh)
So much so that I on a couple of ocassions pressed the buttons twice only to have it skip the originally requested plate.

I rate the Sony 505 reader as next to useless in the aircraft and will not be buying one for this purpose.

I am waiting for the plastic logic, it may be the go. Doug put me on to it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v226DYqlbHQ
 
Plastic Logic

Yes, it may well be too big. Although its roughly the same size as my knee pad. It should be readable though. And there may be other reasons its no good as well.
Maybe they will make a slightly smaller one.

I really just wanted to get across that the in my opinion the Sony 505 is no good and if someone was contemplating purchasing it for reading approach plates they should not just rush out and buy one. It looks to be great for reading books, but they generally have larger text and dont have all the different shades of grey that the plates have.
 
breister said:
Anyone using the 505 as primary? If so, how do you like it?

How hard is it to dial up the correct plate on a bumpy night?
Click to expand...


I use the 505 for my primary in my Bonanza, and print paper backup for my primary and alternate airports. I have had no problems with it, and at night, a headlamp works just fine. With a little preflight planning, pulling up the charts for your planned flight is only a couple key strokes away, and pulling up the unplanned charts takes just a little longer. Yes, the print is a bit smaller than the paper charts, but the clarity is very good. If you do lots of interregional flying, I say it is well worth it...beats the heck out of killing all those trees every 28 days. In my RV I use an MX-20 with chart view. If I could justify the expense, I would put one of these in the BO. But for $200+ and 9.99 a month, the 505 is tough to beat!
 
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