Blog update and status update

Hello, fellow aviators!

I am in the process of moving the blog to free hosting, because I cannot justify paying for hosting for it any more. This blog is not as flexible but it meets the needs of this project.

Regarding status, it has been some time since I did any development on the Pilot Altimeter & VSI. This has mainly been the case for personal reasons. At present, family and professional commitments and the fact that I am not active as a pilot have meant that the project has had to take a back seat. In addition, the project is in need of quite a bit of updating. I don't think it builds with the latest version of Android Studio and it needs to be updated to use the latest Android APIs. This is a requirement before any updates can be published to the Google Play store.

The positive side is that I work with Android professionally as a software engineer, so that will help me update the project when I have time.

I have open sourced the project so if anybody would like to enhance it, that is of course possible. You can find the project here:

https://github.com/phabvionics/pilot-altimeter

Work in progress in Altimeter and VSI

Note: Originally published 2016-05-22.

Work has started on the next feature for the Altimeter and VSI version 2.0, and with this, I think the app has the potential to become seriously useful as opposed to something that could just serve as a backup for those instruments.

Many people have asked me to add an alerting feature. This requires quite a bit of redesign and I'm doing this in my spare time, so it will probably be another month or two before it is released.

I didn't want to remove existing functionality, but altitude alerting requires a lot more buttons in its user interface (mainly the 10 digits so that you can type in the desired altitude), so there will be a new screen that will allow entry of this target altitude. You will get a warning when approaching your desired altitude, say 1000 feet away; another warning when inside your tolerance region, say 200 feet away; then you will get warned if you stray outside the tolerance region. The warning will at least be audible and will probably also involve a flashing indicator on the screen.

The good news is that although some people have said they will happily pay for this feature, I have decided that this will be free as well!

I have designed the new screen and am now working on the back-end stuff to support it.

I have also had requests for a "variometer"-type indication that would also be audible and would make a sound based on whether a climb or a descent is in progress, the sound also varying depending on the speed of climb or descent. I want to work on that feature some time in the future.

Finally, I have made the code open source. If the code interests you, you can see it here:

https://github.com/phabvionics/pilot-altimeter

The new stuff isn't on that repository yet, but it will be.

Thanks for reading!

Pilot Altimeter & VSI Version 1.9

Note: Originally published 2015-11-28.

I have added variable-length history for the altimeter and the VSI to this edition. You can select between off, 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes or 5 minutes for each instrument. Note that using longer history may result in performance degradation on less powerful devices.

Pilot Altimeter & VSI version 1.8

Note: Originally published 2015-05-16.

Version 1.8 of the Pilot Altimeter and VSI has been released. Here are the changes:

• The graphs no longer lose their contents when the device is rotated.
• Some devices were showing STOPPED all the time, even though it was clear that samples were being received. This has been fixed.
• The port to Android Studio (the new official IDE for Android development) has finally been completed.

I do want to add more to it, but since this update was of value, I wanted to get it out as quickly as possible.

Note that I have selected a staged roll-out in the Google Play Developer Console with 20% of users getting this update initially; I believe these are randomly chosen. The reason I have done this is that I do not have the necessary resources to test on all devices and I want to make sure it's a good quality release before providing everybody with access to it. If you want instant access to it, you can apply to become part of the beta-testing programme by providing your email address.

If no significant problems are reported, I expect to open the doors to everybody to receive this upgrade in about a week's time.

Pilot Altimeter & VSI version 1.7

Not much has been updated for this release. These are the updates:

• The VSI needle was pointing at the wrong angle at least when the graph was enabled and possibly also when the graph was not enabled. That's been fixed.


• In vertical mode, and possibly in horizontal mode depending upon your device (something I could not test), the buttons have been made bigger so that they are easier to press.


• Since I am not using in-app billing, I have removed the permission from the app.

I've tested it, am happy with the changes, and have published it on the Google Play store. Many thanks to Sriram for reporting the bug that I've fixed.

Pilot Altimeter & VSI version 1.6

I have now added the capability to display a rolling graph of the vertical speed as well as the altitude. Both are now enabled by default, but if you installed version 1.5, the altitude graph may not appear unless you enable it in the configuration.

The scaling of the altitude graph is, for the moment, fixed (except for the selection of feet or metres for the altitude readout). The scaling of the vertical speed graph is dynamic; it has a reasonable minimum and will increase as necessary to accommodate the measured history.

This works fine on the Nexus 4, but it might not work well on some slower devices. If this is the case, please let me know and I will see if I can change the app to enhance its performance in these cases. Thank you.

Pilot Altimeter & VSI version 1.5 released

I have just uploaded to Google Play the latest version, 1.5. It adds a rolling graph of altitude over the last 30 seconds. This is the first change to the program I have made that I consider really exciting. I can't wait to take this one flying and find out exactly how bad my level flight really is! :-)

You have to select it in the configuration before it displays, otherwise it displays just the same as in previous versions. I did that on purpose because it takes longer to update the display if the graph is also present, and I didn't want that to cause a problem for anybody.

Note that you can now find details of my apps on Google+ here:

https://plus.google.com/communities/102881120171139152924