Little project

[rizzz]

Little project,
But I can’t do it on my own, looking for people to help!

As some of you know, I’ve been selling a “flight simulator” app for iOS and Android called “iFMS” for a while now.
The app gives flight simmers a realistic “Boeing style” flight management system and navigation display, below is a picture that shows the systems it simulates circled in red:

757_3.jpg (137.85 KiB) Viewed 2768 times

Just have a look on my website and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.ifms-fs.com

Now the interesting part, the app can also be used for real world flying since you can configure it to use the GPS rather than a flight simulator as source for position/altitude/airspeed information,
Be aware though that the nav data I currently use (even though it is accurate) does not allow usage for real world flying so for now flying for real with iFMS is strictly against the terms of use of the software (even though I must admit I personally do it all the time).

Anyway, here’s the idea:

I want to convert iFMS so it runs on a Raspberry Pi (http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs) which is a mini computer that can be bought for less than $50,
The Pi connects to a display using HDMI so you can connect it to one of those rear car TV touch screen displays (you know, to keep the kids in the back occupied during long trips :-) ). You can buy these for less than $200.

I’m also working to add a primary flight display (the display above the navigation display circled in red) to iFMS but obviously (when not connected to flight sim) I would need an AHRS module to get attitude, and magnetic compass information, well guess what I found:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-IMU-AHRS-m ... 0918781329
(play the video included in the advertisement).
This should connect to the Pi though USB easily and I should have no trouble using the API to connect it iFMS, and best of all, the cost is $90!

So in summary, with all of the above I should be able to build a realistic “Boeing Style” flight management system with a nice primary flight display and navigation display to install in your Sonex or other homebuilt for less than $400! (Going with Dynon/MGL or similar you thousands of $$$ for something like this.)
You'll be able to fly and navigate your small plane like the big boys do :-).
Later on I could also upgrade the software to add synthetic vision to the PFD etc.
I also have a few friends who have 3D printers so we should be able to draw up a casing for the whole system and just "print it" making it look pretty and professional.

Obviously this is as “experimental” as it gets so I would never suggest you install this system without having at least an altitude and speed steam gauge to back it up if it fails.

As I don’t think I have the time to complete this on my own I’m looking for fellow entrepreneurs and/or people with some computer programming skills interested in helping/participating?

[falvarez]

Hi Mike...sounds like a fun and interesting project (of course it would appeal to me...I'm scratch building :D ). Up until a few years ago, I was doing C, C++, Java development. I'm not much of a UI guy but if you need any help coding the logic behind the presentation I'd be interested in helping out.

Feel free to email me at sonex800 (at) comcast (dot) net if you decide to move forward in getting help w/ the coding.

[rizzz]

alright, thanks,
I might take you up on that offer, I'll contact you in the near future once I get a chance to play around with that AHRS module and get a better idea of how much programming will still be required.