Q: EAA Project for free GPS taxiways?

[JohnSBA]

As described in two recent posts, I'm volunteering my help with the new free (with no ads) open-source Aviation GPS app named Avare. It already has enough cool new features that I've canceled my chart subscription and started using it on my Droid X phone for its free Sectionals & TACs.

Zubair the developer of Avare is about to release an update with live GPS location on FAA Airport Diagrams (all free still!), but there's an improvement I believe EAA could contribute to. The problem is that the free FAA Diags are not Geo-referenced, and his new feature that shows your location on an FAA Airport Diagram won't work until Avare has the geo data. Though not all Diags change with each new FAA release, they'd all need to be checked just in case. Zubair has created a rather complex bit of code that allows us to do each Diag ourselves.

Being the eternal optimist, I said maybe I could find enough EAA volunteers to do the whole 700-some US airports so that Zubair could provide them pre-done with the free Download feature in Avare. What's involved is positioning a cursor on a known point on a Diagram where the lat/long lines meet, then move the cursor diagonally to another point and do the same. This allows Avare to calculate the orientation and scale of the Diagram so that it can display the GPS cursor that tracks your progress.

Question (at last): Are there enough EAA volunteers to do this, or should we just stay with each Avare doing it themselves for each airport in advance of using Avare on that field? Could we find 360 or so who'd do two airports each, or 700 who'd do just one? I thought about figuring out a way to collect the inputs pilots do for themselves, but that would require changing Avare's installation Permissions to add what I personally don't like to see in apps.

I'm also looking for someone to beg for geo data at the FAA, but that could take months.

Impressions??

[JohnSBA]

In re-reading my hastily-written question above, I'm realizing it's pretty hard to understand. In essence, I'm asking your opinion on this question: will EAA members volunteer to spend a few minutes to fill out a web form that will allow anyone with an Android phone or tablet to have a live GPS location pointer on an FAA Airport Diagram at no cost?

Avare already provides the Diagrams (along with GPS moving map all Sectionals & TACs) at no charge, but the Diagrams aren't moving map because the FAA doesn't provide the required geo data.

If there were a website where you could look at the Diagrams for your airport or one nearby and input two points, would you do it to help yourself and other pilots? Do you want to see free software for pilots? Would you rather just pay for an app from a provider that buys the geo data from a third party and passes that expense on to you?

If this still isn't clear, I welcome questions along with any feedback you're willing to share.

[rosiejerryrosie]

Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't understand what would be involved, but, now that I understand, I, for one, would be happy to assist with the project if the data were avialable.

[Mike M]

yes, i'd help

[JohnSBA]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into creating an online interface so we can calibrate the free FAA Airport Diagrams for use in the free Avare app. That way even volunteers without an Android device could help out using the web browser on any computer or mobile device.

I hope to come up with something that would allow us to simply move cross-hairs over an intersection of lat/long coordinates on a Diag and click OK, then move to a second intersection and click OK. For example, on the Diag for BVY (<-click to download the PDF for a look), the lat/long lines intersect for 70°55.5'W and 42°35.0'N intersect just below and left of the center of the field.

I'm imagining the process to be that the website would display the Diag you've chosen to calibrate and tell you what lat/long intersection to place cross-hairs on using your mouse. When it's exactly positioned, you'd click and the website would prompt you to point and click on a second intersection. It would probably do some bounds checking and then let you know the process is complete. Might only take half a minute or so to choose a Diag and do the work. Avare can then place the moving map location icon on the Diag file for that field using GPS.

Does this seem worth the effort? Do you think if we start off just doing some of the largest and most popular GA airports, maybe over time more volunteers will step forward?

[Bill]

I'd like to help, but the latest release of Avare (3.1 I think) broke Android Ice Cream Sandwich on both my Galaxy tablet and my Motorola Razr so badly that I had to uninstall Avare on both platforms and am looking for a replacement.

[JohnSBA]

I'd like to help

I'm happy that we're now up to four volunteers. Even if nobody else joins in we could at least do some of the most popular GA airports.

broke Android Ice Cream Sandwich on both my Galaxy tablet and my Motorola Razr

I'd appreciate if you'd install again and let me know the outcome. We've had no problems on ICS in our emulation software or on the Nexus 7.

There was a brief period when an unstable update was available on Play, but we discovered and fixed the problem and quickly posted an Update. It was due to a change in the way FAA charts are done, and we've modified our chart update procedure so hopefully it won't happen again.

[JohnSBA]

Update: I've discussed this further with Zubair, and neither of us has the expertise to quickly and easily build a web interface for geo-calibrating the FAA Airport Diagrams. If anyone reading this with that expertise would like to volunteer such an interface, please contact us or reply here.

Meanwhile, since Zubair already has the outlines of an interface running in a planned release of Avare, we plan to use that. At first it would just be for each of us to calibrate the Diags we want to use with moving map. The next step would be for me to create an area on the Avare section of our Apps4Av.com website, where people could share their calibrations. After that, Zubair would add a feature in Avare to install our calibration files. I'll post followups as we roll out this feature. I'm excited about it, because moving map Diags are pretty expensive on the few apps that even have them. Thanks for the offers of help!