Hang Gliding, South Australia

What is it

The Binatone Carrera X350 is an in car / personal navigator, basically it is a commercial PDA with a built in GPS reciever.

 

XCSoar is a "free" flight computer software package that runs on a PDA.

 

This project brings together the two, allowing XCSoar to be run on the X350. The X350 can still be used as a personal navigator by removing the SD card (see below) and restarting the device.

What you need

A Binatone Carrera X350, avaialable from Big W for about $200.

 

A SD Card, a small one will do if you have one, the programs only needs about 3Mb plus you will need a few Mb for track logs, but a 1Gb SD card is cheap, I brought one for $15 from Big W the other day. I have tried the X350 with a 2Gb SD card from my camara and it worked fine.

 

The software, currently available here.

 

ActiveSync, download from the microsoft site, I think the vista version is called something else? ActiveSync is not actually needed if you have an SD Card reader, it is only used to put files on and get files off the SD Card, but you may find it simpler than swapping the card anyway.

 

Its probably a good idea to get a copy of the manual, available on the XCSoar site here.

 

The download includes map data for South Australia, if you want map data for another area it can be generated via the XCSoar site here, choose xcm format as the file type

What to do

Basically all you need to do is get the software onto the SD Card:

 

If you have an SD card reader you can just unzip "xcsoar.zip" and copy the two directories ont the card.

 

Otherwise:

 

install ActiveSync.

 

unzip "xcsoar.zip".

 

Turn off the X350 using the little switch on the back.

 

Put the SD card in the X350 and turn it back on.

 

Connect it to your computer using the USB cable, ActiveSync should start.

 

Click on "Explore" in ActiveSync.

 

There should be a directory: "SDMMC", open it and copy the two directories you extracted from xcsoar.zip into it.

Startup

To start xcsoar turn off the X350 using the little switch on the back.

 

Insert the SD card and turn the device back on.

 

Select "Navigation" after you get past the warning screen, xcsoar should start.

 

To use the device as an in car navigator repeat the process, except remove the SD card instead of inserting it.

Setup

The download includes data for hang gliding in South Austalia (map, turpoints, polars etc). If you want to use other data, copy it into the XCSoarData directory on the SD card then select it in place of the data suggested here, see the manual and XCSoar site for formats, download locations etc.

 

Double tap the map area of the display, you should get a "Menu button", click it and then click "Config" twice, then click "System Setup" you should get to the setup pages.

 

For the map file select "sa.xcm" (or your own map).

 

For Waypoints 1 select hgsa 2007.dat (or you own waypoints).

 

If you want airspace select australia.txt (or your own airspace file).

 

To go to the next page press ">".

 

If you dont want aispace cluttering the map select Airspace display -> Clip and a clip altitude of 0, see the manual for more info.

 

On the Polar page you can select the polar file to suit your glider, I have included a few hang glider polars.

 

On the Device page set both "Device A" and "Device B" to Generic, COM 7, 4800.

 

For other settings see the manual, or just play.

 

The device should now be working with a map displayed.

 

You may get a warning that there is an error loading the task, this will go away after you define your first task (it tries to load the last task at startup).

 

There is a file called "xcsoar-registry.prf" in the XCSoarData directory, you can edit this to change some of the settings, most usefull is adding PilotName as the device does not have a keyboard. Keep a copy of the file before editing just in case.

 

Note that there is a PC version of the software available that will run in simulation mode. to use it with the data included in the download just copy the XCSoarData directory to "My Documents" on your computer and setup as above (dont worry about setting the device).

Other Stuff

The internal battery will only last about 3 hours. An external battery pack will be required to run for longer periods, there are several designs in the web that are simple, cheap and easy to make, or you can buy ready made devices. Ill add some links later.

 

About the software

The software in the build is basically the latest stable PPC2003 release of xcsoar (5.1.6) with a few minor modification to make it work on the device. I will be adding my changes back into the source code so that new features will be incorporated as they happen.

 

I will be making some othe enhancements to the software to make it eaisier to use on the device, check here in the short term, hopfully these will appeare on the xcsoar site soon.

Changes Made

Removed ability to laod jpg files, this only stops photos of waypoints from being viewed, I will try and put this functionality back.

 

Changed the location that some default files are stored to the SD Card XCSoarData directory (default for some files is to My Documents on a PPC device).

 

Allow setting small values in some of the input boxes using the up / down selectors on the screen.