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jeb

Recon HUD for wing-suits

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I received a notification from Fedex because they couldn't deliver them (didn't find my home).



Are you on the run AGAIN?
no I am settled for this month.. They just couldn't spot the entry of the mancave... :D
scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

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Yes you can zero altitude :) And the next generation will have sound too telling you glide as you fly on top of having HUD :) They just need to know there is a market to spend the money in development...



Care to tell us how to zero the altitude Jeb? Cause I tried and tried and it just won't happen! Perhaps you got a "special" model or maybe we just got Jebbed?

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Alright, could somebody put up some images of what you actually see with them on? I can't say I was all -that- interested, I learned to fly by feel not by gauges, and so far with reports of signal acquisition issues and the zeroing apparently hidden somewhere it sounds more like the Garmin Etrex I picked up a ways back- technically it can do the job but practically it did it poorly and was more hassle to use than it was worth. Damn Garmin ate batteries like popcorn and killed its batteries whether it was on or off, only way to make sure it worked next use was to pull the damn batteries out.

If its just a simple fixed "digital watch" style LCD display I think I'll pass. Anyway I'd like to know what it does in some serious detail before I'll splash another 300$ on another gadget that turns out to be useless. If its all that and a bag of chips though, maybe I'd get one myself to fine tune for comp training. And, I'd REALLY like to see ability to set waypoints, and a little arrow pointing to the DZ... good for cloud surfs! If it can do THAT, I'd DEFINITELY want one. I've got lost a time or two up there...
-B
Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

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Yes you can zero altitude :) And the next generation will have sound too telling you glide as you fly on top of having HUD :) They just need to know there is a market to spend the money in development...



Care to tell us how to zero the altitude Jeb? Cause I tried and tried and it just won't happen! Perhaps you got a "special" model or maybe we just got Jebbed?


The altitude mine show is neither agl nor msl. It's about half way in between.:S

And yes, I DO know the difference between feet and meters. It's wrong in both.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Yes you can zero altitude :) And the next generation will have sound too telling you glide as you fly on top of having HUD :) They just need to know there is a market to spend the money in development...



Care to tell us how to zero the altitude Jeb? Cause I tried and tried and it just won't happen! Perhaps you got a "special" model or maybe we just got Jebbed?



Figured it out...The left and right buttons on the remote zero it out up and down. Only 3 feet at a time though. I had to cycle through 600 feet.

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Yeah, the fedex guy surprised me this morning :)

Let's see... basically, this is going to be interesting and I can't wait to jump this thing.

From a day of playing with it, some observations:
- The thing likes to eat battery quite a bit, though with disciplined use only during flight, I could easily see this lasting for a day or two of jumping.
- I did not see any issues with GPS lock times
- The lens is on a pivot arm and it helps to adjust it for optimal viewing
- Altitude can be adjusted in increments of 3 feet by pressing left/right
- The display is a color LCD screen (not just a simple 7-segment screen as someone asked about above)
- When you reach a maximum speed, the display pops up a window with your new personal best. This is nifty, but it covers up the altitude indicator, but as the manufacturer plainly says, you should not be using this as an altimeter anyway
- The display shows speed, altitude, and glide ratio. The glide ratio indicator seems to change colors depending on how well/poorly you are flying. There also seems to be a vertical line indicator for speed
- The goggles tend to limit the vertical field of view a bit, but I have not had a chance to jump yet so I don't know what the impact would be

When connected to a computer, the device shows up as a USB storage device. Data is stored in various files in a funky binary format. The manufacturer’s website has a browser plugin that will interface with the USB storage device and overlay your data on a map. With a little bit of work it should be possible to decode the data format so that all the linux geeks out there don't feel left out. Perhaps when I get some time...

See attached photos. Due to the fancy optics, it is very difficult to get a good photo of the display using a regular camera, but I tried as best I could. In reality it does look better than what is pictured here.

Final thoughts: this thing seems pretty sweet. I can't wait to jump with it.

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I added a bunch of pictures/screenshots on here.

Someone's come up with a way to turn the funky GPS data into GPX files: http://www.jori.ws/recon_decode/, although I'm still sticking with my WBT-201 for the time being.

Based on using these units for skiing over the last three seasons, battery life is around 4-5 hours with the screen turned on the entire time, and around 7-8 hours with the screen off most of the time. Since you'd have the screen off in the plane and exposure to the cold would be limited in skydiving, I can see this lasting at least a day or two.

Edit: Typos

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Ah, cool- someone wrote a decoder. But it seems to be online-only, with no source or spec. Regardless, the .RIB files seem to follow a repetitive pattern of 20 bytes. Looking at my unit and with the help of the online converter, the data encoding seems to be as follows (big-endian):
4 bytes - latitude
4 bytes - longitude
2 bytes - speed, in increments of 0.1km/h
2 bytes - altitude
5 bytes - ???
3 bytes - time (one byte for hours, minutes, and seconds).

Latitude and longitude are encoded in a somewhat funky format. The first byte is the whole number of decimal degrees. The second byte is the whole number of minutes, with (I am guessing) bit 7 actually being used as a sign bit for the overall number. The third byte is in decimal minutes in increments of 0.01. The fourth byte is in decimal minutes in increments of 0.0001. So basically, convert all four bytes to decimal, clear bit 7 of byte 2 as needed, and "put them next to each other" and you should have a coordinate in the form of DD MM.MMMM.

One data point seems to be recorded every second.

In addition to this, there seems to be a general data header. I haven't decoded this, but at least 2 bytes of it seem to be the current month and day. Oh well.

Keep in mind this is based on a single data point. I am sleepy.

One more thing- the goggles seem to not interfere with my helmet (bonehead, open-face) but just barely. I hope the field of view is not too much of an issue. I like to pull off my goggles after opening, but this looks like it may be more difficult. One unfortunate consequence of having all that padded material at the bottom of your field of view is that HANDLES are harder to see now. Guess I'll just have to pull high and deal with it if I have to.

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... Fedex...




No wonder why shipping took so long.
oh yeah, I now understand... [:/][:/] I had to have the shipment "rerouted" to be delivered at my office, which is 60 km from the "original" Fedex facility. They shipped it to another facility, 205km away, and from that place to the facility closest to my office, 256 km away... But it was delayed due to a late incoming flight [:/]
scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

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The 5 bytes have the temperature data. I converted some of my MOD Live RIB files from a recent heli skiing trip to GPX -- the temperature was listed in a comment field next to each data point.

On another note, I'm not sure how well the GPS lock holds in a Twin Otter; it was pretty good in a Bell 212, but not as good as the Wintec WBT-201.

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