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peek

Aircraft Load Timer program for DZ's

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I have written a Windows application that is an Aircraft Load Timer program.

It is basically a replacement for the kitchen timer and manual PA announcements used at manifest to keep track of loads.

It includes PA announcements via the sound card using a set of included audio files, (which can be replaced by audio files of your choosing).

A version of the program can display messages on a BetaBrite large LED display (electronic sign). (This is the unique part, because I'm not sure many people know how to program messages to these displays via a computer.)

The descriptions and links for download can be found at the top of this page: http://www.skydivestlouisarea.com/peeksa.htm

Some background:

Years ago I made a hardware device for a local DZ that did something similar. You pushed buttons to set the time while viewing the display, then started the timer. It produced beeps over a speaker every 5 minutes and displayed a countdown to the load.

Note:

If any of you programmers think you can write something better, then go for it! (I'm sure you can.)

Some of you folks who write manifest programs could integrate this stuff into your programs.

Feel free to use the audio files, and if anyone wants to create audio files with the voice of their favorite sexy-voiced manifest chick, then that would be great too!

We can make this some kind of open-source project if you like. It would be neat to have a number of sets of audio files with different voices.

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Karl Castle of NPR fame is going to be in Wichita this weekend. His voice on your program would be much cooler than on your answering machine.

I'd download it but Martin has not moved into the digital age yet.
It's called the Hillbilly Hop N Pop dude.
If you're gonna be stupid, you better be tough.
That's fucked up. Watermelons do not grow on trees! ~Skymama

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Hi,

We downloaded your programs and had a look at it. From what we saw it is a nice and useful program. However we wonder if your drop zone uses the audio announcements to inform the jumpers about the status or just to keep the manifester up-to-date. When we added that kind of information to DZ-Manager (see attached screenshots) we did not add audio announcements mainly because customers told us that they would not use it. On the other hand a major European drop zone just told us that they are interested in such a feature.

What we really like is the support for the BetaBrite LED display although we could not test it. How much are these displays ? How much effort was it add support for it ? It would make a nice addition to our load-viewer.

Did you think of using a text-to-speech engine ? If so what were your reasons to go with pre-recorded sound files ? We wrote an application that used the Microsoft text-to-speech engine 10 years ago and it was horrible, but I heard they have improved a lot since then.

Last but not least two things we recognized while playing with your app:
- if opening text files via the menu (configuration and help) the application "hangs" until notepad is closed
- if clicking the start-button, the app starts the countdown, but vanishes / moves to the lowest ZOrder-position.
Maybe both is by design but it is a little confusing at the beginning.

Keep up the good work !

Blue skies
mySkydive - The new German portal for skydivers
DZ-Manager - The sexy manifesting software

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However we wonder if your drop zone uses the audio announcements...



No one is using this. I just wrote it. The local DZ is using the microcontroller hardware based design like I said in the OP..

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What we really like is the support for the BetaBrite LED display although we could not test it. How much are these displays ? How much effort was it add support for it?



About $200 for the USB version at Sams Club in the US. www.betabrite.com to see who the distributors are, and to get protocol documents.

Software support is the "magic" part. I have been working with large LED displays for many years. Go to http://www.industrologic.com/products.htm#largeled and follow the links to the display you want. Go to the Software page and get sample source code.

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Did you think of using a text-to-speech engine ? If so what were your reasons to go with pre-recorded sound files ?



I didn't feel like buying a text-to-speech engine. I was in a hurry so I just made audio files.

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Last but not least two things we recognized while playing with your app:
- if opening text files via the menu (configuration and help) the application "hangs" until notepad is closed
- if clicking the start-button, the app starts the countdown, but vanishes / moves to the lowest ZOrder-position.



Both by design. No reason to keep the config file open. The time is displayed in the minimized window.

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It looks interesting. A feature you may want to consider is to make your Call Time to be a configurable option. Not everyone may want every 5 minutes.
Also, if you don't have nine airplanes, the radio buttons still appear. It would be easy enough to set the visible property to false if the caption value is empty.

Another tiny 'bug' is your configuration file contains the line

Everything below here is the actual configuration information.


which isn't quite true. I cut some of the airplane config lines and pasted them above the statement and they still showed up.

It was also a little eerie to see the demo data screen snapshot since Justin is still recovering from his safety day crash and couldn't possible be on a load.[:/]
For the same reason I jump off a perfectly good diving board.

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Actually, I'm not considering any changes at all. This is a quickly done program that some people might find useful, and some programmers like yourself can improve on. I'll leave the perfection to others.

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It was also a little eerie to see the demo data screen snapshot since Justin is still recovering from his safety day crash and couldn't possible be on a load.[:/]



Who is Justin, and what is the demo data screen snapshot? It sounds like you might have evaluated a manifest program lately.

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Software support is the "magic" part. I have been working with large LED displays for many years. Go to http://www.industrologic.com/products.htm#largeled and follow the links to the display you want. Go to the Software page and get sample source code.

Thanks for the link, I will have a look at that sample sources.

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I didn't feel like buying a text-to-speech engine.

It was my understanding that a speech engine is part of the .NET-Framework 3.0 and therefore comes with newer Windows version at no extra charge. But I could be wrong.

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It was also a little eerie to see the demo data screen snapshot since Justin is still recovering from his safety day crash and couldn't possible be on a load.

I did not think of that, sorry ! We are currently working on new features for Start Skydiving and Justin is part of the development team. He also has an account on our development website. Therefore he is in that database and is manifested during testing on a regular basis.
After all he is recovering really good. Do you think it would be appropriate to remove him from the database / the screenshots ? Somehow I would feel like giving him up [:/]
mySkydive - The new German portal for skydivers
DZ-Manager - The sexy manifesting software

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After all he is recovering really good. Do you think it would be appropriate to remove him from the database / the screenshots ? Somehow I would feel like giving him up



Wasn't my intent. Justin is a great guy and one of my AFF instructors.
For the same reason I jump off a perfectly good diving board.

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It includes PA announcements via the sound card using a set of included audio files, (which can be replaced by audio files of your choosing).



I was at a DZ two weeks ago where the following call came over the PA. Can you please integrate it?

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"5 minutes after the 10 minute call for load NEXT."

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