Ask Slashdot: Hackable Portable Music Player For Helicopters? 158
First time accepted submitter mrhelio writes "I work for a medium-sized helicopter company; we mainly fly tourists around on sightseeing flights. My company needs help finding a hacker-friendly portable music player for our helicopters. We have a problem with our onboard music players — mostly because it is an obsolete terrible design. The manufacturer has made an updated model, but it's basically the same obsolete design with the same terrible software and user interface. We are worried about spending $1000 per unit on these because the manufacturer will eventually stop making replacement units and then we will be force to buy upgrades for our entire fleet again and get everything recertified. (Any piece of equipment hard mounted in a commercial aircraft has to be certified by the FAA and it takes a lot of paper work, time and money for that to happen.) So we have a new plan: get portable music players like iPods, and plug those into the aux input in the intercom system. We need something that has nine hours of battery life, can hold at least three hours of music, and has remote control options for start, stop, volume, and selecting tracks and playlists, and a display that is visible in bright and sunny as well as dark conditions. The remote control option is the toughest part to find. The pilots need to be able to control the music without taking their hands off the flight controls for safety reasons. There are buttons and toggle switches already designed into the flight controls for these kind of purposes and we have mechanics/ engineers that can wire it all together, but the music player has to support the remote interface in the first place. Our first choice would be to give each pilot an iPod, but Apple is notoriously anti-hacking and anti-open source, plus you have to pay them ridiculous licensing fees to get access to their USB interface. So we are looking for a manufacturer that is open source / hacker friendly and makes something that meets our needs. Do you know of anything that would work for us? Maybe something that runs Rockbox? Should we just break down and design something from scratch like the Butterfly MP3 player?"
don't forget another important requirement (Score:4, Insightful)
Other than that: why don't you just use the auxiliary input of the 4-way intercom?
... Don't? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a tourist who's been on one [flickr.com] or two [flickr.com] small, sightseeing aircraft - can I suggest going without the music?
Especially on a helicopter where the background noise is already quite phenomenal, going without some barely-audible music warbling away over the headset is hardly going to impair my experience. I'd much rather be looking out the windows (or absence thereof [flickr.com]) and listening to what the pilot has to say...
Time equals money (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is the wrong forum for that... (Score:5, Insightful)
what utter nonsense. neither portable GPS nor intercoms nor timing devices nor "PCATD-lite" things nor any of the other portable gadgets that go in an aircraft have to be "certified" by the FAA.
/ 20 year flight instructor, owner of an aviation company / terrible slashdot karma for routinely calling out BS that others mark "insightful"
Re:Apple isn't anti-open source (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a great example of the distinction between Open Source and Free (as in Freedom) Software
Sure Apple has Open Source embraces from time to time, but they will never embrace Free Software because that would mean offering liberty to their products, er, consumers.
Oh and only $99 US dollars to be able to put your code onto something you own? HOW GENEROUS OF THEM
*pukes*
Free Software allows people from ALL walks of life to do as they want with the code (run, learn, modify, redistribute) regardless of their status in life, not just those who can pay money in order to buy a Apple dev-'indulgence' that can purify/wash themselves clean of their ignorance.
You cannot be remotely serious? (Score:0, Insightful)
Can you please post for us what helicopter company you work for, so we can know to never, in our fucking lives, ever fucking ride in one of your helicopters?
I'm sorry, but "hacker friendly" and "hacked together" systems have no business in a vehicle which, when it malfunctions, will likely kill or severely maim all of its occupants.
If your company is too fucking cheap to buy properly certified gear - do without a music system. This "We need something portable to get around regulations" bullshit smacks of corner-cutting, and I have to wonder what other things you do to get around regulations. When the safety of your pilots, and your customers, is at stake, cutting corners is both foolish, and unfortunately for you, illegal.
Re:This is the wrong forum for that... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is essentially correct. If the device interfaces with the aircraft interphone system (or any other aircraft system), it must be certified for use on YOUR aircraft model. On the other hand if the aircraft has a utility bus with a 115 volt AC outlet, you can more or less plug in anything within the limits of the associated circuit breaker's current rating. As an example, some airline crews are now using iPads and laptops within the flight deck.
You may be able to engineer in a system separate from aircraft systems that is accessible to the flight crew. Such a system would still require approval of your local FAA inspector, but would not require the TSO approval (http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/tso/) of an off the shelf system purchased from your friendly avionics vendor.
I would suggest discussing your desires with your local FAA inspector assigned to your operations. They will be able to point you down the right path.
Re:... Don't? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple isn't anti-open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Either an iOS device is the best solution or it isn't. If it is, and $99 will stop you from doing it, or running your own code isn't free enough for you, then you're letting your idealism get in the way of the best solution.
Solve the right problem. The insistence on solving problems we want to solve rather than problems we're asked to solve is one reason IT is seen as a thorn rather than an asset.