Amazon Kindle Fire as an electronic flight bag / GPS
During the “Black Friday” sale, I picked up the lowest end Amazon Fire tablet, the 7" model that normally retails for $49.99 (with ‘special offers’), for $34.99. On paper, this looks like it should be an interesting little device. Capacitive IPS display, 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 8GB storage with a microSD slot that can take up to 128GB flash media, and cheap. Even at the normal retail price, this thing has to be a loss leader. (Amazon seems to be applying the razor/blades (a/k/a printer/ink cartridge) business model here.)
Quick (general) review: The aspect ratio kind of sucks for reading. The Kindle has a tall, narrow (1024x600, .6 width:height) aspect ratio; I much prefer the iPad/iPad mini’s wider .75 width:height ratio (for comparison, an 8.5x11" sheet of letter-sized paper has a .77 ratio). The build quality is nowhere near Apple’s (case in point, the screen isn't seamlessly bonded like on an iOS device, and my first Fire had dust trapped between the glass and the display) - though in fairness the price is literally 1/10th that of the cheapest iPad, so... And the software is rough around the edges. Amazon’s Silk browser crashes a lot, and things that should have been easy (attaching a screenshot to a GMail message) reliably crashed apps completely. But if you are okay (especially at the price point) with the hardware, and have a software stack that works for you, you really can’t beat the price. I'm using it mostly to watch videos during my commute (I take Metro from the westside into Pasadena every day, about an hour on trains each way). Being able to toss a 16GB microSD card loaded with MP4s into the tablet is awesome, and having a full VLC player onboard makes it an eminently useful device. (It’s nice having something with a larger screen than my iPhone, and without having to juggle what's in storage in my (anemic, lesson learned) 16GB iPad Air 2 - which, with a backup copy of ForeFlight installed, is bursting at the seams already.)
Apps I’ve installed so far:
Aviation use: The Fire tablets do not have built in GPS. (they use WiFi to determine location, when needed). However, I verified that the Fire will talk to the Dual XGPS150A (and presumably other Bluetooth GPS modules). So for under $125 you can have a usable moving map GPS navigation system. I loaded up FltPlan Go, a free aviation app that looks a lot like ForeFlight, and it correctly locked on to my position using the Dual. It’s not the most polished app, and at least as I initially “played around” with it, it seemed kind of slow in redrawing / zooming in on the sectional chart. I’m downloading the Southwest region sectional now (>500MB) and will give it another go in a couple of hours.
Getting it setup was pretty straightforward. Flip the little switch on the Dual GPS receiver, from “Apple” to “Everyone else.” Power on the Dual. Note the blue Bluetooth LED never blinks, just goes solid. Realize it’s linked to the iPad mini in the flight bag across the apartment, even though the iPad is asleep. Switch off Bluetooth on the iPad. Recycle the Dual. Swipe down on the Fire to bring up the widget bar that includes a shortcut to the Settings app. Open Settings → Wireless → Bluetooth. Switch on Bluetooth. Pair it with the Dual GPS unit (which shows up as a pair of headphones, bizarrely.) Open FltPlan Go. See the airplane. Success... (So far.)
I haven’t flown with it. I’m not sure I’d ever replace my reliable, wonderful iPad / ForeFlight setup with this hardware/software combo. But if the price point appeals and you’re okay with some rough edges, this is an amazing price point for what appears to be at least a capable aviation solution. YMMV.
Quick (general) review: The aspect ratio kind of sucks for reading. The Kindle has a tall, narrow (1024x600, .6 width:height) aspect ratio; I much prefer the iPad/iPad mini’s wider .75 width:height ratio (for comparison, an 8.5x11" sheet of letter-sized paper has a .77 ratio). The build quality is nowhere near Apple’s (case in point, the screen isn't seamlessly bonded like on an iOS device, and my first Fire had dust trapped between the glass and the display) - though in fairness the price is literally 1/10th that of the cheapest iPad, so... And the software is rough around the edges. Amazon’s Silk browser crashes a lot, and things that should have been easy (attaching a screenshot to a GMail message) reliably crashed apps completely. But if you are okay (especially at the price point) with the hardware, and have a software stack that works for you, you really can’t beat the price. I'm using it mostly to watch videos during my commute (I take Metro from the westside into Pasadena every day, about an hour on trains each way). Being able to toss a 16GB microSD card loaded with MP4s into the tablet is awesome, and having a full VLC player onboard makes it an eminently useful device. (It’s nice having something with a larger screen than my iPhone, and without having to juggle what's in storage in my (anemic, lesson learned) 16GB iPad Air 2 - which, with a backup copy of ForeFlight installed, is bursting at the seams already.)
Apps I’ve installed so far:
- ES File Explorer, allows importing media from my WebDAV NAS, among other sources; also, makes you a bit nostalgic for the days of FILEMAN.EXE in Windows 3.1.
- OverDrive to read ePub books; the Fire natively handles .mobi, .azw, .pdf, etc., but not .epub - I have several aviation eBooks I compiled into ePub format.
- VLC for Fire, an Android version of the ubiquitous VideoLAN VLC video player app, handles pretty much every video file format I’ve ever thrown at it, at least on a laptop computer.
Aviation use: The Fire tablets do not have built in GPS. (they use WiFi to determine location, when needed). However, I verified that the Fire will talk to the Dual XGPS150A (and presumably other Bluetooth GPS modules). So for under $125 you can have a usable moving map GPS navigation system. I loaded up FltPlan Go, a free aviation app that looks a lot like ForeFlight, and it correctly locked on to my position using the Dual. It’s not the most polished app, and at least as I initially “played around” with it, it seemed kind of slow in redrawing / zooming in on the sectional chart. I’m downloading the Southwest region sectional now (>500MB) and will give it another go in a couple of hours.
Getting it setup was pretty straightforward. Flip the little switch on the Dual GPS receiver, from “Apple” to “Everyone else.” Power on the Dual. Note the blue Bluetooth LED never blinks, just goes solid. Realize it’s linked to the iPad mini in the flight bag across the apartment, even though the iPad is asleep. Switch off Bluetooth on the iPad. Recycle the Dual. Swipe down on the Fire to bring up the widget bar that includes a shortcut to the Settings app. Open Settings → Wireless → Bluetooth. Switch on Bluetooth. Pair it with the Dual GPS unit (which shows up as a pair of headphones, bizarrely.) Open FltPlan Go. See the airplane. Success... (So far.)
I haven’t flown with it. I’m not sure I’d ever replace my reliable, wonderful iPad / ForeFlight setup with this hardware/software combo. But if the price point appeals and you’re okay with some rough edges, this is an amazing price point for what appears to be at least a capable aviation solution. YMMV.
How did you connect xgps150? I'm having no luck at all.
ReplyDeleteI just went into the Bluetooth settings and paired it. Had to make sure the XGPS150A was in "non-Apple" mode (there's a switch next to the recharging port).
DeleteI found out there is a bit more to it than simple pairing. Before pairing, you should go to the Kindle Developer options. In Device tap 7 times on your Kindle serial number. Then turn on mock locations. Pair the XGPS150 to the tablet. Then install an app called Bluetooth GPS or similar. In that app, select the XGPS. Then press the start button in the app. That app will run in the background and relay position info to your map program.
ReplyDelete