Check out our Safety Section

We are very happy to announce that SARMobile now has a safety section. Drop by, read, comment.

www.SARMobile.Ca/safety

SARMobileAirNav Released for Bold Touch 99xx

AppWorld submission for 0.4.8.118 was approved this morning. So Bold Touch users can go get it right away.

At BB10 Jam in Toronto today learning about porting to the new platform. More to follow.

Bold 9900 Support #BeBold

Working on Bold 99xx support for SARMobileAirNav. Wondering why the Bold Touch doesn't support the ToolbarManager.

Not to worry, we think we have a way to easily port to the 9900 series.

SARMobileAirNav Now Available in AppWorld

If you have an interest in air search and rescue, the beta version of SARMobileAirNav is now available in AppWorld. It should run on all BlackBerry Torch models with OS 7.0 or higher. We are starting my just making it available in the US for now, but if you live outside the US, and really want to try it send a request to support@sarmobile.ca and we will consider releasing it to your country.

We are also interested in any feedback or comments you may have.

SARMobileAirNav Beta Submitted to AppWorld

It has been a long haul, but SARMobileAirNav has finally been submitted to AppWorldl. This is our first submission to AppWorld so there may be a few more hurdles to get over, but if all goes well it should be available for download. It will be free while in Beta. We will review the pricing structure (if any) once we are happy with the finished product.

SARMobileAirNav with OurAirports.Com Data

An aviation navigation program is nothing without a database of aviation data. OurAirports.Com provides this data in the public domain. The data is free, which is nice, and good quality, both important features. But one thine that is important to us developing a program to support search and rescue it that it captures a wealth of local data the won't be found in the commercial data sets. Knowing about Maxville, or Howick may make a difference during a search.

The SQLite3 database file is available for download at: www.sarmobile.ca/home/ourairports

Aural Null Simulator Screen Shots

Here are some screen shots of SARMobile.Ca AirNav program running in Aural Null simulator mode. This is an Aural Null Procedure A which took about 1 hour 20 minutes to complete from first detection of the ELT until overflight of the computed location.

The magenta circles are the aural null detection points captured as the ELT signal is first heard. The green squares are convenience way points marked when the signal is lost. This just allows for planning the turn to re-acquire the signal and capture the aural null point.

The simulated ELT was at N 45 10 W 76 20, and here is the Aural Null calculation screen showing a 2dRMS of 0.11 nm:

Near Real Time Audio Mixing on #BlackBerry

With the added power and APIs of the BlackBerry OS 7 smart phones I have been able to implement generation and mixing of the ELT audio signal and noise near enough to real time for me to include a workable Aural Null simulator in our BlackBerry search and rescue navigation app. I've done real time audio programming on BlackBerry before, but handling the output streaming buffers is a challenge.

Interesting Paper on GPS Track Log Filtering

I've been working on track log filtering of GPS data points as part of the development of BlackBerry smartphone software for Search and Rescue. I found a very interesting paper by Rosen S. Ivanov. Many of his ideas have occurred to me before, but he gathers a number of useful ideas together. His paper is available as a PDF here.

Aural Null Software Nearing Completion

Wow, who knew I could get so busy over the winter time. I have been making progress, but didn't have time to blog about it. I have completely refactored my navigation library. Not only is it less prone to errors due to the fact that the Earth is not really spherical, but it actually runs faster now too.

The Aural Null calculation is now very stable since I'm using the Graham Scan to ensure the points are all on a convex hull. This has the added benefit of ordering the point so the polygon is right handed, which also makes computation of the fix faster and more stable.

Here are some screen shots of a couple of test runs: