“Apple Computer’s popular iPod music player could become a flight data recorder (FDR) following an announcement by US light aircraft manufacturer LoPresti SpeedMerchants to introduce the device in the cockpit of its Fury piston aircraft,” Justin Wastnage reports for Flightglobal.com.
Wastnage reports, “The company says it plans the ‘full integration of the iPod into the Fury’s avionics systems.’ The iconic ‘white box’ iPod will serve as a digital data recorder, nicknamed ‘black boxes’ by the general media. The iPod, with suitable software, acts as a hard disk with the ability to record over 500h of flight time data.”
“It was not immediately clear from the company’s statement which parameters would be recorded and for what purpose. Recorders are currently used to collect data for maintenance purposes through system monitoring, for post-flight analysis in training and safety-monitoring, and, when suitably protected, for crash investigation,” Wastnage reports.
Wastnage reports, “Vero Beach, Florida-based LoPresti said, ‘The iPod becomes the first truly portable, personal flight recorder with a huge recording capacity. This is a watershed technology for aviation,’ says LoPresti vice president of operations, RJ Siegel, ‘and we are delighted to be the first to bring it to market.’ The Fury will prove the concept, but once certificated, the iPod FDR could be deployed on other light aircraft.”
Full article here.
[Attribution: MacNN]
Now THAT is WOW!
Anybody heard how Zune sales are going? I googled for an answer, but most of the stuff was from December 2006.
The Zune seems to have died already. I read a post that said the head Zune guy had been fired but couldn’t confirm it…
To Wordsmith,
“Anybody heard how Zune sales are going? I googled for an answer, but most of the stuff was from December 2006.” Yep, thats where they are, still back in dec 06. LOL
When Microsoft yells that they have sold 1 million, then you will know thats where they are. Microsoft already has enough bad news going on right now.
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Flight recorders for personal aircraft. — Ahmmmmmm, — neat!
I think the deal here is lots of memory, cheap, and you can take it with you and use it as an iPod between plane flights so its not just sitting there waiting for you.
As far as FDA cert. These would not replace a black box but most small planes do not have a flight recorder cause its been way too expensive til now. This way planes that do multiple owner thingy can keep clear track of who flew where when and when maintaince is needed. Etc. JMHO.
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N.
Sydney….
I wrote that post about the Zune guy getting let go. It’s on the mini microsoft blog, his name is Bryan Lee and he’s quietly being shown the door according to insiders at MS.
@jim
I looked for the post but couldnt find it. Can you post a URL with enough detail to make sure I can find it? I read a lot of stuff and even responded to the main article about the Vista ad – if you look you will see my long post about why i made the switch…
Sydney…
just found it…
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
about 1/5 of the way down the page in Safari. Or you could do a command find for “bryan lee”
– Jim
Here’s a quote from the blog…
“Also with this past week, two departures: Jim Allchin and Bryan Lee. Seeing some of Mr. Allchin’s internal emails I can only say I certainly haven’t, in comparison, pushed the envelope here with criticism of Microsoft vision and strategy; too bad he wasn’t, ah, in a position to effect change when it was needed. Mr. Lee has been griped about in the comments here before and it looks like someone is, via graceful career aikido, tapping a piece of paper on his back with “Hi! I’m responsible for Zune!” as he slips out the backdoor.”
Uh… I doubt that iPods were built to survive airplane crashes…
It’s inaccurate to say that the iPods will be used as “black box” substitutes. That has the connotation that the iPod will be used to retrieve data after an accident and must be hardened. The Fury is a GA (general aviation) aircraft. GA aircraft never have FDRs or CVRs. The iPods will be the aviation-equivalent of the “iPod + Nike” where you can record the living crap out of your flight performance, download it into your computer, and analyze the flight.
Bob
I’m glad I checked back. That was perfect!
This article is in ERROR. The iPod is not going to be used as a flight data recorder (AKA, “black box”), but simply as an audio recorder. Audio recorders are already commonly used in general aviation aircraft to record pilot transactions with Air Traffic Control. Pilots record ATC instructions so they can be played back, because these instructions can be very complicated and must be followed explicitly. LoPresti is simply introducing the iPod to this task. This is all that is going on here. The black box and flight data recorder references are COMPLETELY ERRONEOUS.
“The software: iCrash!”
That product already exists, it’s called Mac OS X.
There are several vendors already offering PDA and laptop flight data logging solutions:
http://www.pcflightsystems.com/products.html
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/inpages/aim3.php
Most of them are for Experimental class only (the inexpensive ones) but small aircraft are getting very fancy very fast!