===============================
This free and open-source application provides Variometer functions adapted to free flight activities. It is based on My Vario Lite by Yannick Dutertre and the excellent open-source Garmin IQ GliderSK application by Cedric Dufour (licensed under GPL v3.0, just like My Vario is), dropping a lot of features for a simpler/leaner experience, while adding many improvements for free flight activities.
GlideApp is a BACKUP source of information and should ALWAYS be paired with specialized variometer equipment! Watch sensors are simply not precise enough and THIS APP SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A PRIMARY FLIGHT INSTRUMENT!
- Dashboards
Multiple views/dashboards are available.
-
a Global view, displaying all flight data in a single pane: altitude, ground and vertical speeds, finesse, heading, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) readings, wind direction and speed estimate, if available (wind direction and speed are computed on the fly based on groundspeeds when circling, blood oxygen saturation can be hard to get with a moving watch hand)
-
a Variometer view, where the vertical speed can be visually seen
-
a Varioplot/thermal assistant view, allowing to keep track of your ascent/descent rate along your flight path. This view can optionally include a detected thermal core to help keep within the thermal
An option to auto-switch to and from the varioplot/thermal assistant view automa- tically (based on circling auto-detection) is available.
- Tone and vibration curves
The application makes use of the watch beeps and vibrations (if available).
-
Variable-frequency tones to "sound" your ascent rate, as well as vibration-based "tones" to fly in silence. These tones follow closely some popular variometer tone curves (sound frequency/pitch, tone to tone or vibration to vibration pause time, tone/vibration length - all depending on vertical speed)
-
a minimum climb rate setting is available, under which sounds or vibrations won't be triggered
-
a sink rate threshold setting is available, for warning of strong sink via a long, low frequency tone
- Under the hood
-
The application uses a Kalman filter for fast and accurate filtering of altitude and vertical speed (compared to the SMA filter used by GliderSK originally)
-
The smoothing (and latency) applied by the Kalman filter can be changed in the settings
-
The default settings are optimized for a comfortable experience out of the box
USAGE:
You really, really want to go through the Manual before first use, and test the application at home! See below USAGE manual.
https://github.com/pacastro/GlideApp/blob/main/USAGE
Please refer to the USAGE file.
I am using variable frequencytones for the vario and sensor readings of Blood Oxygen Saturation, which are only supported for SDK 3.2.0 and above. This restricts the watches I can support. The GlideApp Application however has had memory optimized to support watches that provie 124kb of memory to applications (Fenix 6, Forerunner 245, Forerunner 945, etc.)
I am not a programmer nor developer besides some small experience contributing to N.I.N.A., an open-source astrophotography software suite. Monkey C, Github, Garming SDK, etc are all new to me. I am a mere tinkerer playing with and monkeying Cedric's work. It's likely I have introduced errors, bugs, or code that could be extremely painful to the eyes of experienced developers. I apologize for the pain caused! You have been warned!