[Xastir] Off Topic & Slightly Commercial: Android App

[Brian Marble]

Curt,

Great App. I understand your struggle with charge or no charge. How to
distribute a product is a vague area of understanding for all right now.

I have two answers to your questions. I have been working recently on a DMS
conversion project web page. It is a small piece to support a significant
public event that requires tracking rockets in the desert with no internet
of any kind. The event is called IREC and it is sponsored by ESRA
(http://www.soundingrocket.org/ ). I am with BARC (www.barconline.org). We
assist in recovering rockets for 3 or more days each June. We do a great
deal of logistics with observation posts, APRS, ATVs, net control and
physical access control. We drink a great deal of Gatorade as well.

1 - Here is a web page that was recently created by Chris Veness, MIT under
a GPL type license. The javascript libraries are opene source and are
wonderful for the math and formatting of the DMS (degree minutes seconds) in
any format you wish. I am using it for locating the intersection of 2 great
circles in a web page that is currently under development. See
http://rocketrecovery.landez.com/tools/calc/index.html. The yellow section
is the defacto standard for my project, everything above it is the work in
progress.

Here are Chris's web pages. I can't say enough about the formatting
especially on the second, spherical math page
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vectors.html (using Vector
Math)
http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong.html (using spherical
trigonometry

Chris was so kind as to provide this for all to use, with out charge. All
the source code is there for one and all.

2 - The conversion app you have created is great. In the spirit of Amateur
Radio it needs to be shared, like Chris's and mine. Open Sourced. So, yours
should be the same, except why just Android. Why not make a self contained
(local set of files) web page that would work on any device with a web
browser. (Using javascript or ???) You make your app (with code) available
to me and others, Chris has done the same, I will do the same. The world is
a greater place because we shared. Now, there is a limit on what one person
can do to share. That is why we go to work and trade our time for money. But
after hours (and retirement) we need to share with rag chews, solar
propogation, law interpretation, software apps, homebrew hardware, mailing
lists, public event support, SAR, etc. We have a great hobby. We have a huge
number of talented, sharing individuals like ourselves that don't need to
reinvent the wheel in their spare time.

That's my opinion and I am sticking to it.

The best to you in your efforts,

Brian Marble
KG7AFQ


-----Original Message-----
From: xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org
[mailto:xastir-bounces at lists.xastir.org] On Behalf Of Curt Mills
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2015 3:28 PM
To: Xastir List
Subject: [Xastir] Off Topic & Slightly Commercial: Android App

Please delete if you don't care about Android or are offended by an offer
for sale here.  It's SAR and mapping-related though!

I'm in a slight quandary as I want to mention an Android app because it
might be useful to some of you, but it's super-cheap and I'm not expecting
to turn a profit on it...  I wrote it for my SAR group and they'll have to
pay the small fee too, to get new features and bug-fixes automatically from
the Appstore each time I put out a new release.

I came up with an idea for an Android app during the Oso, WA, mudslide.  The
SAR deputy would come running in with a scrap of paper containing a
coordinate and want it translated "right now!" into lat/long for the helo
crew.  He'd stand there tapping his foot (or was that my imagination?) until
I managed to convert it on a laptop, write the coordinate down quickly on
his scrap of paper and our comms log, then he'd be off and running down the
meadow to the helo.

I wrote "CoordinatesNOW!" with that in mind, to make it the absolute fastest
coordinate conversion from lat/lon or UTM to:  dd dd.dddd, dd mm.mm, dd mm
ss.s, UTM, MGRS, and USNG.  One button press gets you ALL conversions at
once.  I just added a "Get Location" feature that will snag your location
from the device's GPS and immediately convert it as well.

Because it costs money to become a Google developer, I didn't feel that I
could give it away for free, but I priced it at $0.99 so it doesn't hurt
much.  I only have to sell 35 copies to get my Google developer's fee back.
;-)  The development tools were free and I develop it on a free OS (Linux).
Woohoo!

If it turns out to be lucrative it might encourage me to add datum
translation, or to write other apps for SAR.  So YOU decide whether this is
a commercial advert or not.  I'm just trying to break even on this one.

Link:  https://sites.google.com/site/sarguydigital/home

NOTE:  Requires Android 3.0 or higher.

--
Member of Snohomish County Volunteer SAR (WA) Curt, WE7U
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