Ram Mounting a Small Tablet (and RS232 connections to Android)

I have a yoke Ram mount for my 7” Android but prefer a kneeboard for clutter reasons.

vic wrote:

At the same time you are NOT supposed to fix same items onto the panel – for safety excuses ???

Our avionics shop screwed a RAM mount to the panel — and wrote an AFMS for it stating the maximum mass of anything you attach to the mount in order to satisfy g load requirements.

OK; I recall managing to get that “FTDI serial” cable working too, on Mondays and Wednesdays The app needs to be modified to connect to some “deviceX” or whatever it was called. The device was visible with a file explorer only on a rooted device but presumably an app with normal permissions can locate it. Should be vastly simpler than connecting to bluetooth.

I should have been more specific about wiring the GPS mouse or TX-1500 into Android tablet. Actually I succeded in feeding the GPS signals via USB wiring into some agricultural app for testing. My problem seems to be the EVFR app that is not offering configuration for direct wiring , only BT or internal GPS to set. So even with GPS arriving at the USB socket the app cannot find this port. At least I could not come up with an idea how to fix that – but I am not much of an electronix . The programmer of EVFR did not show much enthusiasm of willing to work out a way of connecting a GPS mouse by wire into the app when I asked him some time ago. Same problem with the TRX-1500 that has Flarm and in EVFR only the WIFI connection is offered, no wiring. So Android is not fully to blame but maybe it is the hassle the programmer does not want to deal with to find more ways to connect. Vic

You can use IOIO to go to an Android. It speaks TTL but it is easy to go between RS232 and TTL.

And bluetooth is not bad. I got 1 Flarm and 1 vario speaking to my moving map via bluetooth. Both are wired into proper power supplies. The RS232 output goes through a MAX232 and then a cheap TTL bluetooth module. The only bother is going from 12V to 5V or 3,3V but the current are so small you can find converter which are not noisy.

Jack would the X-Grip hold it during spinning?

Yes, it’s more effective than it looks.

no direct wiring into Android so far

Arranging RS232 etc is possible with “unix” (android is unix running java apps) but nobody I ever found knows how to do it. So you are stuck with wifi or bluetooth and both have issues.

I very much doubt it is doable with IOS either, although the challenges are similar to android. You would need to root (jailbreak) the device.

This is also why I went this route because then one can do it properly: external power and external antenna. But the airspace warnings with any handheld GPS I know of range from rubbish to completely useless.

I would never ever fix anything onto the yoke, just simply hazardous in my eyes. That place started with a stop watch only but today people fix all sorts of devices there – and get away with it when having the annual – unbelievable. At the same time you are NOT supposed to fix same items onto the panel – for safety excuses ??? In our case we never had a problem with the alu plate bolted to the panel in the Yak that has a hinge on the top for easy access to a few switches you only activate after engine start and before shutdown. To lift the alu plate for switching is just as fast as setting a new page on a glass display, so no big deal. Negative Gs may be a problem here but the Yak is limited to – 3.5 G anyway – not to speak about staff inside. So the tablet with Easy VFR lives on this alu , wired to the aircraft power by permanent plug and with the Android version unfortunately only a BT GPS mouse is accepted , no more wired mouse like with the Windows type PocketFMS . I hate battery devices when no aircraft power can be connected by design. Same with the TRX-1500 anticollision that only supplies EVFR via WIFI, no direct wiring into Android so far. Dangling power lines are no factor at all here. So still hoping for more ways to connect . . . Maybe one could find a place in the 150 for a solution like here depending on the individual conditions of course. I should add that our right seat is never empty so a navigator does his duty all times. Vic

Peter wrote:

Interesting that you can do that, but I think most people who use an Ipad are planning to run more than one app on it.

Peter, you are missing the point here. You can tell the iPad to boot into one App, that doesn’t preclude you having whatever else running on there.