After been reading all the comments on this subject I am really surprised
to find we have around so many capable professionals on the topic and I
wonder why nobody has came up yet with a more profitable and affordable
solution to this issue to compite with companies that invest millions of
dollars in research and development ?
May be the problem is no so simple, or the market is not as big, or there
are more challenges that some may perceive.
I completely understand and support that people may have different points
of views and opinions but some of the comments published lately are
offensive and misleading.
If you have a better idea just do it. It is easy to criticise others for
what the have already done or achieved.
My two cents.
Andres
On Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 9:51 AM, Mike Borgelt <
mborg...@borgeltinstruments.com> wrote:
>
> Justin Couch ,
>
> For most of the standards you talk about there are alternatives. Don't
> like Android? Use Linux or Windows. Some of you examples seem obsolete too.
> Firewire? Haven't seen that in quite a while. As I understand it the wi-fi
> thing is a straight out patent fight. Not so with
>
> Flarm.
>
> The Flarm problem is that to be at all useful all such devices must
> conform to the same standard in the rf scheme and the transmission
> protocol.
>
> This was initially unencrypted and only when a credible competitor
> appeared did Flarm institute the encryption.
>
> Now consider what would have happened had Flarm announced on first release
> of their system that they intended to enforce an effective monopoly by
> encrypting the transmissions? Or announced that they would do so in future?
> Would the takeup have been as rapid?
>
> Would a competitor immediately have appeared or announced intention,
> before the installed base of Flarms got large, to offer an unencrypted
> transmission protocol? Maybe several competitors? Would the IGC or a
> National gliding body (maybe a non Swiss one with
>
> a large number of pilots) have said - that's a good idea but we're not
> paying those chocolate makers and yodellers a royalty* - here's our open
> standard?
>
> The IGC publishes a standard for IGC certified Flight Recorders and
> verifies that any manufacturer's product meets it. There were some
> shenanigans with that too, though. As I said, people send me stuff.
>
> Another gliding comparison would be if one of the major manufacturers had
> developed or now bought the rights to CS22 which gliders must be certified
> to in most countries and had the ability to change it at will and demand a
> licence fee. How many other manufacturer's
>
> would there be? From reading between the lines one non European
> manufacturer already ran up against Germany Inc. when trying to certify a
> glider.
>
> I really despise anti competitive behaviour and the people who indulge in
> it. In the Flarm case encryption introduces unnecessary complexity and risk
> to protect a market. The privacy argument is a mere fig leaf for anti
> competitive behaviour. ADSB and mode S have
>
> unique codes for each aircraft and are easy to eavesdrop. What next,
> flight plans and Sartimes are breaches of privacy? Who was it said around
> 15 years ago: "Privacy, there isn't any. Get used to it."?
>
> I can't see what Flarm are worried about. If they don't encrypt and have
> licence agreements those contracts still stand until one of the licencees
> develops his own source code, circuit boards and hardware and uses that
> instead of the Flarm equivalents. Given the market
>
> penetration of Flarm and the near saturation of the market this may not
> even happen. The licencees didn't get the source code AFAIK anyway just the
> hex.
>
> For the record I was offered a licence to manufacture Flarm in 2004- 2005.
> I forget which and I'm too lazy to look it up. As it used a very similar
> GPS to that we were designing into the B500 system, my German distributor
> suggested I talk to them about it. I did so and
>
> they made the offer. I even did the research to find the correct frequency
> to use in Australia. I wasn't really interested in manufacturing the
> things here, nor selling them as I thought they would be useless unless
> there was near universal adoption, I'm not fond of mandates
>
> and customer support was likely to be onerous.
>
> Adrian and I had scoped out the possibilities for a similar system in
> 2000. Transmitting GPS positions for traffic awareness is an obvious thing
> and not patentable. We actually decided how many bits in the message
> (funny how we came to the same number as Flarm)
>
> and how often it needed to transmit. Consulted Adrian's son, Peter, a
> graduate Electronic engineer about the rf side and he suggested we might
> get 5 to 6km range on the 2.4Ghz band. Good enough for a demonstration we
> thought. We had other things to do and getting
>
> decent range would likely involve the bureaucratic nightmare of getting a
> specific frequency allocated. We were somewhat bemused
