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10/28/2010 7:48 PM
 

Just received my IFly. I see this puppy can do more than they push. How about some info on the unit itself? What else can the unit do. Show pictures?, book reader? Multimedia? How about some more info.

 
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10/30/2010 2:44 PM
 

I'm pretty sure the unit can do other things. Press the "Menu" button, then select "System Menu" and it should take you to a screen that will let you Choose:

Navigation: Will take you back to the moving map GPS you presumably purchased the iFly for.

Multimedia: Looks like it will play audio and video files. Press the up arrow to get to a selection page to navigate the SD card.

Image Viewer: Looks like it will show images. Up arrow, or the button with the three lines to get to a File Manager page to select a folder on the SD card for images.

Config: Lets you change various settings on the iFly.

Additional: Takes you to another page that offers a Clock, Text Viewer, Memo, Calculator, Audio Visual, RCAM, and a Game (Solitaire).

I've only briefly looked at most of these, so I don't know how well they work, or how capable they are.

 
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11/1/2010 10:46 PM
 

Pacer,

Mike did a good summary. Currently these are "undocumented" features, which is why we don't mention them much in our marketing materials. However we're working on putting some good instructions together for these features.

Thanks,
Walter


Walter Boyd
President, Adventure Pilot
 
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11/3/2010 12:34 PM
 

Until Walter upgrades the user manual, I may be able to help a little. As I write this message I play with the iFly, and so, I will put down the results in real time. Please bear with me, this is a rather long walkthrough. I hope it will help people get the most out of their iFLY (and, in the process, maybe help Walter with the user manual, too ).

This "little" tutorial is based on the assumption that all the external files - pictures, text, music, video, etc. - are on a USB flash drive (or stick). If your files reside on the SDHC card, adjust the instructions accordingly. I call the icons on screen "buttons" because they do something when you touch them.

(NOTE: I, personally, stay away from mixing program files with playable ones. It's just me, I don't want to screw up the system if I make a mistake. Windoze is notorious at letting people screwing the system. Therefore, I put all my multimedia, images, etc. on a USB stick.)

- MAIN MENU (a.k.a. "System Menu", if you are in Navigation mode ): If you don't touch the screen for 15 sec AND you have the screen saver enabled in Configuration, the screen will display the Clock.

- MULTIMEDIA: Has two modes, selectable by the lower-right icon on the bottom menu bar:

  1. (default) Video, shown by a icon of a camera with a zoom lens
  2. Audio, selected when the icon is touched, and changes to a boombox with an open lid (I guess ! I haven't seen such strange icon before.)

To upload and play your files:

  1. Insert the USB flash stick containing multimedia files.
  2. Open the location of your multimedia files: Ttouch the "Open" icon (an underlined arrow looking up, the third icon from right on the bottom menu bar).
  3. The left panel ("Multimedia") lists your "hard disc(s)": SDMMCDisk and USB Disk. Touch the location of your files (in my case, "USB Disk"). Depending on your file organization on the drive, the panel will display your multimedia files and/or folders containing them. The program ("Multimedia" will NOT display non-multimedia files, like pictures or text.
  4. Files that can be played on iFLY (and seen in the "Multimedia" panel):
    - Audio: mp3. It doe not recognize iPod / iPhone (i.e., m4p) or other, open-source (i.e., ogg) files.
    -Video: wmv, mpg, mp4, avi. It does not recognize iPod / iPhone (i.e., m4v, mov) files. No surprizes here, after all it's a Windoze system ! I would be surprized if it would be more versatile.
  5. The icons in the middle ( left and right single- and double-arrows) lets you make a selection and add it to the playlist (right-pointing arrows), or removing it from the playlist (left-pointing arrows). The double arrows add/remove all the files in your lists.
  6. SAVE your playlist ("Play List"), otherwise you won't see your files in the player.
  7. In the player, choose what type of file, audio or video you want to play. See above about how to do it.
  8. The player has many buttons to help you configure it. I won't go into details, I let you play with it for a while. However, the most important (IMHO) button is the "Compass" (first button on right, vertical menu): It switches directly to navigation.

The touch buttons (icons) in the menu(s) lets you configure the multimedia-playing experience:

  1. Top menu bar: Speaker adjustments (higher, lower, mute), Type of play (auto-rewind, shuffle, replay, random), Back to Main Menu, Exit (Same as Back to Main Menu; why would you have two buttons doing the same thing?)
  2. Right menu bar: Back to Navigation, Screen format (Auto, 16:9, 4:3). I still didn't figure out what the up/down arrows and "1/1" icons do.
  3. Lower menu bar: Normal player buttons (play, stop, rewind, fast-forward, advance, etc.), Sound equalizing (Normal, Classic, Pop, Dance, Rock), Multimedia Mode (Audio, Video)

One last comment about the "Multimedia" feature: The sound sucks! It's the speakers behind the unit, with external speakers one can have a better experience. Also, I could not find a provision in the menus to play the movie in full screen mode. The movies are played in a small window.

One last-last comment: If you don't remove the saved playlist (Open -> Left double-arrows -> Save) and you remove the USB drive, you'll get a "File not Found" message when switching to "Multimedia". Done with "Multimedia".

- IMAGE VIEWER: Displays pictures. Only pictures. To see your pictures:

  1. Open the location of your pictures ("Open" button, underlined arrow pointing up, fourth icon from the right).
  2. Select the pictures you want to see (main menu bar on top). Press "OK".
  3. Here's a tip: the buttons on this page are so small, you'd need small fingers or a stylus to touch them reliably. Steal one from your kid's Gameboy, and you'll be fine (kinda!)
  4. The Image Viewer goes automagically into slide show mode, confirmed by the orange leftmost button (Play/Pause). Play with the other buttons to see what they are doing.

- CONFIGURATION: Lets the user configure:

  1. Backlight intensity
  2. Screen calibration (you will need again a stylus or a small-tip, non-marring pen here)
  3. Miscellany: Button sound, Start Program, Screen Saver, Reset the GPS, Time Settings (on Settings2)

The fourth button, "System" is just for information purposes.

- ADDITIONAL: Extra features one may find useful. Some of the additional features are displayed below:

- TEXT VIEWER: Same as Image Viewer, only displays text files.

- MEMO: A small pad that you can actually write on it. Very useful for note taking. (Artist pilots can even sketch their new nose art on it. ). Not very precise, but it does a reasonable job.

- CALCULATOR: Self-explanatory

- AV: Audio-Video input from a camera. Did not figure out yet the jack connections (three- or four- contact connector, mono or stereo sound) or whether it actually works. I think it'll be useful to "videotape" your flight.

This is it for now. I'll update the information once I find more.

Blue skies !

Ferdi_F4U4.

 
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11/13/2010 6:28 PM
 

"QUOTE"Additional: Takes you to another page that offers a Clock, Text Viewer, Memo, Calculator, Audio Visual, RCAM, and a Game (Solitaire)." QUOTE

The game is called FreeCell, not Solitaire. You can look up the instructions on the internet. It is an interesting game for passing the time. You can store 4 cards in the upper left four blanks temporarily. The upper right four blanks are for putting the ACE, then the 2, 3, 4, and so forth in order. Your finger can touch a card and it turns black-then touch where you want it to go and the card shifts. With the right planning, you can get all the cards to line up with the King on the top of a column and the Queen , Jack, Ten and so on until you get the righthand blanks to fill up with their respective suits due to your shrewd and astute planning. When the computer sees you got it right, it moves the rest of the card to the upper righthand blanks automatically.

 
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