The HeliPort support thread

[Ber60]

It is always nice to see something you created is appreciated

[Tjomp]

He seems like a nice and polite guy. I´ve added his shop to my favorites

[redbird300]

Just a little anouncement: we added a few interesting heli-related links to the "useful stuff" page of the HeliPort website. These websites are so kind to help to make HeliPort more widely known, so we decided to link back to them.

My special thanks to John from http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/, I always admired his very complete and informative site about almost every aspect of r/c helis, IMHO it's about the best site ever on this subject. He kindly put a link to HeliPort on his site.

[redbird300]

Totally unexpected, HeliPort got a tiny review on one of the largest helicopter news sites, in the "General News" section. Don't ask me the name of the site, but it has "resource" in its name. And we all know that story. But I guess and hope it doesn't hurt to post a small screenshot:

[Jonnyheli]

Hey, nice one Raf. Heliport is doing well

I really don't know how you get that audio tachometer so accurate but if "resource" say it's usually within 10 rpm then it must be accurate.

Do you have an ad on helifreak? If not, you should get in touch with Bob... I'm sure he will be happy to put a small ad on here somewhere for you. The more people know about this tool the better. It can save people a lot of money on buying dedicated equipment.

I know your not doing this for money. But even if you had a small fee people would pay it.

Like I say, a small ad somewhere on Helifreak could do it a lot of good. That's if you don't already have one on here somewhere?

-Jonny

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by Jonnyheli

Hey, nice one Raf. Heliport is doing well

I really don't know how you get that audio tachometer so accurate but if "resource" say it's usually within 10 rpm then it must be accurate.

Do you have an ad on helifreak? If not, you should get in touch with Bob... I'm sure he will be happy to put a small ad on here somewhere for you. The more people know about this tool the better. It can save people a lot of money on buying dedicated equipment.

I know your not doing this for money. But even if you had a small fee people would pay it.

Like I say, a small ad somewhere on Helifreak could do it a lot of good. That's if you don't already have one on here somewhere?

-Jonny

Thanks Jonny. The 10 RPM is in fact mathematically defined in the used algorithms, a trade-off between speed, sample rate, audio length, processor speed in a mobile phone and user-friendlyness. More accurate for a R/C heli didn’t really make sense to me when I choose the way how to implement the fast fourier libraries in the software. The first beta version was only 40 RPM accurate, and I decided to go to 10 RPM. I could easily get it to 2 RPM for example, but recording and especially calculation times would increase exponentially, without much benefit.

There’s no ad on Helifreak, I am already very happy with the fact that Will James made a sticky of this thread without me asking for it. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate it, but I don’t feel like asking for it myself, they did enough effort as it is, I think. But I agree with your idea that I should try to get HeliPort more widely known, I’m working right now on it, time permitting.

About the money, it has been suggested before, but that’s a very difficult matter, it would also impose a lot of obligations if you start asking even a little fee for it, I prefer the actual situation for many reasons. It’s not like it would get me a fortune, and there are a few downsides. A vendor-customer relation is very different. I’m kinda independent now, I can pretty much do whatever I want now with HeliPort. Some modest sponsorship maybe later to cover for the costs, who knows, but that wouldn’t hurt the users, that’s as far as I ever would go. I hope you understand.

[Jonnyheli]

A sticky on this forum is great! Any thing like that helps.

What I meant about the money thing was. It's such a good tool that people wouldn't mind paying a small fee for it. Like you say, it's not going to be an amount that would change your life, mainly because there's not a very big audience for this sort of thing. Again, I would probably pay a few £ for this.

Have you thought about putting it on Apple's App store?

If I was at the field and I needed to check my HS for some reason. I could just get my Iphone out, go onto the app store spend 50p or whatever and there it is, on my phone in a matter of minutes. You know, just to widen the audience even more.

You could make it a free app too.

But yea, I just think it would be cool if this was the number one heli application around.

And nice programming skills btw

-Jonny

[redbird300]

Rewriting the whole program for iPhone would be a hell of a job, take a lot of time, and cost me a lot of money. There won't be an iPhone version in a near futur, I'm sorry. The Windows desktop version targets the widest audience possible, and I won't maintain 2 different programs. I will focus on more functionality in HeliPort, or online applications, or other software for Windows. BTW, the Win Mobile version doesn't take any extra work for me, it's inherent to the programming language. But there is no language that allows to develop for Windows and iPhone at the same time, using the exact same code. Blame the closed Apple system, lol.

And the developments in this business are going very fast, better wait what happens first. Last month, for the first time, more Android phones have beens sold than iPhones to non-business users in the US. What will it be in 6 months or a year ? Nobody really knows. I once wrote software for Symbian (Nokia), same story. Operating systems come and go. Palm once was master of this market, now almost nobody remembers them.

[Jonnyheli]

Yes, ofcourse. I should have thought of that... Man Apple are so stubborn lol.

You need a Mac OS just to make the apps apparently... And like you say, you will be basically making the program from scratch again. On top of that, you will need to learn a bit about the programming language the Iphone software understands.

As much as I would like another phone to take over the Iphone, I haven't come across any other phone that runs as smooth as the Iphone. The touch screen is so precise, the menus move perfectly with the movement of your fingers etc...

Anyways, enough about the Iphone...

Best of luck with Heliport... Maybe Bob will put a video review of it on here one day

-Jonny

[redbird300]

Another announcement:
The HeliPort manual mentions clearly that the tachometer is only intended for electric helis. Some people tried it with nitro helis anyway, and it seems to work, but the spectrum graph is needed more than with electric helis, as the harmonics of the motor disturb the signal. Meaning that the first value that the tacho finds is not always the right one.
But all this will change soon probably. I recently gathered enough sound samples and some information to make it work reliably for nitros as well. I'm thinking even about adding a second, dedicated nitro tacho in HeliPort. That would be a nice add-on when version 1.00 is released next winter or so. Time is the most limiting factor now, lol. To be continued...

[SAR1]

I'm having a problem getting heliport to run on my computer and hope someone can help. I'm running Windows XP SP3. I unzipped the files to a folder on my C drive. When I click on heliport_desk.exe, I get and application error. Error = The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Are there any known problems getting this to run with popup blockers etc or any system settings that might need to be changed? Thanks for any help with this.

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by SAR1

I'm having a problem getting heliport to run on my computer and hope someone can help. I'm running Windows XP SP3. I unzipped the files to a folder on my C drive. When I click on heliport_desk.exe, I get and application error. Error = The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Are there any known problems getting this to run with popup blockers etc or any system settings that might need to be changed? Thanks for any help with this.

Hi,

This happened to some users before, and it is a problem with your Windows installation, not with HeliPort. The solution is very simple though.

But first off all, just to be sure, verify that you have at least all these files together in a folder, if you use the latest version 0.17 for Windows (not the Win Mobile download):

- HeliPort_desk.exe
- imageedit.dll
- pachRecorderDesktop.dll
- settings.hp
There are also some other files like the manual and eight WAV files.


Now, it is most likely that your Windows installation is lacking some files:

You should install Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.
This is the link:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

It could also be necessary to also install Microsoft .Net Compact Framework 2.0.
Download details: .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2 Redistributable
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en


These are standard updates for Windows.
I can only guess you blocked the updates in the past, because they seemed not useful to you at first sight. Or you turned off the automatic update feature in MS-Windows, anyway, it's not that important anymore. Let me now how it went, HeliPort should run fine after installing these updates. Enjoy.

[SAR1]

Net Framework 2.0 fixed the problem. Thank you very much.

[redbird300]

Just a few vids that I found. Someone using HeliPort to measure headspeed on two of his Walkeras with a desktop PC, he made some recordings of it. He measured 3 times on each heli. It makes me feel good that people are actually using it.

BTW, a look at the webcounter today indicates that about tenthousand vistors came to www.helisoftware.com since we started this site in April.


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tTxUTadz9w[/ame]


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-0XhHLUPwo[/ame]

[Adventurer]

Instead of separate battery and flight loggers, why not create a composite logger that writes a row to both the flight log and the battery log of the selected aircraft and selected battery (and maybe a new pilot log).

A separate capture form would probably have to be created as I don't think you would fit everything into your existing grids, there would need to be aircraft, battery and pilot comment fields for the different logs.

[Adventurer]

In the battery logger, could we also have a post-flight voltage field.

I track the voltage of my packs at the start of charging so that I get an early warning of a pack that's coming to the end. Dropping post-flight voltage for equal mAh means that the capacity of the pack is falling, and that you're now taking more than 80% out of the pack.

[redbird300]

Nice ideas Adventurer, I'll see what I can do in the next versions of HeliPort, scheduled for the upcoming winter. Much depend on how much information I can get into that little interface, but there are ways around it, as you suggested. I hope you enjoy the program anyhow in the mean time, thanks !

[pitchp]

hey guys,


I don't know if I'm in the right thread. But my question is about this program
http://www.digitizeit.de/heli/#pc how accurate is this program? The reason I asked this, is I converted a part video of Bert K's 3D 250 into a wav file, and it measured max 2000 HS. Is that right? My T250 is 5600 HS. Sorry I hope I am not bothering anyone.

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by pitchp

hey guys,


I don't know if I'm in the right thread. But my question is about this program
http://www.digitizeit.de/heli/#pc how accurate is this program? The reason I asked this, is I converted a part video of Bert K's 3D 250 into a wav file, and it measured max 2000 HS. Is that right? My T250 is 5600 HS. Sorry I hope I am not bothering anyone.

No problem, the author of this program is a friend, we support each other.
Just send him an email at heli@digitizeit.de with your questions.
I am pretty sure it's a very accurate program, when used in the right conditions, as with any acoustic tachometer.

[pitchp]

RB: it's my fault, sorry, I just realised that when I converted the video to a wav, the quality wasn't all there. So hence the false reading. I installed it on my mobile phone and it works.

Talking about apps, RB i tried to install Heliport in windows xp I get an error: HeliPort_desk.exe - Application Error

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click Ok To terminate the application.

I would really like to use this but I am having trouble with it.

am I supposse to install something else like a runtime?