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Show HN: Aviation navigation log on $20 receipt printer
- carloslagoa 3y agoHi HN! Just a small script I wrote a few days ago, but I had 2 or 3 friends publish some blogs online and I got hella jelly --- so here's my submission, so at least I can say I made something and post it. Hopefully you like both planes and tech and very hopefully you find this an okay read :) Any spelling mistakes, bugs, issues, ethics, please do tell me about! Sorry if it looks rushed -- night is coming upon us and I need to take the dog out! Good weekend!
- jfim 3y agoNot knowing much about aviation, are there concerns if the printed list falls off of the pillar?
- carloslagoa 3y agoHi! --- fantastic question, so far, mostly due to the gentle nature of General Aviation flights and my sellotape skills, I haven't had to deal with this. I did worry at one point, but it's surprisingly sturdy. If it does fall --- no worries! I have my original (kneeboard) copy to go off Thanks for the question!
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- btgeekboy 3y agoI’d rather reach down in the plane and pick something off the floor than do the same in my car. Especially if the plane has a half decent autopilot.
- tux1968 3y agoHi there! Which printer are you using? Can't be a new one at that price, surely?
- carloslagoa 3y agoHi! erm, lemme check tomorrow -- I'm using one I got second hand in facebook marketplace from a business. The printer works with the library in the article but things like font-size selection had to be retweaked It's a generic brand one -- but on eBay I've see some for cheap; maybe (like someone pointed out) not that cheap (sorry if title was misleading, not my intention at all) My recommendation? buy it locally or just ask a business if they are getting rid of one (that was how I got lucky) Sorry I can't help much more
- mmastrac 3y agoAwesome project. You should edit the title with a "Show HN" prefix!
- carloslagoa 3y agoThank you thank you thank you -- just did! Nice day
- svarlamov 3y agoIs there any way to send a Foreflight flight plan into this printer setup?
- carloslagoa 3y agodamn -- if I went through the silly PDF that SkyVector provides -- why not! Lemme research a bit what the export format is!
- jcrawfordor 3y agoI wrote up a tool years ago that would take a nav log and print the charts onto long strips of receipt tape, basically as an artistic venture. The Epson thermal printers can do surprisingly nice halftone once you figure out which of the several ESC/POS raster modes they like the most, although the printing is very slow compared to the usual text speed. Unfortunately I don't think I have the scripts any more.
- carloslagoa 3y agoThats sounds dope! I had to modify the library I use for printing because it was made for Epson ones hehe I agree -- it's artistic than anything, but is cool! Thanks for popping by :)
- EMM_386 3y agoI'm a dinosaur and I'm always amazed at the technology that pilot's have available to them these days. While complex to learn, having huge glass navigation systems sitting in front of you in a single engine plane seems so foreign to me. I did my instrument ride in a C-172 and my commercial in a PA-44. During both of those checkrides, I ended up having to shoot ILS approaches to minimums, in turbulent IFR conditions, with nothing but "steam gauges". The fanciest thing in the plane was probably the HSI. On the instrument ride, I had to shoot an NDB approach to minimums in actual. That was a good time. I assume planes don't even come with NDBs anymore. I used to tune into AM radio on them just to have something to listen to to pass the time. I used the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator recently and loaded up the C-172. It just stared at the screen for a minute, realizing I don't know how to use a G1000 so I couldn't fly it. I mean, I could start it up and get it off the ground, but for IFR navigation? No clue. Lots of buttons and fancy graphics. The march of progress.
- svarlamov 3y agoG1000s are great, but it's disappointing that just about everything else has remained basically unchanged on GA aircraft for the last 30+ years. I hope that we will see some actual innovation in GA engines, airframes, and fuels soon. Fuels might be the most promising for the near-term.
- ryandrake 3y agoNearly all the innovation in general aviation, particularly regarding situational awareness and safety, is happening in the Experimental category. Moving maps, synthetic vision/terrain alerts, ADS-B in and out, engine monitoring, airspeed-aware electronic trim control, fuel injection, electronic ignition, FADEC systems... yes, all are available on newer certificated planes for $,$$$,$$$, but much more affordable and accessible in the Experimental world. And, the builder/owner can install and configure everything himself. Garmin's latest G3X update includes the ability to use rudimentary set/clear logic signals to do if-this-and-that type CAS alerts, and configure your gauges to behave differently during different phases of flight. All owner-configurable.
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- whartung 3y agoYou should look into a roll chart. It’s a small device typically mounted to a handlebar of a motorcycle that contains directions. As you reach each waypoint, you turn a knob and roll the next waypoint into the window. It should work just great with your receipt printer and your not limited to the length of the A pillar in your plane.
- carloslagoa 3y agoI was about to buy a plane with a longer a pillar --- darn it! I guess roll chart makes more sense indeed. I know them from the Rally Dakar, I think up to recently they used them, I think they are super cool; great shout :) I'd wanna grab a friend w/ a 3D printer to make one because I kind of like the flexibility of sellotape at the moment, especially the roll chart mount into the airframe
- tennisflyi 3y agoRoll charts and the kneeboard are good to know about now!
- cameronh90 3y agoI've ridden a motorbike for 15 years and this is the first I've heard of roll charts! Prior to phones, I would just scrawl my notes onto a sheet of A5 and tape it to the top of the tank. It didn't work well when it was raining.
- kotaKat 3y agoI'm just starting out onto a motorbike and this is a stupidly brilliant idea, and I do have a 2.5" IBM receipt printer...
- klinquist 3y agoIt's most common in the dual sport community. I ride dual sport rides here on the west coast that still provide roll charts as their primary routing.
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- 71a54xd 3y agoThis is awesome, but I've been less excited with using my thermal label printer / thermal tape printer lately since realizing those labels are absolutely loaded with BPAs intended to stabilize the thermal ink. :(
- mschuster91 3y agoThere's special BPA-free or at least -reduced paper these days, the local supermarkets here have shifted to using that for environmental reasons.
- carloslagoa 3y agoI had no idea! Researching now
- mschuster91 3y agoNiiice. I'm looking to start flight training myself for ultralight next years and will definitely keep this bookmarked.
- carloslagoa 3y agoWohooo!! good luck!!
- alanbernstein 3y agoThis makes me want to buy a receipt printer to use for grocery shopping lists.
- _joel 3y agoRetail inception
- toomuchtodo 3y agoI have an unused unit I can ship to you gratis. Email in profile.
- carloslagoa 3y agowhat a great gesture!! put a smile in my face
- toomuchtodo 3y agoJust paying it forward, love your project, thanks for sharing it with us.
- alanbernstein 3y agoThanks for the offer. I spoke with my shopping coordinator and she wasn't as excited about it as I was, so I should probably pass.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoSingle Engine Land PPL holder here. I would have loved this when I was flying still. Such memories with the kneeboard and nav logs! Fun fact: I left my plotter and E6B in my black car in TX during cross-country training and came back to both melted! I was broke and 18 so figured I would wing it, but it surely made my calculations error biased by some amount of yards because I was broke and not wanting to buy a new one!
- carloslagoa 3y agoHahaha, I had a similar thing, I folded my E6B day 1 hour 2 of ground school... anything from 130deg to 210deg had a +-5deg parallax error Great story! Glad it coulda been've use :)
- miki123211 3y agoThis is one of those posts with tons of images whose alt text is just set to the literal string "alt text". Does anybody know where this phenomenon comes from? This isn't the first time I'm seeing this, and I don't know why anybody ever thought that it was a good idea.
- moogly 3y agoThe `alt` attribute is technically required for `img` tags, so if you run your HTML through a validator, or want to shut up IDE/editor warnings, you're going to have to add it. It can be an empty string though IIRC.
- bigDinosaur 3y agoAn empty string is supposed to signal that the image is entirely unnecessary to understand the content.
- carloslagoa 3y agoI copy pasted my <img> tags cause I had to 'remake' the blog and completely forgot to fill it in, if you are using accessibility functionality I am very sorry -- please allow me to update it briefly Have a nice weekend :)
- rtheunissen 3y agoMight be a CMS of some kind because I doubt anyone would purposefully type out "alt text".
- carloslagoa 3y agoSadly just me being dumb :')
- aledalgrande 3y agoMuahaha looks like a restaurant order for the kitchen I love it!
- carloslagoa 3y agoWaypoint 6 wants a number 12 and 3 number 8s - 9NM away and they want it in 3min31
- palijer 3y agoI've worked in a bunch of restaurants and now work with restaurant software (we're hiring some cool positions if you are interested [1]) The one thing I'd be a bit wary about here is heat making that paper unreadable. I've seen a bunch of kitchens intend to run thermal printers in kitchens, but had to switch to impact printers because how quickly the paper would turn dark in the ambient heat in the kitchen, plus the heat lamps on expo station. Thankfully the author isn't relying on this for anything absolutely critical (also aviate, then navigate anyways) but I'd wonder if on a sunny day without any clouds there, how quickly that paper would degrade. [1] https://boards.greenhouse.io/touchbistro/jobs/5058791003 https://boards.greenhouse.io/touchbistro/jobs/5058791003
- carloslagoa 3y agothat's interesting, thanks for the insight -- I was aware of thermal's darkening but unaware of it's speed. I'll leave one out in the sun tomorrow, if I can have ~4hrs with it I'll be chuffed And, of course, as you said, aviate navigate communicate first :) Thanks!
- pierat 3y agoYeah I've been "burned" by thermal receipts before. Had a receipt in my wallet. 30 days later, the thermal print completely faded. Had to dispute with credit card company over that one. Wasn't fun.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoMakes me wonder if "you need a receipt to claim warranty" is intentional like that. There's a few apps that can organize / OCR receipts for you, if a photo of a receipt is adequate. I don't actually know any and I may be talking out of my ass but err. I'm sure there are!
- TeMPOraL 3y agoOver here in Poland, companies usually require a "proof of purchase", which can be a receipt or an invoice. As a buyer, it's up to you which one you want to receive[0]. There's a special kind of pseudo-invoice called "personal invoice", which is like a VAT invoice except you don't need to be a company or provide a tax ID for it. This is the one you want in any scenario when you expect to hold on to the proof of purchase for longer than it takes to reach the nearest trash can - its killer feature is that it can't possibly fit on a thermal paper receipt[1], so you get it printed out using regular, durable means, on regular office paper (and/or e-mailed as PDF). -- [0] - On-line you usually get to pick at check-out, off-line you usually have to ask before paying. [1] - Technically it could, but it would be quite an achievement, and it's sufficiently non-standard that nobody bothers.
- iefbr14 3y agoNice, but I would like to know where you can get those printers for just 20 bucks :)
- carloslagoa 3y agoI actually just bought one from the business next door but on eBay I've seen them at $20 (tho if you get the Super Pro XL Mega 4K one it's more hehe)
- iefbr14 3y ago>I've seen them at $20 Have another look, its more like 50 nowadays, thanks to the new ones having proprietary paper with chip.
- carloslagoa 3y agodamn you may be right (maybe something between 20 and 50 at least) does second hand count? gumtree m/craigslist/facebook marketplace/ etc etc
- seabass-labrax 3y agoI got a second-hand one for a bargain £30 with so much paper that I will be hard-pushed to use it all in my lifetime. The power supply burnt out after a year or so, so that will be another £10 or so, but I don't regret that purchase by any stretch. I've used it to print out the headlines from RSS feeds, like my own personal Telex ticker-tape machine!
- thepaulmcbride 3y agoI’ve been thinking about something like this but with an e ink display. I want something that has the frequencies and waypoints I need in case my iPad dies that isn’t reliant on power. Very cool project!
- carloslagoa 3y agoYeeeehaww!! e-ink rocks!! Do it
- lsh123 3y agoSometime soon you will discover ForeFlight or Garmin Pilot, and your life would never be the same ;)
- carloslagoa 3y agoHehe --- for sure, I'll grow up one day
- chrischattin 3y agoForeFlight is the greatest app ever created.
- cosmotron 3y agoJust passing along a hat-tip on the acronym. Looks like you had some fun with it and wanted to let you know it has been appreciated!
- carloslagoa 3y agoWanted to let you know your comment was appreciated!
- cmdlinecowboy 3y agoAs someone with a spare receipt printer and studying for a private pilots license……genius
- carloslagoa 3y agoYeehaw! Glad you may be able to put it through its paces
- indus 3y agoNot only are you mastering the art of flight training on a vintage plane, but you’re also moonlighting as a creative tech guru with your Nav log printer project. Your kneeboard “cargo pants of the air” are legit, and turning the cockpit’s windshield pillar into prime real estate for receipt prints? Genius move. Your journey from regex to JSON wizardry is like a flight plan through the tech skies. Keep soaring, my friend!
- carloslagoa 3y agoI really appreciate it thank you :) Have a nice sunday
- elzbardico 3y agoI’ve bought a laser printer during the pandemic and it is surprising how printing stuff is handy at times. It is like having infinite additional displays for no cost at all. But for some stuff like task and check lists, a letter-sized page is too much. Hadn’t thought about buying one of those small printers before.
- nektro 3y agoneat project but no mention of what model printer you got?