SkyDemon Forums

Vocal Audio Warnings/Alerts

http://forums.skydemon.aero/Topic24886.aspx

By PaulSS - 11/27/2017 12:43:47 AM

Following on from my audio question in the Navigation section, is there any chance of having the vocal audio warnings, from the likes of Pilot Aware, 'piped' through Sky Demon or have Sky Demon generate the same in response to the traffic information?
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I am lead to understand, at the moment, that traffic information is received via the Flarm protocol and is then re-broadcast by SD onto the screen. I further understand that an audio warning is generated, which basically draws your attention to the screen. This is all great stuff and will certainly help improve awareness of other traffic (we all know the limitations of the systems and that is not part of this discussion). However, to make a great system even better would be to enable more 'heads out', rather than 'heads in'. So, instead of a buzzer telling me to look at my screen and the inevitable delay while my human brain processes the visual information on the screen and resolves the area in which I should look, I believe it would be better to have a vocal 'warning' telling me the traffic is 3 o'clock, 4 miles, 100' above......or similar. No mucking around head down but looking straight to the place I'm told (just as I would with ATC giving me the same information).
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‌I DO appreciate SD is not traffic awareness equipment but I'm certain this would be a very useful feature and would be even moreso since SD users would not have to separately connect their Pilot Aware etc to their aircraft audio systems to get vocal traffic information. Yes, I do realise this benefits traffic awareness users more than it benefits the navigation facilities of SD but as an integrated package it makes the system far more user-friendly AND it is future-proofing.  As more electronic conspicuity comes to the fore, SD will already be in a position to issue the vocal warnings. This helps the safety case AND means I can simply Bluetooth my headset to SD and not have to wire PAW into my aircraft systems (BIG smiley face) 🙂 
By PaulSS - 3/26/2018 12:51:03 AM

a great SD solution demands a lot from the developers

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‌Certainly for a dimbo like me, this would be almost impossible but you know how clever these SD people are :-)  
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‌SD already has audio and it's obviously receiving the traffic data from PAW etc. I wonder whether it also receives the vocal audio from the same and it's a 'simple' matter of re-broadcasting or whether SD has to produce its own vocal audio based on the traffic data? Clearly re-broadcasting would be a lot less hassle than writing code to issue vocal warnings based on such-and-such criteria, so I hope the audio data is already 'attached' to the traffic data.
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