AltimeterThree for iOS Released

Jolly Logic began selling AltimeterThree for iOS (Android coming soon) this week on our website.

We're limiting the release to our site to start with so that we can make sure we know how to support the product well before we begin advertising and stocking our resellers. If you have a favorite reseller you like doing business with, by all means wait a few weeks if you'd like to keep your business there. That's always a good idea.

The product requires an Apple iPhone/iPad to operate, and communicates via Bluetooth. As I'm sure you're all aware, Bluetooth can at times be a pain to set up. So we really need to know if there are gaps in documentation (or perhaps even in the assumptions we've made in the software) to get folks up and running quickly. Beta testers tend to have more patience than someone who actually shelled out good $$$ for a product. The expectations are different.

Check out our website to learn more about the product.

If you end up being one of the early adopters who do buy one, please email us a flight or two. We love to see flights, and the notes you jot down in the AltimeterThree app are fun to read, too. We're going to start posting a gallery of flights on our site that you can browse. Even disasters can be interesting.

Likewise, don't be shy about things you see missing in the User Guide (if you read those) or the website. We already have a list of future enhancements our testers would like--add yours to the list. This is a really capable platform to build on (for instance, the firmware can be updated over the air wirelessly), so we expect some cool future improvements that even early adopters will get as they are added.

Cool! Just ordered one...

Eagerly awaiting the Android release!

So I guess I'm technically a beta tester working with the shipping versions of the app, altimeter firmware, and user guide. (I'm planning to buy an AltimeterThree, but John gave me one to test out during the last LUNAR launch.) I've run into some of those frustrating bluetooth issues. I've yet to get an actual flight recorded, but I'll definitely keep testing (and providing feedback.)

WillMarchant said:

Cool! Just ordered one...

Click to expand...

Got it, John! Thanks for the quick shipping. Easy to bind to the iPhone. Now, I only need a chance to get out and fly it...

Great to hear John!! Good luck with the product launch!!

rbelknap said:

So I guess I'm technically a beta tester working with the shipping versions of the app, altimeter firmware, and user guide. (I'm planning to buy an AltimeterThree, but John gave me one to test out during the last LUNAR launch.) I've run into some of those frustrating bluetooth issues. I've yet to get an actual flight recorded, but I'll definitely keep testing (and providing feedback.)

Click to expand...

Well, it's probably my fault for asking you at the last minute to also use AltimeterThree in your testing when what you really wanted was to help me Beta the new firmware for AltimeterTwo. Maybe that was too ambitious. Flying AltimeterTwo Version 3.9 and Version 4.0 side-by-side should tell us enough to know if the 4.0 fixes work (for the issue where AltimeterTwo mistakes post-burn-out deceleration as ejection), if we can re-create the condition. I got greedy, because AltimeterThree is SO handy for collecting data.

And I was serious when I said that I'm very interested in the user experience with Bluetooth. I made some design decisions that need validating with a wider audience, wider than our Beta pool. Specifically, in the iOS version the altimeter tries to connect automatically, instead of having you click "Press to Connect" each time you walk up to your altimeter. It's probably more reliable in iOS to have you request the connection each time, but I thought that was an inconvenience.

The Android version works a little differently; the Android app does the connection, and this works a little cleaner. The Bluetooth in Android in general is easier to program, iOS is more "walled off."

It's also possible that the app just doesn't work as well on a 4S. I'll have to keep an eye on that, too. It should be fine, but you never know...

I'd suggest holding down the AltimeterThree button until it says "Resetting," going into iPhone Settings>Bluetooth>AltimeterThree info>Forget, and then redoing the pairing to start over. The Bluetooth Troubleshooting Guide to walk you through it.

Wireless setup can be *really* frustrating.

I purchased an AltimeterThree and will be using it with my iphone 5c. I'll let you know how it works. I also purchased an AltimeterTwo because my pre-2014 AltimeterTwo display was damaged on a rough landing. I'm terrible at soldering so I didn't even want to try replacing it.

John Beans said:

Well, it's probably my fault for asking you at the last minute to also use AltimeterThree in your testing when what you really wanted was to help me Beta the new firmware for AltimeterTwo. Maybe that was too ambitious. Flying AltimeterTwo Version 3.9 and Version 4.0 side-by-side should tell us enough to know if the 4.0 fixes work (for the issue where AltimeterTwo mistakes post-burn-out deceleration as ejection), if we can re-create the condition. I got greedy, because AltimeterThree is SO handy for collecting data.

And I was serious when I said that I'm very interested in the user experience with Bluetooth. I made some design decisions that need validating with a wider audience, wider than our Beta pool. Specifically, in the iOS version the altimeter tries to connect automatically, instead of having you click "Press to Connect" each time you walk up to your altimeter. It's probably more reliable in iOS to have you request the connection each time, but I thought that was an inconvenience.

The Android version works a little differently; the Android app does the connection, and this works a little cleaner. The Bluetooth in Android in general is easier to program, iOS is more "walled off."

It's also possible that the app just doesn't work as well on a 4S. I'll have to keep an eye on that, too. It should be fine, but you never know...

I'd suggest holding down the AltimeterThree button until it says "Resetting," going into iPhone Settings>Bluetooth>AltimeterThree info>Forget, and then redoing the pairing to start over. The Bluetooth Troubleshooting Guide to walk you through it.

Wireless setup can be *really* frustrating.

Click to expand...

John,

I didn't mean for it to sound like I was complaining. Far from it. I'm more than happy to also test the AtimeterThree. I do find the auto-connect to be a neat idea, but it hasn't worked so well for me yet. Personally, I'd be fine with having to "press to connect" once I recover my rocket. I don't think I'd see it as an inconvenience. (I'd rather do that and be able to get my data than have the autoconnect fail, requiring a reset.) I'm taking notes as I play with the altimeter and I'll send my feedback along soon.

I was thinking that my 4S might be the problem. I sometimes have weird pairing issues between it and my bluetooth enabled car stereo, as well. I'll see about getting a hold of a newer iDevice to compare.

I have reset the AtimeterThree and the re-done the pairing settings a couple of times as outlined on the troubleshooting page. (I even went so far as to re-install the app at one point.) Once I re-do the pairing, the AtimeterThree and phone talk to each other just fine. I start to see issues once I take the phone out of bluetooth range while the AtimeterThree is recording a flight. I'll send you a write up of the exact steps I'm taking to reproduce in a few days. (I want to run through it a couple more times this weekend.)

I hope discussing the issues I'm having in the open doesn't put people off buying one of these. It's a cool device, and will be a lot of fun (once I get it connected to my phone consistently.)

Regarding the 3.9/4.0 firmware change for the AtimeterTwo - of course when we're TRYING to recreate the flight conditions, the bug isn't triggered. (Guess I'll just have to do more flights. Oh, darn. )

On the Altimeter2, how exactly does the burnout detection bug manifest? I had two flights recently (one in a BAR crayon with only the stock bank slot for ventilation, and one in a LOC 5.5" Mini Magg nosecone with vent holes) where the Apogee-eject readings were negative seconds (I think they were negative 5-10 seconds). I know both rockets deployed near apogee so this doesn't totally make sense. Another thing I noticed was that several flights had ejection altitudes and descent rates that seemed inaccurate. Other than that the altimeter works great, I really like the amount of data available and simplicity of setup.

I'm pretty sure that's the exact issue. I had emailed John about it as well. For me the Apogee-eject reading is basically the same value (but negative) as the Coast-Apogee time, as well as a very low reported Ejection altitude, as well as a slow Descent rate since I believe it's computed as Ejection altitude divided by Eject-to-end-of-flight time. The other numbers all seem reasonable.

So it sounds like you're still looking for more data on this bug? I'm hoping to be at Snow Ranch on 2/7, any chance you'll be there? I saw this both times I flew the A2 in my rocket with an I280DM and I500T (4 flights total), though not the one time I flew with an I140W (that reported a reasonable eject time). So hopefully I'll be able to reproduce it with my rocket (I'm happy to fly more I280DM's in it ). And I'll be flying my new A3 as well, just got it today! :clap:

Good to see these starting to be out "in the wild". I've had a beta for awhile (actually have been through three of them since last summer - and thereby hang several stories). I never did any field testing with my iPhone 4 though I did some in-the-house testing with the link without any unusual trouble.

My field testing was with a 5, until I traded it in on a 6 Plus on December 30th. For me the bluetooth business has been a source of frustration (most of the time) and big smiles when it "just works" - which it did the last time I was out with the A3 on the 10th (but not on New Years' Day). I find killing the app and restarting it will often "shake things loose". One can also terminate the recording (if you can't reconnect after a flight to tell it to stop) by powering down the A3. Then when you bring it and the app back up, you'll more than likely get a reconnect and your data will download to your phone as it should.

I was playing with another feature of my new phone - 240 FPS video - at the 1/10 launch and put together a little movie directly on the phone of liftoffs and occasional landings. For the two A3-carrying flights I also put in a screen cap of the altitude vs. time graph right after the video of the flights. It's below in case anyone's interested. (John already has the data packages from those two flights)

[video=youtube;bzG5DLyYiMM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzG5DLyYiMM[/video]

Bernard,
After seeing your slo-mos, I feel like that's the ONLY way to watch launches. So, so cool!

By the way, what you put together there (the video with the flight graph) jives with my ultimate goal of the "Share" feature that's currently in AltimeterThree (which is pretty simple right now). My vision is that it would let you quickly generate a Flight Story, including photos and video (if you had those) so that with minimal effort (record the flight, snap a photo or two, record a video) it would put all that together like you did. There's an app called Storyo (storyoapp.com) that does that with photos you take. It demonstrates the kind of things that be generated automatically from stuff you're already doing, with animations and a map of where everything took place. It sounds simple, but it's surprisingly cool.

Thanks, John. The one that makes me almost giggle is how fast that Mosquito (second launch in the video) gets out of the frame even in slow motion.

Putting that little movie together from the individual boost videos, landing videos and the screen captures of the two A3 graphs probably took me a couple of hours. It gave me something to work on as my wife and I were on a 737-800 headed for Hawaii two weeks ago tomorrow. It was all assembled with the iMovie app on the phone. I wish it was more flexible about titles in particular (so I could put in rocket names and motors on each flight and some "end credits") but was pretty easy to use.

I'll need to look at Storyo.

To get back to A3 operations: I've been thinking about it and I think having to reconnect the bluetooth when getting back to the rocket, if it were solidly reliable would be preferable to an automatic reconnect which works sometimes and sometimes doesn't (at which point the manual reconnect usually doesn't either without at least killing and restarting the app). Now I have NO idea from your end which is more straightforward to implement. And of course, you have already thought about this at some length.....so I'm kind of stating the obvious here. I guess for me consistent behavior (even with more steps) is far preferable to "I wonder if it's going to work this time?".

Feel free to tell me to take this discussion back to emails if you prefer.

SCrocketfan said:

On the Altimeter2, how exactly does the burnout detection bug manifest? I had two flights recently (one in a BAR crayon with only the stock bank slot for ventilation, and one in a LOC 5.5" Mini Magg nosecone with vent holes) where the Apogee-eject readings were negative seconds (I think they were negative 5-10 seconds). I know both rockets deployed near apogee so this doesn't totally make sense. Another thing I noticed was that several flights had ejection altitudes and descent rates that seemed inaccurate. Other than that the altimeter works great, I really like the amount of data available and simplicity of setup.

Click to expand...

That sound pretty much exactly what I'm trying to help test a fix for. I'm even using a BAR crayon.

BEC said:

One can also terminate the recording (if you can't reconnect after a flight to tell it to stop) by powering down the A3. Then when you bring it and the app back up, you'll more than likely get a reconnect and your data will download to your phone as it should.

Click to expand...

Thats good to know. I'll add that to my testing I'm doing. This might be a good trouble-shooting tip for the FAQ on the website.

BEC said:

To get back to A3 operations: I've been thinking about it and I think having to reconnect the bluetooth when getting back to the rocket, if it were solidly reliable would be preferable to an automatic reconnect which works sometimes and sometimes doesn't (at which point the manual reconnect usually doesn't either without at least killing and restarting the app). Now I have NO idea from your end which is more straightforward to implement. And of course, you have already thought about this at some length.....so I'm kind of stating the obvious here. I guess for me consistent behavior (even with more steps) is far preferable to "I wonder if it's going to work this time?".

Click to expand...

I tend to agree with BEC. As a user, I'd rather have to manually reconnect by tapping a button in the app UI, than wonder if it will automatically do so. This is doubly true if I've had problems with the auto-connect in the past.

Once I'm done working through my "honey-do" list today, I'm planning to sit down and play with the A3 some more. ("But Robert, why are you on TRF instead of working on your list?" you might ask. I'm just taking a short break while my lunch heats up.)

And again this afternoon (well yesterday afternoon now) I went out with my A3 and iPhone 6+ and it all worked just as it should. I'd have gotten two data sets....but i forgot to start the recording the second time. Oh well, I was letting some kids who happened by launch the model and got caught up in that .

For those looking for comparative data: That flight today was in a slightly modified Estes Eliminator (made the top four inches a payload section). On the flight where I remembered to start the A3 recording (powered by D12-5) the A3 gave 709 feet. The Adept A1 aboard beeped 710 feet and the PerfectFlite Firefly blinked 713 feet. That's about as good agreement as I've ever seen across three makes of devices on the same flight.

I played a bit more with my testing A3 last night. I really think I have something busted in my bluetooth setup - most likely it's on the phone side of things. I actually managed to lock-up the A3 when trying to start a recording at one point. (Timer sat at 00:00 until I quit the A3 app on my phone at which point the timer started to increment.) I'm going to try to reproduce that one today.

So far in testing around the house I've been able to power-up the A3 and the phone catches it (even when the screen is dark, showing the dialog to launch the app and connecting when the app opens), put it in record mode through the app then walk away such that it disconnects, and it has re-connected within a few seconds of coming back into range every time. This is an iPhone 5 w/8.1.2. The real test will be on the field obviously (fingers crossed for favorable conditions and agreeable family members on 2/7), but it seems very happy around the house.

rbelknap said:

I played a bit more with my testing A3 last night. I really think I have something busted in my bluetooth setup - most likely it's on the phone side of things. I actually managed to lock-up the A3 when trying to start a recording at one point. (Timer sat at 00:00 until I quit the A3 app on my phone at which point the timer started to increment.) I'm going to try to reproduce that one today.

Click to expand...

Robert, I'd advise a "redo." Hold down the AltimeterThree button until you see "Resetting." That will tell it to stop trying to connect to your particular phone. Then tell iPhone to "forget" the pairing. Then re-pair, taking care that you approve the link ON BOTH THE IPHONE AND THE ALTIMETER when they show the same approval code. Never approve a pairing if only ONE of the two devices is asking for it. We can't change the way Bluetooth pairing works at its core, and it is crazy-making, I know.

It's funny. In some cases the Bluetooth acts quirky, but for some folks, it just works all the time. This is why I'm rolling this out slowly. Some folks have zero issues ("what's the fuss?"), while others have to wrestle with it a bit. I'm hoping we'll isolate a factor that we can compensate for.

I wish I have more control over the pairing process, and more indicators from the Bluetooth core stack, but it's all kind of walled off in Apple. Alas.

John Beans said:

Robert, I'd advise a "redo." Hold down the AltimeterThree button until you see "Resetting." That will tell it to stop trying to connect to your particular phone. Then tell iPhone to "forget" the pairing. Then re-pair, taking care that you approve the link ON BOTH THE IPHONE AND THE ALTIMETER when they show the same approval code. Never approve a pairing if only ONE of the two devices is asking for it. We can't change the way Bluetooth pairing works at its core, and it is crazy-making, I know.

Click to expand...

Yep. I've redone the pairing multiple times following that process. I still get weirdness. If it would help, I can do a demo video of the behavior I'm seeing and steps to reproduce, assuming I can reproduce the issues reliably. The locking up at the start of recording was a new wrinkle yesterday. I'm also going to talk my wife into letting me try it out on her 4s, and I've got a couple of friends with 5s(es*) and 6+(es) that I can talk to as well.

John Beans said:

It's funny. In some cases the Bluetooth acts quirky, but for some folks, it just works all the time. This is why I'm rolling this out slowly. Some folks have zero issues ("what's the fuss?"), while others have to wrestle with it a bit. I'm hoping we'll isolate a factor that we can compensate for.

I wish I have more control over the pairing process, and more indicators from the Bluetooth core stack, but it's all kind of walled off in Apple. Alas.

Click to expand...

I'll keep trying and sending feedback.

(*How should one pluralize 4s, 5s, 6+ anyway?)

digitalastro said:

Eagerly awaiting the Android release!

Click to expand...

I'll second that eagerness.

Stupid iPhones and their stupid market domination!

Testing on an iphone 6+ report*:

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here; huge success.
It's hard to over-state my satisfaction.

I borrowed a 6+,
and paired via Bluetooth with no hiccups.
I then recorded 5 test-flights with no issues.

...


*To the tune of "Still Alive" because reasons.
(Also I could try to do a whole parody song, but it would probably take too long)

So yeah it's not my particular A3 unit. (Nor is it user error, probably.) It seems to be funkiness with my 4s. I'll see about testing on another 4s soon. Not that 2 data points will be enough to confirm one way or the other that it's a general issue with the 4s and not just my particular phone.

For the record, the 6+ is running iOS 8.1.2, as is my 4s.

rbelknap said:

Thats good to know. I'll add that to my testing I'm doing. This might be a good trouble-shooting tip for the FAQ on the website.

Click to expand...

Well, wouldn't you know - it already is.

I guess I should see what's ON the website before I start making suggestions about what should be on the website.

So my wife, or at least her 4s, is going to have to start coming to the launches with me. (not really) Her 4s does not seem to be experiencing the same bluetooth connectivity issues that mine is.

Time redo the pairing again on mine. Maybe this time it will work. (This is the definition of insanity, right? It must be, because my phone is driving me crazy. )

Hey John - I just had a(nother) crazy thought. I can pair the A3 with my iMac - any thoughts on an application interface for the mac/pc? (See, told you - crazy pants over here.)