CDU on Kindle HDX

[Xavier]

Hello to everyone !

Long follower of the forum, I'm waiting for my PSX copy to arrive.
In the meantime, I'm trying to imagine a efficient display combo assuming that most of the time I'm abroad for work with no possibility to bring much more HW with me than my 20" sim dedicated gamer laptop.

I was thinking of buying a small (<12") touch screen to emulate the CDU. From what I've read on the forum that should be pretty straight forward ?

However as I need to buy a Kindle color tablet (or equivalent) for other needs (namely doc storage and reading), I'm wondering if there could be a mean to use it for this task ? That is like a simple touch screen displaying the CDU run by my laptop, as FSX won't I guess run on the Kindle (or will it ?).

FYI here are the Kindle's Fire HDX specs from amazon :

Display   7" HDX touchscreen display, with 1920x1200 resolution at 323 ppi, 100% sRGB color accuracy, video playback up to 1080p, max brightness over 400 nits, Dynamic Image Contrast, reduced glare, and advanced polarizing filter

Wi-Fi Connectivity   Dual-band, dual-antenna Wi-Fi (MIMO+HT40) for faster streaming and fewer dropped connections than standard Wi-Fi. Supports public and private Wi-Fi networks or hotspots that use the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, or 802.11n standard with support for WEP, WPA and WPA2 security using password authentication; does not support connecting to ad-hoc (or peer-to-peer) Wi-Fi networks

Ports   USB 2.0 (micro-B connector) port for connection to a PC or Macintosh computer or to charge your device with the included power adapter

Content Formats Supported   Kindle (AZW), KF8, TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, Audible Enhanced format (AAX), DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, Dolby Digital (AC-3), Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3), non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, PCM/WAVE, OGG, WAV, M4V, MP4, AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1, HE-AACv2, MKV, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, HTML5, CSS3, 3GP, VP8 (WEBM)

What do you think ?
Thanks in advance for the help !

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

In brief, no, you cannot use your Kindle in any way.

Typically, these tablet devices do not run Java (there is no Java app) so you cannot run PSX on them directly.

What works, but would not help you, is to run a remote display app on the tablet. This would give you your MCDU but it would also exist on your main screen so that is not what you intend.

However getting the smallest of the small Windows notebooks below USD300 will give you sufficient horse power to run a PSX client and they are about the size and weight of a book. This gives you even more than just the MCDU, it also gives you the instructor panel. I have an Asus X200M and it does very well for this task.

Connecting the two machines may be possible via WiFi if your big box supports becoming an access point. Otherwise, you typically need a crossover Ethernet cable, or a small Ethernet switch.


Hoppie

[Xavier]

Hi Jeroen,

Thanks, that was precisely my question.
I had not realized how little touchscreen notebook were that cheap (compared to a tablet or simple touchscreen monitor that is) ; that's definitely the way I'll go. Might be able to have principal layout on the main laptop and a set of secondary interactive  layout (CDU, parts of overhead or CB panel...) isolated on the little one.

Thanks very much for the advice !

Xavier

[Ray_CYYZ]

Looking through the Apps store, there seem to be a few people who have written a CDU to drive various 7xx aircraft already, but no 747 flavors.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kmajor.fmc&hl=en

Sure would be a lot cheaper then buying a real external one.

[Phil Bunch]

Jeroen - your answer was very helpful to eliminate some key gaps in my understanding of how these options work (and don't yet work).

I sure wish there were some way to use tablets for various 747 tasks like CDU emulation for PSX/FSX.  

I see from Apple's App Store that there is an app "Virtual CDU 777" for Apple's iOS devices (that's what I have) and FSX.  I wonder if it would interface with the 747 FSX/PSX CDU?  At first glance, the 777 CDU looks like the 747 but I suspect it isn't the literally exact clone we'd need for PSX...

Apple sells a box (which I also have), the "Apple TV".  It uses wifi to mirror the iPad or other IOS devices onto one's HDTV, with one-click ease.  Anything that is shown on the iPad or iPhone or iPod Touch shows up on the HDTV.  Perhaps someone can think of a way to do something useful for PSX with this remote display option but at the moment I can't think of anything and plan to just use it for display of the PSX manual.  It really works well for that purpose, something I'll badly need very soon.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

The FSX add-ons won't do a thing, but it will be straightforward for any iOS developer to write a MCDU for PSX. All networked details are readily available. The market is there...


Hoppie

[Christian Adrigan]

Jeroen,

Asus has the T100 Transformer Notebook. It's very small and it could be a very nice CDU substitute.

Do you think this thing is able to run it's own instance of PSX (but not using it for windshield, PFD, ND etc, but only for displaying a huge CDU Screen plus the instructor page)?

The CPU should be sufficient (although there are more powerful variants with up to 2,4 GHz with TurboBoost, the linked one runs up to 1,8 GHz only).

But what about 2 GB of RAM?

http://geizhals.at/asus-transformer-book-t100ta-dk002h-32gb-90nb0451-m00810-a1011563.html

What do you think?

Thanks,
Chris

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

I think it would work perfectly fine. My old XP box has 2 Gb and runs like a charm.

[John Golin]

I have run it on a very old netbook with an Atom processor.  It was slow, but it ran.  For a CDU it would he fine

[Matt Sheil]

I just got out my old Fujitsu life book tablet 1.2ghz .99ram touchscreen
Updated software and loaded PSX
Runs nice albeit at about30FPS
I might use it as a mobile instructors panel
I can't believe it worked on it.

[David Palmer]

I might use it as a mobile instructors panel.

Is it WiFi capable?
I can just imagine the calamity it could remotely create.

[Matt Sheil]

I might use it as a mobile instructors panel.

Is it WiFi capable?
I can just imagine the calamity it could remotely create.

Yes sir  :twisted: