Initial Feedback from using the device

Thank you for creating such a cool altimeter! I can’t wait to jump it even after seeing others use the prototype and the new explorer model.

I have a few notes on my initial impressions from unboxing it and setting it up.

  • It was kinda odd to me that it didnt start up initially because the battery had no power. I plugged it in and it came on quick.

  • First time you turn it on it should go straight into wifi setup and search for networks. The first couple of times I pressed the search nothing happened

  • The initial login was confusing to me. There was a number there that I didnt know where it cam from but now I see its my id#. It’s a minor issue but maybe using the regular login would be better.

  • The keyboard needs some work. I know the device is still rough around the edges but my large fingers had issues with the keyboard. I finally used a pen kind of like a stylus.

  • The time is weird. It often goes to gmt time and I have seen pacific standard time( in california) and rarely Pacific daylight time. As a gps device I would think this would be pretty simple. The dropzone choice says gmt -8 but if you go into time settings it says +11.

  • I think the moon is sunset but even though I am not using 24 hour time it displays in 24 hour time.

  • It seems like there are some uninitialized variables on the stat screen. Highest jump, freefall time and last jump all have strange numbers. Other values like plane time have a dash since it hasnt calculated that yet.

  • It would be nice to have some feedback if its off and you plug it into charge. I’m not even sure it charged while off and plugged in while I was working. It’s very obvious while on that it is charging though.

  • As a programmer, the patching looked fine to me. A less informed person might get confused by the terminal screen and text flashing by. I would just expect the logo and installing updates.

  • As many others have pointed out setting base jump numbers and freefall time would be great.

These are just some picky things I noticed unboxing and setting it up. I used to work on video games as a programmer and we spent weeks on things like initial setup. So I get a little picky with some things. Thank you for making such a cool device though. I just started skydiving a year ago and was kinda shocked how we had amazing tech all over the place but the altimeters were not using anything remotely current.

4 Likes

Thanks so much for this in-depth feedback @kat00 :facepunch:

Will make sure these suggestions get through to the dev team, much appreciated!

There are bug fixes coming for things like the time, previous jump log and missing data variables.

Blue ones!