Flarm Radar

Flarm is a collision-warning system for general aviation and recreational flying. It is an alternative to the commercial airliners’ expensive ACAS/TCAS system. It is however important to understand that Flarm-like devices were not designed to protect you from other flying objects. They are useful for situation awareness of other Flarm devices in vicinity. There is lots of other traffic and obstacles that are not covered by Flarm therefore be aware that the most important task in the cockpit is to keep a good overview of the traffic around your glider at all times.

SeeYou Mobile is able to read the output from Flarm devices and present a radar-like system which displays other Flarms with correct visibility/privacy settings in vicinity. Flarms that have privacy enabled are hidden. The screen may look like this:

Each circle represents 1 km distance from the other Flarm device. By default, those Flarms which are less than 100 meters above or below your current altitude are marked red, others are black. Each Flarm is presented by a glider symbol, its recent track and a group of numbers for altitude and average vario (20s average). If a friendly name was added for a particular Flarm, then this name appears in the label as well. Colors, visibility of the radar, track lenghts and some other settings are customizable through Settings > Flarm. 

At zoom levels greater than 10km (by default) the radar circles around the glider disappear. New circles appear in the upper right corner of your screen. This is a Flarm Radar Symbol which displays the three concentric circles in the upper right corner of your screen (by default, but you can move it around). They still represent 1km distance each regardless of the chosen Zoom level and units.

You may tap anywhere on the screen and select the “Flarm” tab to see a list of all Flarm devices that are being received at the moment:

In the example screenshot three Flarm devices are visible. By default they are sorted on distance from the tap on the screen. If you tap on a specific aircraft that aircraft will be the first on the list. First item in the screenshot is “DD8D07”. This code is the Flarm identification number and thus not very useful or intuitive. This is why you may select a device and click Edit to rename a specific Flarm to give it a readable name.

You may also select a device and then Goto. This way you start navigating towards the selected Flarm device for as long as it is within range. When it goes out of range, the aircraft symbol for that device will start blinking for a default period of 120 seconds. After that the target becomes blank and the device is removed from the maps and lists.

The keyboard for entering the Flarm friendly name and other information is large enough to be used in flight by fingers:

Close all dialogs with OK and you will see an additional line in the Flarm-Radar screen which will report Flarm’s friendly name in addition to altitude and vario (see the first screenshot for Friend and Enemy flarms). Additionally when you exit SeeYou Mobile these friendly names will be stored on your PDA for the future. It is a simple text file, so feel free to share it with friends.

Further customization is possible through Settings > Flarm dialog: