Whats up nerds! I’m heading into the aviation industry and I’m curious to know if any other pilots or A+P mechanics have used the framework laptop. If so, what have you found particularly useful about it for your line of work?
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I am an ATP level pilot with multiple type ratings. Worked in a wide range of segments of the industry.
So yes, pilots use FWL … 13 in my case.
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Not an aviation nerd but I found this a while ago, which you may be interested in.
Radiation-Tolerant Crew Laptop
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As general use devices they work great and similar to the airline industry it is highly upgradable and has a long service life of expanded capabilities from the base design.
If talking about an embedded system like for avionics they are not rated this way/ruggedized natively by Framework. There have been a number of projects that have used the main board and other components in portable devices designed for rougher service than your everyday portable computer. The biggest benefit would be the sheer performance gain and low cost of just the main board compared to the embedded systems commonly offered in the electronics industry for more ruggedized work.
It would be a great way to introduce some faster and more modern hardware into these environments, additional testing and trials would need to be done individually to test the application for suitability. Only a handful of companies make devices like this partly due to the high cost of testing and proving durability. It would be equally well suited in the Naval industry as well since they have similar requirements for reliability though sometimes not as stringent in some areas.
It always makes me think about use cases and what happens if the computer stops working unexpectedly:
Cars: shuts off, vehicle comes to a stop, low risk of catastrophy.
Ships: shuts off, stops moving, but unlike a car stopped on the road at the mercy of the state of water, not inherently deadly but could cause some major damage to ship or others (like a bridge!)
Airplanes: shuts off, no more propulsion but there is always backup controls, hopefully enough altitude and room to find a safe place to put it down, not quite the most dangerous spot to be in but not too far off from space travel risks, at least it is on the home planet! Almost guaranteed to make a news story regardless of the outcome.
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That’s interesting! I wonder if it will make it out of the development zone and into space. Welp, here to hoping FW16 high.