Custom source for charts

[nikolzaksalpaus]

Hello!
I have a source of charts for all airports all around the world so to get the charts I go to a website and put an icao into the url. So for instance, it is something like https://cdn.example.com/charts/{ICAO}.pdf.
I would really love a feature so that users could enter their own chart sources in settings, and then access it from the efb.
I really appreciate your work.

[brian-mckeown]

H @nikolzaksalpaus ,
Thanks for the idea! Can you give me a specific example of a chart url or API service that you'd want to use? We can certainly look into expanding our charts service sources, but each source/service differs in the way they provide the charts, so we'd need to understand as much as possible about the service to build it into FlightDash.io.
The current service does have limitations outside of the US charts tbough, so we'd definitely love to hear what other chart services people are using outside of the US!
Thanks again.

[nikolzaksalpaus]

Hello and thanks for your reply!

Personally, I have this source https://cdn.flighthelperbot.com/EFHK.pdf which is basically an average source of outdated Jeppesen charts that can be found on Google.

However after thinking a bit more, I became not as sure about this idea as I was before because of two reasons: Jeppesen charts are not supposed to be free, and most of the Jeppesen charts I could find on Google are incredibly outdated.

So at the moment I'm thinking more about ChartFox to see whether they do their job well in flights. Putting their webpage into an iframe wont work so instead they have an API. ChartFox is also for example implemented into the AviTab plugin.

[brian-mckeown]

@nikolzaksalpaus - apologies for the delayed response. Yeah, Jeppesen charts would be great, but not free. Maybe some day in the future. Also, I did try finding more details on chartfox's API for FlightDash.io, but was unable to find it, and didn't hear back from their team when reaching out directly. Would be great to integrate with them directly. Currently, FlightDash.io charts are sourced from: https://www.aviationapi.com/

[nikolzaksalpaus]

Hello again!

I've got another idea of how custom charts could be implemented.

If a user has charts on their device locally, it would actually be possible to open them using iframe. It requires a local server running in order to receive the files from the storage.

In the example above I achieved to receive a chart in PDF format from storage using VS Code local server.

So the way the custom charts feature could be implemented is that users could install a program, which creates a local server and a folder, inside of which users can put their charts into.

Let me know what you think of this approach!