Meet Earl... The Next Gen GPS?

if you want to see the quality of work coming out of onyx international, just have a look here http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=220

They are shipping a VERY high number of blemished units & still others keep having to resort to hacks to make their unit work as intended.

Link to original post.

I know someone who put up cash on the kickstarter. His attitude is "if I get one, it could be an interesting piece of gear. It could be a POS. Whatever, it was a crap shoot, and I have wasted more money on poorer propositions".

He has the right attitude.

there was a 3 second pitch for the earl on YouTube yesterday. it showed ( as much as you can tell in 3 seconds) the earl turned on.
can't find it now.

I am an original backer and like others If it happens great if not I'll be bummed but no big deal...call it a bad investment.....I have lost more money on stupider endeavors.

Having gone through a dozen Garmins, I'd have to agree.

you kmow, yesterday I was really wanting to put one of these under the tree for my kids to explore with.

but then I woke up and loaded some geo caches (with locus pro) on their tablet instead.

merry christmas earl, wherever you are.

Thought about Earl today and went to the site.

The main page just says "loading" and never loads for me.

No new updates since October, and nothing new in the Forums.

Didn't see this coming !!!.


Live life,be yourself !!!!.

The website works for me, I been disillusioned for a while.... I don't think it was a scam but clearly he is in way over his head.

I've given up on Earl and besides the last gimmick I was in on still waiting on from the Middle East.

Just a lurker but interested in the product. I noticed an update from Earl site dated 01/27/15.

http://www.meetearl.com/updates/

I am also not sure if this is new but posted on Youtube and publish date is 01/21/15. From looking at the Youtube, you figure for the time that he started the video and jumped all over the place, he actually could have done a well detailed feature by feature overview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktw-baN-sTI&feature=youtu.be


Jon

I thought the video was ok,good to see something albeit not a finished product..


Live life,be yourself !!!!.

Got excited when I saw the length of the video and a powered on, working unit. then watched some of it and realized it's way , way, wayyyyy off.

The interface looks like it's going to be a little less than frustrating than manipulating base camp, on a touch screen, with a rope, from thirty feet away. So that's a good sign.

They shouldn't have made it an Android device. They should have used a custom Linux kernel, and made it a dedicated device. It would run much faster than using a general purpose OS like Android.

Then make a custom application designed for use with eInk, and make up an SDK for accessory expansion.

It also would've been nice if they used the colour eInk screen.

Really, I probably would have built quite a different device.

Pretty sure 3 or 4 years ago when they "designed" this bit of vapor ware, color eInk didn't exist.

So, I just came across the Earl Backcountry Survival Tablet, and it piqued my interest. It's an android tablet with a 6" e-ink screen (like the Kindle readers), GPS, walkie-talkie, radio, messaging, bluetooth, and solar charging. It is only being crowdfunded right now, but this looks like a device to keep an eye on.

Here's a link to their site: http://www.meetearl.com/

What are your all's thoughts on this?

read the forum comments, its not happening anytime soon. there's a thread about it on adv already

Thanks. I had just found out about it and the advrider search didn't find anything about it when I tried earlier. I found the adv thread through google though.

Merged.

Looks like Earl is nowhere near production.

Here's the first paragraph of their latest update.

End of 2015 bump.

Go buy an android or apple product, slip it in a rugged case, and enjoy. This thing isn't going to happen anytime in the next minute, or 525,600 minutes.

:)