SkyDemon Mobile on Third Party Devices

We sell our own SkyDemon Mobile MD devices which are the perfect way to experience the SkyDemon Mobile platform. They are well tested and our devices are depended upon by pilots flying around Europe every day.

We also allow installation of SkyDemon Mobile on third-party Windows CE devices, with the caveat that we cannot officially support this configuration since such devices are often of very poor quality and are not really suitable for aviation navigation software. We have created this page to help get you started and a discussion forum so you can talk to other people running SkyDemon Mobile on third-party hardware.

Compatible Windows CE Devices Forum

Choosing a Device

Most people who purchase a device on which to run SkyDemon Mobile do so from eBay. There are hundreds of generic unbranded devices on sale, often delivered from the far east, with a wide variety of screen sizes, battery life, and other capabilities.

The most important things to look out for are that the device runs Windows CE, and has the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 or later installed. If these conditions are met, there's a great chance SkyDemon Mobile will run.

We strongly suggest talking with other people on our forum (linked above) before spending money on a device that may or may not work for you.

Screen Resolution and DPI

Many devices have high-DPI screens but do not report this fact to software running on the device. This can result in software like SkyDemon appearing to have very small buttons and text. We offer a means to partially work around this issue by including a file that tells SkyDemon the real properties of your screen. To generate this file, use the form below.

Screen Properties

When you have saved the file, simply transfer it to the same folder as skydemon.exe on your device. Next time SkyDemon starts you should see that buttons and text are a different size; the size we intended them to be.

Altitude Correction

The GPS chipsets in some devices do not perform correction from GPS ellipsoid altitude to altitude above local mean sea level. If this is the case you will notice both that the SkyDemon altimeter disagrees with your pressure altimeter, and that the background of the SkyDemon altimeter is red, indicating this problem.

SkyDemon has the facility to perform this altitude correction automatically, but you need to download an additional file. This file is linked below and must be saved within the SkyDemon Data folder on your device. After saving, the next time you start SkyDemon you should see that the altitude is now corrected.

Download Altitude Correction File

Onscreen Keyboard

Most devices have a Soft Input Panel (SIP) which is an onscreen keyboard. Many of these keyboards are inadequete and can be frustrating when the buttons are too small.

A contributor to our forum, Steve Lupton, has made available a package which can replace the built-in keyboard on many devices with his own keyboard, which has large, easy-to-use keys. This is an unsupported contribution and is not endorsed by SkyDemon. For more information, visit the forum thread dedicated to it.

Onscreen Keyboard Thread