E-Paper Vario

Varduino variometers are paragliding and sailplane flight instruments featuring e-paper displays, which provide excellent outdoor visibility. They feature a GPS, an ultra-sensitive pressure sensor, an inertial measurement unit, an SD card and Bluetooth connectivity, which provide these variometers with all the necessary functions for successful thermal flying:

Super sensitive variometer
IGC tracklog recordings
Cross country navigation
iOS and Android connectivity
Voice notifications

Variometer sound in thermals

Using the configuration tool Varduino Manager, variometers are fully customizable, with a modern sound profile customization feature.

Project background

Our motivation was simply to put together an Arduino variometer with an e-paper display, which provides impressive visibility in bright sunlight during flights.

The original idea in 2017 was a pretty basic instrument, with a GPS chip, a pressure sensor and a display. After many iterations and successive improvements, the project led to a fully fledged GPS variometer, with high sensitivity and wireless connectivity, perfect for thermal or cross-country flights.

As these are Arduino-compatible devices, users willing to program their variometer themselves may request all technical details to do so. Based on ESP32, SAMD21 and SAMD51 microcontrollers, they also constitute great programming and teaching boards for beginner programmers. The project history and former development steps are still available on theformer website (in English).

The idea is to keep the instrument pricing as low as possible, while covering future hardware and software development costs.