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-   -   Lifespan of an EFIS system? (https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=118406)

Kevin Horton 10-10-2014 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snowflake (Post 924070)
This is *exactly* why I think we should be leveraging the consumer market as much as possible. The screens on modern tablets make every EFIS on the market look like a 1980's video game. It's almost embarassing.

How does the brightness of the tablet screens compare to that of EFISs? My impression is that the EFIS screens are much brighter. How hard is it to add a brighter backlight to a consumer screen? Is this practical?

humptybump 10-10-2014 07:18 PM

Kevin, you've hit on one of those "market scale" issues. While it is possible to get a brighter screen, to do so at the resolutions of tablets and the PPI numbers they achieve you increase both cost and power requirements. The recent "fruit" phone was expected to have sapphire glass. People wondered why it didn't. It turns out the harder glass would have lowered light transmission. To compensate, the device would have needed to drive the display with more power. For the target market, it was not a worthy trade-off.

A search of "sunlight readable displays" yields resolutions common to our moder EFIS displays, not what consumers are demanding in their mobile devices.

jjhoneck 10-10-2014 07:36 PM

In 15 years, when our "panels" are projected on our eyes by GoogleGlass Version 23.4, this thread will look as quaint as a discussion of ice boxes. :D

That said, in the interim, I am VERY happy with my GRT Horizon HXr. :cool:

rwtalbot 10-11-2014 02:58 AM

Newer but not cheaper
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by scard (Post 923790)
What do you think the usable lifespan of your installed EFIS and it's associated system components is?

Scott, Like you I work in IT. I really doubt a lot of this hardware will last too long when compared to military/certified equipment. I fully expect replacement parts will be an issue inside 5-8 years as most are using consumer technology within. Quite a few EFIS manufacturers have come and gone already.

In contrast Garmin released the GNS 430 in 1998. That's 15 years of stability, support and service on those units. The units themselves are known for being reliable. I'd suggest that is as good as it gets and perhaps gives Garmin the edge if long-term supportability is a consideration in people's purchasing decisions.

All that said I don't think the lifespan of the EFIS is really the issue. Many (most?) owners are making regular upgrades as the technology improves. In 5 years I have done one upgrade already to my AFS unit. In that time we have had bigger screens, SV, charts, touch screens, the list goes on.

The EFIS has built in obsolescence as new tech and software features are released. Honestly, when all this is considered I doubt that EFIS screens are really cheaper than the gyro's they replaced. But I would never go back.

kamikaze 10-11-2014 06:31 AM

Well, one might wonder where the longevity of certified equipment comes from, and why the experimental avionics can't have it too.

Is it just the certification process and requirements, or is there something else? Also is the demand there for something that lasts that long in the experimental market, where upgrade paths are much easier?

How to build high-quality, long lasting avionics is known. You don't actually have to certify the product, but maybe develop it as if you were, just skip the FAA part of the process. I don't actually know how much of said processes the Dynons and AFS' of this world go through ... do they do DO-254 style environmental testing for example? even if only in part? How much would it cost if they did?

But then, do we really need a Dynon EFIS to last 20-30 years like our good old King radios and Garmin GNS'? Probably not, everyone will have upgraded to something better/newer long before then (in the experimental world).

So it only needs to last long enough until the next generation probably. And by all accounts this seems to be the case with existing products, plenty of D10's still around, right?

Of course over 30 years you may end up spending as much as you would've on a certified product that lasts that long, but you will have had incremental upgrades along the way and greater flexibility ... which is still a win!

Snowflake 10-11-2014 11:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kevin Horton (Post 924095)
How does the brightness of the tablet screens compare to that of EFISs? My impression is that the EFIS screens are much brighter. How hard is it to add a brighter backlight to a consumer screen? Is this practical?

Brightness is a good thing to bring up... Most tablets i've seen that have "auto" brightness turned on run a lot dimmer than the EFIS screens from Dynon/GRT. However, turning off "auto" and cranking the brightness to "full" does bring them pretty close. Battery life suffers, but that shouldn't be an issue when you have ship's power to run them from.

A bigger issue perhaps is that even with ship's power, and the best charger you can find, the 2A supply sometimes isn't enough to keep up with full brightness, full-time GPS, and full-time moving map processing. At least, my Nexus 7 seems to slowly draw the battery down over the course of a flight. Wouldn't be an issue on flights less than 4 hours long, by my estimate, but still worth considering.

Jordan1976 10-11-2014 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rwtalbot (Post 924150)
In contrast Garmin released the GNS 430 in 1998. That's 15 years of stability, support and service on those units. The units themselves are known for being reliable. I'd suggest that is as good as it gets and perhaps gives Garmin the edge if long-term supportability is a consideration in people's purchasing decisions.

While Garmin released the 430 in 1998, they discontinued it in 2006 when they upgraded to the 430W. This was not a drop in replacement. They then discontinued the 430W in 2011 when they released the GNS series of products. While you can still get support for most of these products, the Garmin service page says "The GNS 430 28V only is no longer able to be repaired." So it's not like the GNS series is an example of a product that went unchanged and sold for 15 years.

Not knocking them at all for that, since the GNS products were pretty revolutionary and clearly are good products. Just pointing out that it's not a great example of a product that has had complete stability for 15 years. Garmin has only been selling aviation GPS units for 20 years, and their support site is full of "no longer supported" products.

Along side that, Dynon has been shipping the D10A since 2004, so it's been for sale for more than 10 years. You can still get a new one, you can still get service, and we have no plans of discontinuing it. That's actually a two years longer than Garmin ever sold a specific model of the GNS products. Dynon's SkyView has been sold for 5 years now, so in just a few years it will beat the original 430 in sales timeframe. It was designed from day one to be a platform for a decade or more, with specific design choices made to allow us to avoid issues that will inevitably happen when parts go end of life, which has already happened multiple times, but has not prevented us from selling the exact same functionality. It in fact works a lot like some of the requests in this thread seem to call out- it's expandable by adding modules to the system, but the rest of the system and the screens don't need to be replaced to do so.

This isn't about experimental vs. certified. You can find companies in experimental aviation that give excellent long term support on their products and don't change platforms every few years

--Ian Jordan
Dynon Avionics

Jordan1976 10-11-2014 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kamikaze (Post 924169)
I don't actually know how much of said processes the Dynons and AFS' of this world go through ... do they do DO-254 style environmental testing for example? even if only in part?

I assume you mean DO-160 testing. DO-254 is a design process for "complex hardware" like CPLD's and FPGAs, a lot like DO-178 is for software. DO-160 is the environmental testing.

Dynon does do the vast majority of DO-160 testing on our products, and in fact has more stringent requirements than DO-160 in some areas as we've found that to be needed to be commercially viable in our market.

kamikaze 10-11-2014 02:48 PM

Yes sorry I meant 160 ...

Good to know ... I'd expect environmental "sturdiness" is a big component of long life ... if you're designed to withstand temperature, shock, vibration, humidity, etc... to those levels, you're likely to last a pretty long life ...


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