R

Rainier Lamers

Well Known Member
We will be showing off our new XTreme EFIS system at Oshkosh this year so if you are interested in a very affordable solution, give us a visit !

XTreme.jpg


This unit can act as a PFD (as shown on the image), engine monitor (with external RDAC like our big EFIS systems) and it even has a built in 65 channel GPS receiver and thus can act as your GPS navigator as well with SD card for data.
It uses a 4.2" sunlight viewable, wide screen, wide viewing angle, high resolution LCD. The unit is easy to mount in a standard 3.5" instrument hole with a very low mounting depth requirement and no need for brackets. While the instrument is wider than a normal 3.1/8" instrument, offset location of the rear part allows several options to install as replacement/addition in standard 6-pack panels.
As super low cost solution for VFR applications it can be used without AHRS.

We don't have the final prices yet - but you can be sure that it will be XTremly competitive with the lowest cost competitor out there.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
I missed going to Oshkosh the last two year's. I can't wait to see all the new goodies that are available now, or are in development! Looks like a nice unit Rainier.
 
David Clifford said:
I missed going to Oshkosh the last two year's. I can't wait to see all the new goodies that are available now, or are in development! Looks like a nice unit Rainier.
Click to expand...

Nice it is indeed. It is also XTremely flexible (sorry about the word play - can't help it) as it can run multiple applications just as you would on a PC - loaded from SD card. So, today it's an EFIS - tomorrow ? Who knows...

Ok, the cat is out of the bag - but there seems to be another kitty in there. I'll release it next week...

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
rjtjrt said:
Ranier
Is it pitot or GPS or both aided?
When available?
John
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As I have pointed out on numerous occasions - we do not believe in aiding to make an AHRS work if there is another way (yes, there is and no, I'm not telling). An AHRS should work well without any form of aiding (and to TSO requirements) and if a good reliable aiding source(s) is/are available, this may be used (but with great care).

In additon we also do not believe in internal AHRS units as sometimes the location of the panel is not in the best interests of the AHRS system. For this reason the AHRS is external which also gives you the option of using low (cheap) or high grade (not so cheap) systems to suit your mission. It also allows you to operate a VFR panel without AHRS at a dramatically reduced price if that suits your operations (or for example two panels with one AHRS or two AHRS with one panel and so forth - flexibility is what we want).

As an asside there have been long and furious discussions here at MGL to decide if we should put the AHRS in the box or not. The external AHRS in the end won the vote - it just had too many things going for it.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
The hits just keep coming!

Rainier, you're well on your way to filling up my entire panel! I had wondered what I was going to do for backup instruments, but I wonder no longer.

For redundancy, would you advise a backup SP2/SP4 combo, or do you find the reliability of the SP2/SP4 to be so rock solid that redundant ones are, uh, redundant?
 
Im glad I have not put any dollars down yet on an Efis system, this one looks great. Will it have AoA ?
 
Just a long shot, but what the heck. If this thing is easily programmable/adaptable would it be possible to use it as an extra display for say a GRT for the back seat of an -8?
 
John Courte said:
Rainier, you're well on your way to filling up my entire panel! I had wondered what I was going to do for backup instruments, but I wonder no longer.

For redundancy, would you advise a backup SP2/SP4 combo, or do you find the reliability of the SP2/SP4 to be so rock solid that redundant ones are, uh, redundant?
Click to expand...

We do have occasional failures of a gyro in the SP-4. This usualy happens if the unit is quite new (despite our 48 hour "burn in"). This seems to be related to "infant" mortality as it is known, we even get a certain percentage of gyros straight from the manufacturer that are "dead on arrival".
I'd say once the system has been in operation for a while it is indeed pretty solid. I have an SP-4 in my plane that is probably the oldest one around and it is just fine. Even my old SP-3 (predecessor to the SP-4) is still doing it's thing.

The one thing about redundancy for an AHRS is that two is not good enough unless one fails "dead". Mostly if a gyro fails it starts "drifting" leading to an incorrect horizon - if that is a big error it's usualy obvious but if it is small then which AHRS are you going to believe ? This is why airliners typically have three AHRS units.

So, the answer to your question is that there is no straight answer. You decide after weighing up your needs...

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
RV8RIVETER said:
Just a long shot, but what the heck. If this thing is easily programmable/adaptable would it be possible to use it as an extra display for say a GRT for the back seat of an -8?
Click to expand...

Well, this one is different to our other EFIS units in that you can't change the screens and there is not a lot you can setup. We did this on purpose to make it easier for the average aircraft factory to install (aircraft factories are mostly staffed by people who don't want to have to do anything - they need "plug and play").

But it is also different in other ways - it can easily run multiple applications loaded from SD card (once a new application is loaded it stays in the unit until changed again).
This unit is written in "C" (unlike our other EFIS systems) so it makes it quite possible for other programmers to use the hardware to do whatever they want. We are thinking of making that easy by providing a basic application (Like the famous "Hello World") so all the hardware interface layer, display driving and stuff like that is taken care of and the third party programmer can then concentrate on what he wants the unit to do. In part this is due to non-aviation related applications but what the heck - I wanted to have something resembling open source for a long time so this one may just be the ticket. (our big EFIS systems just are not suitable for this).
The "Hello World" will probably be done in GNU C (ARM) so the development environment is free and easy to get.

To answer your question - yes, absolutely. You would just need the XTreme hardware, no AHRS or anything else (so that is really cheap) - and then write a program to take in whatever data you can get your hands on from another EFIS and display that. Who knows where that could go...

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
Jamie Aust said:
Im glad I have not put any dollars down yet on an Efis system, this one looks great. Will it have AoA ?
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Yes.
But it is not built in.
We are preparing a low cost external little box for this. The reason is that we need to make the XTreme price as low as it will go and in our experience very few end up using the AOA sensor built in to our other EFIS systems so that is wasted money.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
Say What?

Ok, I tried to find out what a "168" is by going on the MGL website in South Africa, but no joy.:(

Also didn't find a "search" function on the website?:confused:

So, what's a 168??? (I bet I'm not the only one wondering!):rolleyes:
 
New CPU board

PCHunt said:
Ok, I tried to find out what a "168" is by going on the MGL website in South Africa, but no joy.:(

Also didn't find a "search" function on the website?:confused:

So, what's a 168??? (I bet I'm not the only one wondering!):rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Found that on the Stratomaster user's group. Sounds like a very nice and powerful new engine for MGL's EFISes.
 
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PCHunt said:
Ok, I tried to find out what a "168" is by going on the MGL website in South Africa, but no joy.:(

Also didn't find a "search" function on the website?:confused:

So, what's a 168??? (I bet I'm not the only one wondering!):rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It's actually the PCB number for our new EFIS processor card.
It joins the MGL126 (Enigma) and MGL152(Odyssey,Voyager).
They are all plug and play compatible but the MGL168 is unfortunately too big to fit the Enigma hardware so it will be used in the Explorer EFIS which is now in active development (to get the Enigma screen size but high resolution and Odyssey functionality).

The new processor card runs a main processor at twice the speed of the MGL152 (but that is not hugely relevant) and adds a dedicated graphics processor (GPU). This means that drawing is no longer performed by the main processor but by a dedicated piece of hardware which can do such nice things as texture mapping, transparencies and all the typical drawing tasks that are normally so time consuming for a processor.
It also is able to provide both VGA compatible video output (compatible with any computer monitor) as well as four video inputs - real, high quality uncompressed video, not USB. It is also able to take in s-video for even higher resolution and video quality but it does not seem that there are a lot of small video cameras that support this (no matter, normal video is just fine).

Anyway, the MGL168 is working (we'll be sending a couple to Osh) and we are now doing a few screen designs to show off what it can do (yes, you can still make up your own screens, just as before).
Should rig up a camera and take a couple of pics later this week (I promise I will post them here...)

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
loopfuzz said:
Rainier, I have written down your going to be at Hangar B booth 2139. Is that correct?

Christopher.
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Not myself this year I am afraid.
But my trusty sidekick Nicol will be in my place - he is heavily involved in our many developments so he's a good guy to talk to...

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
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