[Brantel]

I have been wanting to work on building a remote AOA indicator for my legacy Dynon system to augment the on screen display (not very usable) and the progressive tone over the intercom.

Since the Dynon streams EFIS data over its RS232 port all the time and this stream includes the AOA info, the same rig I used for my Pmag monitor can be used to create a remote AOA indicator.

Vern has already done this and did sell these at one time but I think he has stopped production on them.

I plan to make the LED array out of red, yellow and green LED's and put them in a very small enclosure just big enough for the parts to fit in. This will then be mounted up on the glare shield right in the site line one uses when landing a TW RV. For normal flying, it will be so small that it will not be noticed.

To gather, buffer, parse and spit out signals based on the Dynon data stream is a challenge since Dynon uses 115,200 baud (most uControllers do not support this high baud rate) and they send out sentences at a rate of 64hz. That is 64 x 52 byte sentences a second!!! That is a ton of data over a standard RS232 port!

Anyway, here is a short video of this new device in action using a repeating loop of data I gathered out of my Dynon on my last flight. This data shows the same take off and landing 5 times in a row. For display purposes, I deleted the time up to rotation, most time flying around at low AOA and time after touchdown, for the most part all I am showing is the data where the AOA transitions from low to critical AOA. I am streaming data to the rig at the same rate the Dynon does. The system is not dropping any data, the video is in real time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RdfK98m-Bg

The uController I am using can drive up to 19 LED's while using its serial port for gathering data so I can add more LED's to make the display less jumpy. Heck if I wanted to move to multiplexing, this thing could have 100 segments (there are some cool LED bars out there). I can also play around with the transition points for each LED to expand the display in the critical zones and compress it in the less critical zones to make it more useful. It is a work in progress!!

 

[vlittle]

I have been wanting to work on building a remote AOA indicator for my Legacy Dynon system to augment the on screen display (not very usable) and the progressive tone over the intercom.

Since the Dynon streams EFIS data over its RS232 port all the time and this stream includes the AOA info, the same rig I used for my Pmag monitor can be used to create a remote AOA indicator.

Vern has already done this and did sell these at one time but I think he has stopped production on them.

I plan to make the LED array out of red, yellow and green LED's and put them in a very small enclosure just big enough for the parts to fit in. This will then be mounted up on the glare shield right in the site line one uses when landing a TW RV. For normal flying, it will be so small that it will not be noticed.

To gather, buffer, parse and spit out signals based on the Dynon data stream is a challenge since Dynon uses 115,200 baud (most uControllers do not support this high baud rate) and they send out sentences at a rate of 64hz. That is 64 x 52 byte sentences a second!!! That is a ton of data over a standard RS232 port!

Anyway, here is a short video of this new device in action using a repeating loop of data I gathered out of my Dynon on my last flight. This data shows the same take off and landing 5 times in a row. For display purposes, I deleted the time up to rotation, most time flying around at low AOA and time after touchdown, for the most part all I am showing is the data where the AOA transitions from low to critical AOA. I am streaming data to the rig at the same rate the Dynon does. The system is not dropping any data, the video is in real time...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RdfK98m-Bg

The uController I am using can drive up to 19 LED's while using its serial port for gathering data so I can add more LED's to make the display less jumpy. Heck if I wanted to move to multiplexing, this thing could have 100 segments (there are some cool LED bars out there). I can also play around with the transition points for each LED to expand the display in the critical zones and compress it in the less critical zones to make it more useful. It is a work in progress!!

Have fun with this. In order to keep up with the data stream, you'll need to run interrupts and implement a software FIFO system. Once you have interrupts, you can have a real time clock to do things like dim the lamps (based on photoresistor) and blink them (as you have done).

Maybe I should put my (discontinued) design into the public domain for all of the experimenters out there. Of course, I would need a triple-down promise that I would never get any questions on the firmware.

V

 

[Brantel]

Vern,

Already using interrupts and a buffer. This data is too fast otherwise....I can drive it to 1.5 times the Dynon speed and not drop a single bit. This is overkill though, the AOA indication does not need to be that fast....

It is easy to dim with this controller since I can make all the outputs active low and tie all the LEDs to one of the analog outputs for power. It even has built in PWM outputs if one wanted to use em.

 

[MJarreau]

Toys...

Already using interrupts and a buffer. This data is too fast otherwise....I can drive it to 1.5 times the Dynon speed and not drop a single bit. This is overkill though, the AOA indication does not need to be that fast....

It is easy to dim with this controller since I can make all the outputs active low and tie all the LEDs to one of the analog outputs for power. It even has built in PWM outputs if one wanted to use em.

Don't ya just love 'em?!