No Man's land between Dynon, Ray Allen, VPX and Infinity Stick Grips?

[claycookiemonster]

Wiring the Ray Allen pitch and roll trim servos, plus Dynon A/P servos into a plane with VPX Pro and Infinity stick grips.

Each of these entities has their own system, and they are all amazing. But on the periphery of each is kind of a gray area where they reach towards each other, but don't really mesh. At least to my old school, analog, Red and White RCA plug understanding.

The VPX people are eager to run the entire world, and they have pins waiting to run the entire Ray Allen universe. Cool.
VPX will also send power to Dynon A/P servos, though they don't get into A/P actuation.
Dynon wants to access the Ray Allen servos to make trim part of the Dynon A/P universe.
The Infinity Stick grips are ready to send trim signals to Ray Allen, and disconnect the Dynon A/P servos.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to confront this forest of wires and pins. I'm having a very nice email exchange with Dynon support now. But I know where the world's brain trust lives, so I thought I'd bring this here.

Can someone provide me an overview of how all these systems will integrate in the end?

 

[Carl Froehlich]

I have integrated these components, minus the VPX. PM me to discuss if you like.

Carl

 

[Radomir]

I have all of that equipment in my plane.. auto-trim is not functional most likely as it was not wired for that. Everything else is working just fine.. I think one day when I get bored I may dig into this and make auto-trim work (note: I did not build this plane, so did not do any of this wiring..but I am sure this is all possible)

 

[riseric]

I used VPX to power everything except the trim (and all EFII electrics of course)
Dynon (edit, thanks Carl) SV-AP-PANEL powers and controls the trim servo, enabling the Auto-trim.

 

[RV8JD]

Dynon AP powers and controls the trim servo, enabling the Auto-trim.

As long as one is using the SkyView Autopilot Control Panel (SV-AP-PANEL). Some folks don't and operate the AP through the SkyView EFIS instead.

 

[gear1]

Wiring for Infinity and VPX

Claycookiemonster,

PM sent. I have a spreadsheet detailing the connections you are interested in.

Let me know if you are interested.

 

[bruceh]

I have my trim wired up to the VP-X and do NOT have the Dynon AP-PANEL unit.
I am planning on adding the Dynon AP-PANEL unit. There are 2 ways to use this unit. The first is to just connect up the Skyview Network. This makes the buttons on the unit drive the Autopilot features just like you can do manually with the bottom menu buttons on the EFIS under the Advanced AP setting. Trim is still handled manually by the VP-X. This is probably how I will use the AP-PANEL - no auto trim. The Dynon AP will still annunciate to trim up/down if the AP servos are holding too much pressure on the controls.
The second way is to add the power/ground and trim servo wires to the AP-PANEL, by moving the stick wires over from the VP-X, and then it will be able to do the auto trim.

The main issue is that the two systems cannot be wired up at the same time. Pick the one you want to control the servos.
There are also wiring differences between the Dynon AP-PANEL and the VP-X involving how the pilot/co-pilot switches are prioritized/shared/separated. Both also use different values for runaway trim detection/override.

 

[Flying Canuck]

I have VP-X Sport, Dynon HDX with A/P panel, and Torston grips with trim control. Trim control is wired the A/P panel, flap control and position sensors are on the VP-X and trim position is on the SV-EMS module.

There is a failure mode to be aware of with this, there was a recent service bulletin for the AP panel. With the panel removed, you have no trim control.

 

[PhatRV]

I don't have the VPX

I wire the trim servo via the Ray Allen relay circuit but I am planning to wire it to the Dynon AP circuit in the future

The dynon AP servo power is in the same power circuit as the trim servo.

The servo power circuit is protected by fuse and it is activated by a toggle switch. In the case of a run away trim or a run away AP servos, I can flip the switch off and turn off power to all servos.

 

[claycookiemonster]

Making progress

OP here. The consensus seems to be to keep trim and A/P together on the Dynon system, and leave flaps to VPX. We're going that way.

Question about wiring the Ray Allen servos. They have 5 wires each. Two are white or white/gray and they control the direction of travel. The remainder are Blue or White/Blue, Green or White/Green and Orange or White/Orange. There is a conflict between the way the VPX describes the wires and the Dynon manual. Ray Allen is not very helpful here, trusting you to simply match colors.

What do you folks know about Blue, Orange and Green? Someone is power, someone is ground and someone is position. Who is who?

 

[Carl Froehlich]

Question about wiring the Ray Allen servos. They have 5 wires each. Two are white or white/gray and they control the direction of travel. The remainder are Blue or White/Blue, Green or White/Green and Orange or White/Orange. There is a conflict between the way the VPX describes the wires and the Dynon manual. Ray Allen is not very helpful here, trusting you to simply match colors.

What do you folks know about Blue, Orange and Green? Someone is power, someone is ground and someone is position. Who is who?

See pages 7-68 and 7-69 of the SkyView install manual.

Carl

 

[Lkitson]

OP here. The consensus seems to be to keep trim and A/P together on the Dynon system, and leave flaps to VPX. We're going that way.

Question about wiring the Ray Allen servos. They have 5 wires each. Two are white or white/gray and they control the direction of travel. The remainder are Blue or White/Blue, Green or White/Green and Orange or White/Orange. There is a conflict between the way the VPX describes the wires and the Dynon manual. Ray Allen is not very helpful here, trusting you to simply match colors.

What do you folks know about Blue, Orange and Green? Someone is power, someone is ground and someone is position. Who is who?

I just looked at the wiring diagram for my 8 (with Dynon/VXP/infinity grips). I have both orange wires from the trim servos going to the auxiliary 5 volt DC Output (pin 18) on the SV-EMS Engine monitor. The green wire on the roll trim servo goes to the GP input 6 (pin 10) on the SV-EMS and the blue wire to the ground (pin16) on the SV-EMS. For the pitch trim the green goes to GP input 1 (pin 4) on the SV-EMS and the blue goes to the ground pin 3 on the SV-EMS. The trim works great both manual and autotrim. This is how I wired mine but you can use different pins if the ones I used aren't available. The Skyview installation manual lists which pins you can use.

I can send you a copy of the wiring diagram I put together if you're interested.

 

[airguy]

OP here. The consensus seems to be to keep trim and A/P together on the Dynon system, and leave flaps to VPX. We're going that way.

Question about wiring the Ray Allen servos. They have 5 wires each. Two are white or white/gray and they control the direction of travel. The remainder are Blue or White/Blue, Green or White/Green and Orange or White/Orange. There is a conflict between the way the VPX describes the wires and the Dynon manual. Ray Allen is not very helpful here, trusting you to simply match colors.

What do you folks know about Blue, Orange and Green? Someone is power, someone is ground and someone is position. Who is who?

"Trim and Flaps position" section of the EMS installation section from the Dynon install manual. Page 7-69 of the AO revision manual available for free on the Dynon website.

White/Blue is ground, White/Orange is +5V power (available on Dynon EMS), White/Green is the potentiometer signal to your EMS input pin for position display on the screen.

The two white wires are simply power for the trim motor itself and can be run either direction.

 

[claycookiemonster]

Thanks

My confusion stems from comparing the Dynon manual and page you are referring to (which I have) with the VPX manual page 38 (revision G4) which says the Ray Allen Blue or White/Blue is the 2.5v reference voltage, the Orange or White/Orange is Ground and the Green or White/Green is position feedback.

Hence, my confusion.

Since I'm giving the Trim over to Dynon to work in concert with the A/P, I was inclined to follow Dynon's instructions, but the Ray Allen servo is what it is regardless of who's running it. Ray Allen doesn't really address any of this, they just say match colors.

 

[airguy]

What is common?

White/green is common. In both scenarios this is the feedback for trim position. That means that ground/power are ambiguous. (for reference, +2.5V and and +5 volts don't really matter [and for that matter, positive/negative don't matter] it's positive (negative) voltage versus ground, that's really all that matters)

Hey - what else is ambiguous?

The main power in/out for the potentiometer AS WELL AS the motor. The trim direction is reversible. Thus... a hint...

Trim position is nothing more than a variable resistor. You have power in on one wire, ground on another. The signal comes from a point somewhere in between that moves depending on the position (which end is it closest to?) of the device. That signal is reversible during the calibration routine in the Dynon screen. Due to the way the calibration routine works, it doesn't matter if the positive voltage is +2.5V, or +5V, or +17 volts - the calibration routine just sees a pattern and "recognizes" it. During the calibration routine it asks you for full "down" (which it calls X) and full "up" (which it calls Y) and determines if x-y= (negative or positive). The polarity of power/ground on the two inputs of the potentiometer do not matter, since the calibration routine figures out "up" versus "down" depending on the way you run the routine.