How long until glass panels cost $5 bucks?

[jesse]

TWhat I demonstrated yesterday is that we are on the verge of having truly usable, Aspen-like modular glass cockpit technology -- again, all on cheap tablets.

This is Star Trek stuff, guys. Just a few years ago it only existed in Gene Roddenberry's fertile imagination!

Probably not in the certified world and in the experimental world I'd rather have someone build hardware built for my panel versus an iPad.

Like I said before Jay -- this stuff did exist a few years ago -- the iPad was released early 2010 and these apps existed then as well. They're no better now two years later. Why are they no better after two years? Because the hardware isn't designed for it.

 

[MAKG1]

No, it's not.

You're fooling yourself.

Those of us who "see a pile of poop" instead of the unicorn (not a pony) actually work in "reliable" systems and know how the sausage is made.

A tablet might (but probably won't) replace the displays. It will not replace the sensors, networks, mounting systems, and system testing. Add all those in, and you get a five figure installation even using your tablet.

 

[Velocity173]

This just goes to show you that there is always someone who sees the pile of poop, instead of the pony.

Gentlemen, we are flying spam cans with satellite navigation, ADS-B uplinked weather and traffic, moving geo-referenced sectionals, and the ability to find the cheapest avgas -- all on a tablet.

What I demonstrated yesterday is that we are on the verge of having truly usable, Aspen-like modular glass cockpit technology -- again, all on cheap tablets.

This is Star Trek stuff, guys. Just a few years ago it only existed in Gene Roddenberry's fertile imagination!

We live in amazing times. Flow with it!

Sent from my Nexus 7

The problem is all this technology you are talking about isn't legal. It's not certified therefore I can't use it as a primary display. There is no way the FAA is going to allow us to use an iPad synthetic vision to replace our existing crappy steam gauges. So basically it's only use is for emergencies. Believe me I'm all about breaking the red tape barrier and giving us more freedom in instrument/avionics choices.

Right now I'm sitting in an avionics shop getting our helicopter worked on. They have handouts for the Aspen EFD 1000. You would spend about 8 grand to get this installed. That's crazy. That's also considered cheap by EFIS standards. These prices must come down for a typical GA pilot to buy. If not, they'll just go the cell phone iPad route.

 

[John Baker]

No, it's not.

You're fooling yourself.

Those of us who "see a pile of poop" instead of the unicorn (not a pony) actually work in "reliable" systems and know how the sausage is made.

A tablet might (but probably won't) replace the displays. It will not replace the sensors, networks, mounting systems, and system testing. Add all those in, and you get a five figure installation even using your tablet.

In our never ending effort to make a dangerous dalliance not dangerous, we are turning what could be a booming industry into a non existent, except for the very wealthy, industry.

As it is now, it will not be too long before even government employees, with their guaranteed incomes, will not be able to afford to own and operate airoplanes.

The sad truth of the matter is that there is not one single government regulation that can not be justified somehow. The regulations and costs will continue to pile on to GA, even with such cost saving information as Jay has provided.

The pile of poop people are the reason GA, as an industry, is being regulated out of existence.

-John

 

[TMetzinger]

Jay's point about how rapidly the tech is advancing is correct.

Keep in mind, the solid-state AHRS in the G1000 is several orders of magnitude cheaper than anything that came before it - that's why it was possible to build it in the first place.

We should be able to expect more capability at decreasing prices until we hit the point where the equipment is cheap but the integration/certification costs (to ensure it's worthy of betting your life on) are the majority of the price. We may be there now, or close to it.

 

[Ghery]

Jay's point about how rapidly the tech is advancing is correct.

Keep in mind, the solid-state AHRS in the G1000 is several orders of magnitude cheaper than anything that came before it - that's why it was possible to build it in the first place.

We should be able to expect more capability at decreasing prices until we hit the point where the equipment is cheap but the integration/certification costs (to ensure it's worthy of betting your life on) are the majority of the price. We may be there now, or close to it.

You got it there. Jay isn't say "go fly in the clag with a Nexus 7". He's pointing out where the technology seems to be heading. Toys that give us incredible capabilities are coming down in cost as the technology advances. Heck, just compare the capabilities you have in a /G aircraft vs. a /U aircraft today. And I can hop from one to the other in our club any day, so the comparison is easy to make. Now, think ahead a few years as the capabilities in an iPad or Nexus 7 or whatever are integrated into avionics that you can use in a certificated aircraft. You still have to fly the plane, but a bunch of that other stuff just keeps getting easier and easier to deal with. That's the whole point of this thread.

 

[MAKG1]

The pile of poop people are the reason GA, as an industry, is being regulated out of existence.

-John

Nope. The main reason for decline in GA is cost of operation, not avionics and not regulation. Make it a total free-for-all, and it will still decline with $6+ avgas.

And the regulation is unfortunately necessary, given the number of folks who put a pile of poop in their aircraft and think it's actual information. If you only affected yourself, you could go off and do stupid things to your heart's content. But that's not the nature of aviation. The guy you run into while fiddling with pretty tablets might not agree with your choices.

Just because something looks like an AI doesn't mean it is. Speaking as a systems engineer, you use the correct tool for the job. When you drive nails with a screwdriver, the results aren't very good.

Tim is right. Particularly about the part where certification and integration costs are starting to dominate. Aspen has done some very interesting things with their retrofits, attempting to keep that to a minimum. But they have obviously hit a wall of physics -- their systems tend to run hot, and the displays are quite small because of the form factors they have limited themselves to. But if you change that, you raise the cost of retrofit due extensive panel modifications. So, yes, that $8000 figure for a single Evolution retrofit seems to be the minimum. I wouldn't expect it to go down unless the cost of labor does.

And if you've ever used an Evolution, you know what their interface limitations are. They are not G1000s. They are quite useful, but require constant change in focus between near and far. Those displays aren't nearly as large as they appear on the literature. A single display (most common) is the size of two steam gauges in the six-pack.

 

[docmirror]

If you read that a bit more carefully, the iPad was a chart.

But, but, but the iPad could have ASPLODED!. It could have had a BSOD failure, it could have inverted the colors, it could have lost it's BATTERY, it could have been dropped and crack the screen, it could have turned both pilots into ZOMBIES!

Gahh!!! The technology is killing us! Gahhhhhh! Black helicopters, death rays, Gahhhh!!

 

[hindsight2020]

I've flown Dynon products in the clag in experimental and used it to backup the mechanical gyros in the clag in certified cans. The Dynon put the wonky gyros to shame. when exactly was the dynon instrument supposed to inherently fail me? I just want to understand what's the hardware difference between an Aspen and a Dynon suite. Seriously.

If there isn't any technological difference between the two, then we're talking about legalese, and that's an argument I don't buy for not scud running the regs. If the science is there, use it. I find solid state technology much more reliable than mechanical gyros. You dang skippy Im going to use it to the max extent possible, guy who doesn't agree with my choices be damned. This attitude doesn't have to be so prevalent if they would just apply some common sense and streamline the certification process for non-commercial operations of an aircraft...

 

[Gubbins]

It is not just the hardware and technology. It is the operating system and the software too. Consumer products such as the iPad and Nexus don't have particularly stable operating systems for running mission critical applications. And then the quality control on some of these applications may not be quite there. You don't want to be in a critical situation where something crashes and you have to reboot. "Oh so sorry, you're on an approach? Please wait a minute while I restart..."

Those of you who are involved in software development know that it is easy to develop applications that are 80% there very quickly. It takes almost as long to get to 95% and then probably 2 - 3 times to get to 100%. I work in the FDA regulated business which is similar to the FAA in terms of quality controls and red tape, and it is there for a reason.

Having said that I am a HUGE fan of these devices and these applications and they will continue to improve and I will continue to use them. My iPad and foreflight goes with me on every flight.

 

[richas]

I am putting an iPad mini in my PA-22/20 Pacer. It will mount on the panel. I use it for running Foreflight.

I plan on buying one of these artificial horizon apps for emergency use only.

My airplane has no (zero) gyros save an electric turn coordinator with noisy bearings......



Rich

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

I am putting an iPad mini in my PA-22/20 Pacer. It will mount on the panel. I use it for running Foreflight.

I plan on buying one of these artificial horizon apps for emergency use only.

My airplane has no (zero) gyros save an electric turn coordinator with noisy bearings......



Rich

If you use an "emergency use only" app calculating the horizon based on internal accelerometers, you'd have better been clairvoyant enough to have initiated it on the ground prior to your emergency flight (and hope that it hasn't drifted from the vibration and pitch/roll/yaw changes), or it won't know which way is up. A horizon screen that is, say, 30 degrees off isn't going to contribute much to saving one's bacon.

If you use an "emergency use only" app calculating the horizon based on interpreting successive GPS position hits (al la Garmin X96 series), you can start it up mid flight during your "emergency," provided your turn rate doesn't exceed the screen refresh rate (and assuming the plane is still under reasonable control, or it won't be calculating attitude correctly.)

Another example of the challenges using a toy app for flight awareness.

 

[richas]

If you use an "emergency use only" app calculating the horizon based on internal accelerometers, you'd have better been clairvoyant enough to have initiated it on the ground prior to your emergency flight (and hope that it hasn't drifted from the vibration and pitch/roll/yaw changes), or it won't know which way is up. A horizon screen that is, say, 30 degrees off isn't going to contribute much to saving one's bacon.

If you use an "emergency use only" app calculating the horizon based on interpreting successive GPS position hits (al la Garmin X96 series), you can start it up mid flight during your "emergency," provided your turn rate doesn't exceed the screen refresh rate (and assuming the plane is still under reasonable control, or it won't be calculating attitude correctly.)

Another example of the challenges using a toy app for flight awareness.

Very good points. I wonder if there is a simple AI app that makes use of the GPS in that way....

Rich

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

Very good points. I wonder if there is a simple AI app that makes use of the GPS in that way....

Rich

Better yet, who did the coding and how was it tested?

Someone with the aeronautics, physics, and testing background to do it right, or a pimply faced, enthusiastic teenager in his parent's basement on a Monster energy drink binge?

 

[ClimbnSink]

The GA fleet is 40 years old because anything newer would be run out of town. Sigh

 

[MAKG1]

If you use an "emergency use only" app calculating the horizon based on interpreting successive GPS position hits (al la Garmin X96 series), you can start it up mid flight during your "emergency," provided your turn rate doesn't exceed the screen refresh rate (and assuming the plane is still under reasonable control, or it won't be calculating attitude correctly.)

GPS will tell you your velocity vector -- ground speed, track angle and rate of climb/descent. It will NOT tell you your attitude. For that, you need an inertial reference. Conventionally, gyroscopes. It is possible with accelerometers, but those tend to drift like the dickens in vibration environments. It's possible to put solid state gyroscopes (RLGs) in small packages, but the power requirements aren't good for an entertainment device intended to run for 8 hours. Those also drift like the dickens in a vibration environment (some of the reasons are the same -- integrating a noisy rate with sampling errors). RLGs are not the same as iron (spinning) gyros.

GPS also requires seconds of integration time to get these values, and they are not very accurate due to loss of precision when differencing. There are ways to trade off lag time against accuracy, but you need both in an emergency such as an upset.

You can almost get heading directly with GPS with two antennas on a large airliner, mounted as far apart as possible. But it isn't nearly as accurate as a magnetic compass.

Note that yaw rate is not necessarily the same as turn rate. The GPS can measure the latter, but you need to stabilize the former. They differ when winds are strong and highly variable, such as in moderate or stronger turbulence, and especially when dynamical effects such as yaw/roll coupling (Dutch roll) are in effect.

I simply don't see an entertainment device ever getting over these problems without costing tens of kilobucks apiece. In which case, the point of making them goes away.

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

The GA fleet is 40 years old because anything newer would be run out of town. Sigh

Run out of town???

How about just knowing if a legitimate company is standing behind and disclosing what was done, how it was tested, and what they are warranting it for?

What I see are the engineering types looking past the pretty graphical eye candy and asking if the emperor is wearing any clothes underneath the screen.

All this talk of using products interpreting attitude, airspeed, and artifical horizons via un-referenced solid state accelerometers, and lacking any pitot-static inputs make me wonder some pilots know where their flight instruments draw their inputs from.

If the fecal matter hits the fan, much of this stuff will only be worth the $5 purchase price paid. If that is known (AND UNDERSTOOD) in advance, great. But let's not make light of the fact that the programming platforms makes it easy for anyone to do slick graphics that might outsell the functionality of the device to many.

And, for the record, I use FlightAware on an iPad for my charts in the cockpit.

 

[ElPaso Pilot]

GPS will tell you your velocity vector -- ground speed, track angle and rate of climb/descent. It will NOT tell you your attitude.

That is absolutely correct. And I should have said bank angle, based on what Garmin is fudging on this screen, using only GPS samples.

 

[Henning]

You're proposing an ATTITUDE INDICATOR. It indicates the attitude of the phone, not the aircraft. Even if it were close to sensible accuracy (it isn't), Velcro simply is not a rigid, known datum for an attitude measurement. Full stop, end of story.

In moderate turbulence, the first thing to do is stabilize your attitude. Holding altitude is a mistake. Under that circumstance, this Velcro "mount" is going to flop in the breeze, and will read wildly different attitude from the aircraft.

And of course this all assumes you've thought this through far enough not to mount this thing to the yoke.

The "experiment" above is completely invalid. It tests only the nominal cases, purely qualitatively. Under perfect conditions, you don't need any of this instrumentation at all, and having all the loose items is a distraction (no Velcro, is not a secure mount). This is a BAD IDEA.

No amount of "technological advance" is going to keep people from doing stupid things.

I affixed an AHRS for a Bendix unit with Velcro and Nyties which worked well.

 

[Henning]

Let me get this straight... you will bet your LIFE on Bluetooth?

I'll say it again. This is a pretty toy. It's a distraction in VMC. It has unproven accuracy, no specification for mounting, no reliability analysis nor testing, no data provenance, nothing. It's a toy.

To the doe-eyed fans here, you MUST understand the implication of that. It means these cannot be depended upon for ANYTHING. They are not backups, they are not situational awareness, they are just more things to take your attention inside the aircraft to manage, with no operational benefit whatsoever. When the brown stuff gets anywhere in the same state as the fan, these devices are hindrances to recovery. They are a risk. A sensible person would trade that risk off with benefits. But there aren't any!

Even well designed panels take significant heads-down time to manage. Which is fine in IMC, but it can get quite dangerous in visual conditions. "See and avoid" requires actually looking up.

If it has an SVT display it is something you can put in the windshield in IMC lol.

 

[MAKG1]

If it has an SVT display it is something you can put in the windshield in IMC lol.

SVT is only good as the data behind it. Which is unknown for these toys. If it just takes the USGS DEMs and renders them (a shortcut I could see various toys taking, because the data is very cheap), there are quite a lot of things to bang into that aren't represented.

Useful SVT is based upon actual observed configuration, not someones database of where everything is (which can get out of date or just be wrong). But to get that, yet another sensor is needed. Like FLIR or radar. Seems a bit unlikely in a tablet....

 

[LDJones]

How long before a digital AHRS unit is installed in aircraft the communicates wirelessly with whatever devices in the cockpit wish to use the information?

 

[Henning]

How long before a digital AHRS unit is installed in aircraft the communicates wirelessly with whatever devices in the cockpit wish to use the information?

I have an AHRS in my plane right now that will do that. It currently supports a Q1 running Bendix Aviator Horizon on a BT link. I also have a dedicated cable wired unit in the G-500.

 

[MAKG1]

How long before a digital AHRS unit is installed in aircraft the communicates wirelessly with whatever devices in the cockpit wish to use the information?

The "whatever" part is problematic. Basic networking. Consumers are never completely independent of one another, and some uncontrolled device can consume all the resources for other devices. Approved devices installed by trained personnel are in another class -- the point of the approval and training is to avoid resource starvation like that.

This will never be an appropriate DIY project. There are just too many "gotchas." Like some bug "no one cares about" in an Angry Birds player that brings down your panel because the developer didn't think testing the never-used NMEA protocol was required and just released it.

Airborne networks have been around for decades. Even some based on Ethernet. There is a reason there aren't any open network ports in the flight deck to plug your laptop in.

 

[Everskyward]

All this talk of using products interpreting attitude, airspeed, and artifical horizons via un-referenced solid state accelerometers, and lacking any pitot-static inputs make me wonder some pilots know where their flight instruments draw their inputs from.

If the fecal matter hits the fan, much of this stuff will only be worth the $5 purchase price paid. If that is known (AND UNDERSTOOD) in advance, great. But let's not make light of the fact that the programming platforms makes it easy for anyone to do slick graphics that might outsell the functionality of the device to many.

Right. It's a toy, used to play games. Possible technology improvements in the future might allow tablets to do some of the things people here are talking about but it will need to be something dedicated to aviation with a much higher price tag. Of the zillions of people who buy tablets probably 0.0001% are interested in using them in this way and are not going to pay anything more for these functions.

 

[ClimbnSink]

1970s are over, consumer electronics are mostly high quality. Most electronics these days are alive and kicking when surpassed by something better and cheap enough to make the switch. Something airplane manufacturers havent been able to pull off. Oh well the attitude by many in this thread makes it another one that will have lurkers skip the pilot lessons and buy an ATV. Enjoy your exclusive club and remember the less people that play the more the game costs.

 

[Challenged]

I'm obviously in the minority, but I'd replace every item in my panel tomorrow with tablet technology, if it were legal. I could install a triple-redundant system, using triple AHRS sensors, including air data, along with three tablets and three separate ADS-B/WAAS GPS units..and all that for half the cost of a single Aspen 1000 install.

 

[MAKG1]

1970s are over, consumer electronics are mostly high quality. Most electronics these days are alive and kicking when surpassed by something better and cheap enough to make the switch. Something airplane manufacturers havent been able to pull off. Oh well the attitude by many in this thread makes it another one that will have lurkers skip the pilot lessons and buy an ATV. Enjoy your exclusive club and remember the less people that play the more the game costs.

Egads. Quality = doesn't blow up.

No, that's wrong. Actually, it's "not even wrong."

In fact, there is a "quality crisis" in progress, with several only partially effective solutions. Electronics in the 2010s has many orders of magnitude more moving parts than the 1970s, and we are well past the stage where exhaustive testing is possible.

Consumer electronics quality is, as a rule, as cheap as will be tolerated by the consumers. Price is the only factor. Testing is extremely expensive, and it gets dropped on the floor unless forced otherwise. That's where industry standards and regulation come in. There is no alternative when the consuming public is so poorly educated as to not have any clue what kinds of risks they might be taking.

 

[MAKG1]

I'm obviously in the minority, but I'd replace every item in my panel tomorrow with tablet technology, if it were legal. I could install a triple-redundant system, using triple AHRS sensors, including air data, along with three tablets and three separate ADS-B/WAAS GPS units..and all that for half the cost of a single Aspen 1000 install.

Just the integration and testing for your one-off experiment would exceed the cost of a single Aspen 1000 by quite a lot. It's obvious how you intend to cut that corner, which is exactly why that must be illegal.

 

[ClimbnSink]

Oh yeah we'll use laws to keep us in the stone age. Enjoy your lonely expensive archaic hobby.

 

[jsstevens]

http://www.dynonavionics.com/docs/D1_intro.html

This is Dynon's answer. It's $1425 because it does have the hardware behind it to accurately measure what it purports to measure. And because the R&D expenses have to be amortized over a relatively low volume.

And as for providing the certified data sources, that strikes me as an elegant solution _except_ you definitely want a bunch of different devices with different OSs receiving the data. Have you ever seen a set of data inputs crash an OS? I have, though not in an airplane, thank you. Imagine your "triple redundant" array of Nexus 7's or iPads all crashing at the same time because they all got the same data. It happens.

I like technology! I work in technology! I use an iPad with Foreflight. I use a DUAL GPS. But I also build systems that have to be reliable and I think MAKG is right about a lot of the issues.

Cost drives consumer products and they are not critical enough for people to test to the level you want to risk your ticket, tin or life on. Those products that are critical enough are not sold in large enough volumes to spread the testing and engineering costs thin enough to be "affordable". Unless we (as a society) get a whole lot more risk tolerant, the regulations will stay what they are.

Also, in my VFR environment (see the charts for airspace around KORL) altitude and location can be pretty important to not risk my ticket - even VFR. I wouldn't risk my ticket on my iPad as cool as it is.

My $.02

John

 

[Challenged]

My solution to any uneasiness about the reliability of tablets and their software is simple: install a double-redundant tablet solution and just keep the mechanical altitude, airspeed and attitude indicator installed. You still have triple-redundancy at a cost of $4,000, with features that far surpass what I'm currently using for primary reference. I'm a fairly risk averse pilot and I'd happily fly around with that setup tomorrow. If you wanted to be really cautious, I guess you could even say that we'll let the FAA enforce the fact that we can only fly in VFR weather with the above setup; I'm still a happy camper.

I love aviation and I love technology; if we can tone down the certification costs for this stuff, I would spend so much more money on aviation related technology, because it would actually be somewhat affordable to me.

 

[Gubbins]

I'm a fairly risk averse pilot and I'd happily fly around with that setup tomorrow.

Great, but please don't fly over my house in IMC conditions just in case it flakes out on you.

 

[Challenged]

Great, but please don't fly over my house in IMC conditions just in case it flakes out on you.

I edited my comment before you posted, but I even added a VFR requirement..since I knew that would make someone happy.

 

[Everskyward]

My solution to any uneasiness about the reliability of tablets and their software is simple: install a double-redundant tablet solution and just keep the mechanical altitude, airspeed and attitude indicator installed. You still have triple-redundancy at a cost of $4,000, with features that far surpass what I'm currently using for primary reference. I'm a fairly risk averse pilot and I'd happily fly around with that setup tomorrow. If you wanted to be really cautious, I guess you could even say that we'll let the FAA enforce the fact that we can only fly in VFR weather with the above setup; I'm still a happy camper.

I still think that your primary reference when VFR should be looking outside at the real horizon, not your attitude indicator or the one on your tablet. Going back to the ADS-B out thread, if I ever doubted it's a positive development, reading threads like that convinces me further. People are not looking outside as much any more because the are more fascinated by technology.

 

[Challenged]

I still think that your primary reference when VFR should be looking outside at the real horizon, not your attitude indicator or the one on your tablet. Going back to the ADS-B out thread, if I ever doubted it's a positive development, reading threads like that convinces me further. People are not looking outside as much any more because the are more fascinated by technology.

Well, that's all the more reason we should be using tablets in the cockpit while VFR..the steam gauges aren't even all that important.

 

[Everskyward]

Well, that's all the more reason we should be using tablets in the cockpit while VFR..the steam gauges aren't even all that important.

So you are in favor of the ADS-B out requirement?

 

[denverpilot]

I still think that your primary reference when VFR should be looking outside at the real horizon, not your attitude indicator or the one on your tablet. Going back to the ADS-B out thread, if I ever doubted it's a positive development, reading threads like that convinces me further. People are not looking outside as much any more because the are more fascinated by technology.

Flying above the Earth in the sky looking out the window is so boring.

Louis CK got it right in his "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy" bit on Conan a while back...

http://vimeo.com/14975413

 

[Challenged]

Yeah, I'm in favor of the ADS-B out requirement. My reasoning is that I get to drop my XM subscription and in exchange I get free weather and traffic..I consider it a good deal.

 

[denverpilot]

Yeah, I'm in favor of the ADS-B out requirement. My reasoning is that I get to drop my XM subscription and in exchange I get free weather and traffic..I consider it a good deal.

You can have that with ADS-B In without the ADS-B Out requirement. Think outside the FAA box a little.