Lowering Flaps with an iPad?

Wasn't talking about the software, folks. Was talking about the hardware. Software can be changed.

Example: Kent went on about the OS... It can be removed.

Most of these touch screens are their own self-contained units complete with their own processors. They're all cheap Chinese junk.

My point was... Garmin has seen for to use the exact same junk in their panel mounts going forward, as is in the iPad. Almost zero difference.

That's how much they need revenue growth vs building things to last.

Buttons and knobs work better.

They have no significant real competition in their market space in avionics anymore, so expect cheaper and dumber.

Get used to it, is all I'm saying. The G1000 system just turned 10. They haven't innovated much in 10 years. Fixed a LOT of bugs in that thing, though.

They're resting on their laurels and cheapening the hardware. No real motivation for them not to.

Bendix/Honeywell? Bwahaha. The "we can't ship anything" company?
 
denverpilot said:
Wasn't talking about the software, folks. Was talking about the hardware. Software can be changed.

Example: Kent went on about the OS... It can be removed.
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And if they decided to use an iPad with a completely different OS dedicated to its purpose, and airplane interface hardware to connect it, and they certified the whole mess, I'd have no problem with it. But that's not what they did - They are using an iPad running iOS. Unacceptable.
 
matthammer said:
Well, seeing that neither flaps nor flight instruments are necessary to safely fly an airplane VFR, I'd say not a whole lot that's important. It's a cool concept, just not really my cup of tea. :dunno:
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If your flaps get stuck at 40 degrees on a 150 you're not climbing.
 
This is the first attempt at adding valuable functionality to a relatively affordable touch-screen interface. Keep in mind that all the controls are also tied to standard switches. You can still control the flaps mechanically, and your landing lights, but if a switch were to fail (which it did on our last landing.. landing gear switch) you now have an alternative. On this Searey configuration, the Flaps are tied to the Vertical Power box, which monitors things like, over-speed protection , RPM and vertical speed. It monitors current consumption for all your switches and takes care of any fault that you may not know of. There is a LOT of valuable information that can now be displayed on your tablet, and state-of-the-art technology behind the panel making all of this possible. Reducing the amount of space for things like circuit breakers, etc. This is an Experimental VFR airplane, built by a retired U2 pilot and American Airline pilot Steve Barber, there is so much going on behind the panel (technology-wise)... specifically designed for aviation.. the iPad is just a display that allows us hardware developers to do wonders...
 
What happens if your iPad dead shorts a switch wired in parallel with a real switch?

Either you fail with the switch permanently engaged (runaway?) by connecting in parallel, or you fail with it completely dead by connecting in series. Alternative laws require a safety critical control module. From a safety standpoint, for a flap switch, the dead fail is strictly preferable over a runaway.

You're not doing yourself favors by trying to pass off a U-2 type rating as some sort of systems engineering degree. It is nothing of the sort.
 
Thats not at all how it works. iPad is not connected to your flaps or any switch for that matter. It only sends wireless commands to the iLevil. The iLevil sends this command via serial interface RS-232, to the VP box, just like the Garmin screen. Then the VP box lowers the flaps, considering speeds. This interface is implemented in many airplanes today. The only difference is that now the iLevil provides the wireless interface so that commands can be broadcasted by your App.
 
anandaleon said:
This is the first attempt at adding valuable functionality to a relatively affordable touch-screen interface. Keep in mind that all the controls are also tied to standard switches. You can still control the flaps mechanically, and your landing lights, but if a switch were to fail (which it did on our last landing.. landing gear switch) you now have an alternative. On this Searey configuration, the Flaps are tied to the Vertical Power box, which monitors things like, over-speed protection , RPM and vertical speed. It monitors current consumption for all your switches and takes care of any fault that you may not know of. There is a LOT of valuable information that can now be displayed on your tablet, and state-of-the-art technology behind the panel making all of this possible. Reducing the amount of space for things like circuit breakers, etc. This is an Experimental VFR airplane, built by a retired U2 pilot and American Airline pilot Steve Barber, there is so much going on behind the panel (technology-wise)... specifically designed for aviation.. the iPad is just a display that allows us hardware developers to do wonders...
Click to expand...

anandaleon said:
Thats not at all how it works. iPad is not connected to your flaps or any switch for that matter. It only sends wireless commands to the iLevil. The iLevil sends this command via serial interface RS-232, to the VP box, just like the Garmin screen. Then the VP box lowers the flaps, considering speeds. This interface is implemented in many airplanes today. The only difference is that now the iLevil provides the wireless interface so that commands can be broadcasted by your App.
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I'm all for the *display* of plenty of data on the iPad... It's the control part I don't like.

If you have a separate flap switch anyway, what's the point in controlling it from the iPad? Is there any distinct advantage to controlling the flaps from the iPad?
 
anandaleon said:
This interface is implemented in many airplanes today...
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...designed and tested to a standard for flight-critical software. Can you tell us a little about health monitoring, failure management and fault tolerance of your integrated system and the testing of same?

Nauga,
who says 'trust but verify...and validate' ;)
 
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1) Touchscreen in light aircraft = lousy UI
2) What will happen to Capt Steve's legendary knees in a running-into-something-solid event? oh myyyyy gooooooooooooooddddddd
 
EdFred said:
Johnson Bar flaps, ftw.
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There is a lot to that….

T&Gs in a Warrior on a not-terribly-long runway are a lot nicer than equivalent Cessnas.

And your instructor can't fail the power on downwind to force a no-flap landing (seems to be a checkout fave) :) .
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I'm all for the *display* of plenty of data on the iPad... It's the control part I don't like.

If you have a separate flap switch anyway, what's the point in controlling it from the iPad? Is there any distinct advantage to controlling the flaps from the iPad?
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In Steve's case, he wanted to get rid of the circuit breakers and some switches (including Flaps). Notice he still has Trim Switch control on the Yoke, but for some reason (known to him), he did not want to wire a Flap switch. The Vertical Power is essentially your switching mechanism. You can wire a switch to it, or send serial commands, or both. This flexibility allows builders to do custom panels that look and feel very appealing (to them), it may reduce some weight and often provides redundancy and protection.
In his case, the "nostrils" of the dragon turn green on command. The third iPad on the co-pilot seat is tied to a remote camera (for aerial surveillance). If you look at this project from a commercial-airplane point of view, it wouldn't make any sense. From a home-built point of view, an iPad is a very powerful EFB, affordable, easy to install, and when combined with the right avionics, it is a great interface. We are very excited to be part of this project!
 
A couple of weeks ago SpaceX reveled the control panel for their new human rated 'Dragon V2 Capsule'.

It's got four LCD displays and a joystick, but also has 'mechanical buttons for all safety related functions'. For a good reason.

ZBXDOii.jpg
 
That's awesome! Not far from what Steve is trying to accomplish (at least the concept). I agree with Jim, you need some mechanical buttons for safety and redundancy, unfortunately the video doesn't show the buttons. You can kind of see the switch panel he made at the end of the video, they are located over his head to the right. Thanks for sharing, that picture is amazing! Gotta love technology...
 
flyingcheesehead said:
And if they decided to use an iPad with a completely different OS dedicated to its purpose, and airplane interface hardware to connect it, and they certified the whole mess, I'd have no problem with it. But that's not what they did - They are using an iPad running iOS. Unacceptable.
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Have you seem the complete bug fix list for the G1000? (I know you've seen the release notes for multiple versions. Multiply by however many releases they've had.)

All nice and "certified". Whoop dee do.

I'm not defending this iPad contraption but Garmin is no better. Put a Johnson bar on the floor and save $10,000.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
- They are using an iPad running iOS. Unacceptable.
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Gosh, that seems harsh. He was just sitting in his house, showing off.

Now if does choose to fly it, I do think a Johnson bar would be a much better idea. But until then, he deserves his fun.
 
NoHeat said:
Gosh, that seems harsh. He was just sitting in his house, showing off.

Now if does choose to fly it, I do think a Johnson bar would be a much better idea. But until then, he deserves his fun.
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Now now. Fun is not allowed. And we need Certification bureaucracies and ADS-B!

Didn't you get the memo?

That's the comprehensive combined vision and forward-thinking at FAA. Cutting edge stuff there, I tell ya. ;)
 
denverpilot said:
Have you seem the complete bug fix list for the G1000? (I know you've seen the release notes for multiple versions. Multiply by however many releases they've had.)

All nice and "certified". Whoop dee do.
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I don't care how bad the G1000 is... It doesn't move my flight controls, and I have backup instruments.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I don't care how bad the G1000 is... It doesn't move my flight controls, and I have backup instruments.
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Umm, try Googling GFC-700. That's part of late model G1000s.

It's odd, though, that a bug list is being used as evidence that it's "crap." Were it not certified, the bugs would all still be there, just the process to identify them will have been skipped, so it will be a whole lot shorter.

Yes, there is a big problem letting complex systems control aircraft, but the metric in that case is wrong. Quality is not properly measured by the number of bugs found.
 
MAKG1 said:
Umm, try Googling GFC-700. That's part of late model G1000s.



It's odd, though, that a bug list is being used as evidence that it's "crap." Were it not certified, the bugs would all still be there, just the process to identify them will have been skipped, so it will be a whole lot shorter.



Yes, there is a big problem letting complex systems control aircraft, but the metric in that case is wrong. Quality is not properly measured by the number of bugs found.
Click to expand...


The bugs fixed after release are found in the field, not by the certification process. What are you talking about?

The bugs found pre-release aren't listed in public. I specifically said to read the published lists.

I'm sure there's a bug tracking database inside Garmin (like every other tech company) where there's ten times as many bugs as are ever allowed to be put on a public bug list, and a very significant number of those marked "Won't fix".

User interface bugs are almost always a huge number of those bugs reported that get crap canned. "Can't hit touch screen in turbulence" is almost guaranteed to be in that "Won't fix" internal list with a snarky engineer's comment that says, "Touch screen was mandated by Marketing requirements and screen interface meets all specifications on the requirements document. Close ticket."

The bug list I referred to, the public one, has some pretty god-awful stuff on it. Evidence that "certification" is mostly busywork and expensive busywork at that. It feels important but removed all responsibility for doing the right thing, and then the results end up on the public bug list.

I sat on a Product Review Board that was feeling pressure to release something that everyone knew was half-baked, but it had been over-hyped by the CTO himself as the next best thing since sliced bread. It almost made it out the door without anyone saying anything until one Engineer couldn't take it anymore and blurted out what everyone in the room thought of a particular component he refused to sign off on, "That's not a proper solution, that's a ****ing kludge!"

CTO was very angry. Engineer was asked to leave. Someone else ended up signing off for him. Product shipped the next week. Company spent 10 years quietly talking around it and it made Product Support staff uncomfortable to explain it for the hundredth time to every customer who had problems with that sub-component.

If you think that type of stuff doesn't slip through any particular certification process, no matter what it is, and no matter if it's administered as an internal quality control measure or by a third-party auditor (like FAA in the care of aircraft systems), you've probably just never seen how the sausage is made behind the scenes on a Release Review Board. Take away the outburst by the engineer and replace it with a simple, "I won't sign it" and if the right person wants it to ship, it'll ship anyway.

I'm dealing with a firewall vendor right now who sold a product that claimed to meet certain requirements to my employer, many years ago. It has a bug where it misses the mark for a particular type of traffic by a ten-fold margin. Naturally, this means the feature was never tested or worse, shipped anyway to keep up with their competitors with much better technology and much better engineers. (Because their product is significantly cheaper and handles over a one-hundred fold increase in performance for this particular traffic type.)

It's the dirty little secret of the software biz, now that the Internet works in almost anyplace the software runs. Instead of finishing more of the big list prior to release, the thing ships. The plan is to release patched. Not build it right to begin with.
 
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