Ok, had some time on the train today.
Here is a a first version of the converter: Checklist Converter
It does not do much, but you give it a .txt file with white spaces for indentation.
No indentation = Group (normal, emergency, …), 1 whitespace = check list title (engine start, taxi, …), 2 white spaces for a checklist item
After you uploaded your .txt file you can add further information and generate the .ace file.
Example:
Normal Procedures Engine Start Mixture Rich Main Switch On Ignition Start Taxi Check Brakes Emergency One Engine Out Shut Down Other Engine Glide To Destination
…
You get the idea …
It does only add entry type “Challenge” without “Response”.
I’m happy to extend the tool, if you have any wishes.
On a different forum there are G3000 pilots that are complaining about the garmin software. I have pointed them to your post. It is one of those ideas that you wonder why no-one has ever done it before!
A big thank you from me!
The next challenge is to work out how to put a button to checklists from the default page of the 750. You can on the sim, but not on the real box :-(
I have just done a test run, and it was perfect, thank you!
From the time I copied the 270 line Word checklist into Notepad to the time I had a functioning Ace file was less than 15 minutes, very impressive. I reckon that must have saved me half a day’s work and a huge amount of frustration.
I look forward to uploading it to the GTN750 and/or G600 and seeing how it works.
I do hope others use it.
Thank you.
Thanks for the bug report.
File encoding problem – should be fixed
Would you share the details of the checksum?
I wrote a Scala program that translates the JSON Garmin Pilot checklist payload from FlyGarmin to HTML for printing, and I’d like to have it render an ACE version as well..but the checksum is killing me.
I calculate a java.util.zip CRC32, and it looks like if I reverse the byte order and complement, it gets all the bytes right except the first…obviously there’s something I don’t grasp here.
I’m keen to have this working because my flying club is about to upgrade our non-WAAS 430 to a 750, and I’d be really pleased to be able to edit checklists in Garmin Pilot and load them into our 750.
Would you be willing to publish the source code and make it FLOS (Free/Libre/Open Source)? This would allow better resilience in the great service you did to the world.
Ah, never mind…I have the checksum issue solved. Now to squash a hundred tinier bugs and polish this up.