If there’s a point of contact at Garmin we can organise a lobby on, please let us know Sebastian.
denopa wrote:
If there’s a point of contact at Garmin we can organise a lobby on, please let us know Sebastian.
Sebastian, what is the actual problem with Garmin and, say, GTN boxes (via GDL59 or direct)?
Is that they don’t disclose an API/protocols/connectivity diagrams to you even under NDA?
Or is does it require special public/public key for the hardware?
Or do they require a lot of money to get into the problem?
GTN device officially DO work with Bendix King weather radars, at least according to the specs.
Thank you!
GTN device officially DO work with Bendix King weather radars, at least according to the specs.
Maybe that is done via NTSC video, which (if NTSC is supported by the display device) is totally universal. In fact you could display text e.g. tafs and metars via NTSC.
arj1 wrote:
Sebastian, what is the actual problem with say, GTN boxes (via GDL59 or direct)?
So far I came up with those ideas:
1) Simulate a real radar. Not so easy but the protocol should be available. The final result would be ok but you would only see the weather ahead, so not a perfect solution. The show stopper here is the G500/GTN units only support radar if you buy a very expensive additional radar activation. So my bottom line is not to go down that route.
2) The G500 can display video signals. I had a look at this feature on trade show years ago but the quality was not very good, again the integration with the G500 map would not be good, the ADL hardware would have to be redesigned, it would only cover the G500/G600 so that would not be a good product either.
3) Simulate a real 978 MHz ADS-B UAT signal. I saw projects online doing just that. Then just radiate that either very weak or connect a coax cable directly to the GDL88 box. Probably difficult to build and certify but the big show stopper is the price of the GDL88 box. Most Europeans don’t have one so doing a 5k Euro plus GDL88 installation just to connect an ADL box is also not such a great plan.
4) Some older devices like very old G1000 or GMX200 seem to support the GDL90 protocol but the current devices no longer do. The GDL88 protocol used by those devices is not public. So the best option would be if they would be willing to share this protocol.
But the G500/GTN integration is the last feature which keeps the GSR56 product alive. So their interest for cooperation in the certified market was very limited whenever they did talk to me at the AERO show or similar.
:) Peter, just checked GTN IM in figure E-16 (weather data interconnect), sheet 2 of 3, says that the data from the radar is ARINC 453 (GTN has got an input which says and the radar is controlled with ARINC 429. I’m also conscious of the fact the Garmin’s Satellite Weather device is connected via RS-232.
arj1 wrote:
I’m also conscious of the fact the Garmin’s Satellite Weather device is connected via RS-232.
I had a look inside it once and it is more or less a standard Iridium 9522b modem with an “aviation enclosure” around it so most probably it just passes on the RS232 of the modem.
It is a while since I looked into this (in connection with displaying free text data) but I believe you can do radar data in several ways.
The ARINC429 stream should be fairly well documented – at least is not likely to be encrypted (Garmin’s favourite tactic).
There may be an RS232 stream and probably not documented openly.
There is NTSC video which would be ok for ADL wx images.
I don’t think that using the radar mode necessarily limits you to wx ahead, but I don’t know enough detail.
An Iridium modem would be like a Thuraya modem i.e. a Hayes modem lookalike, no?
ARINC453 is hard to find anything on, but this suggests it is a radar protocol for large aircraft.
Sebastian_G wrote:
4) Some older devices like very old G1000 or GMX200 seem to support the GDL90 protocol but the current devices no longer do. The GDL88 protocol used by those devices is not public. So the best option would be if they would be willing to share this protocol.
But the G500/GTN integration is the last feature which keeps the GSR56 product alive. So their interest for cooperation in the certified market was very limited whenever they did talk to me at the AERO show or similar.
Sebastian, probably a stupid question, but have you tried making a formal request to get access to GTN RS-232 integration?
Garmin probably considers that its own satellite weather solution is equivalent to the ADL, and dorsn’t want to introduce a competition.
If weather appears on the IFD, would it appear on an MFD linked to it, like a Dynon ?
With adding GDL90 support ADL is practically automatically connected to ForeFlight. After getting in-flight weather, radar images along the route will be shown also in ForeFlight application. @Sebastian_G thanks for this great feature.
