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Will there ever be a day when steam gauge avionics have to be ripped out?

alioth wrote:

Maybe for not what’s inside the device, but it’s entirely reasonable to give out installation schematics, or information on how to configure/use the product. Do you not do this?

In the energy production industry we deliver equipment guarantied to last for at least 30 years, sometimes 40 and 50. We never hand out source code, but always schematics, diagrams and drawings. The industry code specifies the function, interface and high level requirements, not the internal design of things (which software is). In the nuclear business things are much more strict.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

Neil wrote:

My company is an electronics manufacturer in a different industry and we would never give out schematics or software information. It’s naive to expect anyone in the real commercial world to do so.

Maybe for not what’s inside the device, but it’s entirely reasonable to give out installation schematics, or information on how to configure/use the product. Do you not do this?

For example, I’m currently working with a microcontroller based on an ARM M0 core. While the manufacturer isn’t giving out internal device schematics, they freely and liberally make a very detailed datasheet which documents in great detail what all the peripheral registers are and what they do, drive strengths of pins, rise/fall times etc. Furthermore, ARM themselves have highly detailed documentation on how to use the core, full descriptions of all the instructions and their effects, detailed documentation on standard peripherals such as the NVIC etc. etc. Not only that, ARM do a lot of work supporting freely available development tools under a software libre license so I can be confident that I’ll always have access to a compiler, linker, assembler etc. (compare this to Peter’s experience with Xilinx). The microcontroller manufacturer also has a development board which has full schematics, plus they make schematics of various application circuits freely available. They helpfully provide a bunch of example code under a software libre license which you can use to build your products with the chip.

Garmin doesn’t even publish simple examples for installing and configuring a GTR225 which is a plain COM radio. I was fortunate enough to find a leaked copy of the installation manual. That’s what really gets my goat, that they expect to have you over a barrel even for straightforward things like simple COM radios.

Last Edited by alioth at 22 Mar 10:21
Andreas IOM

One problem with any AML STC such as the GTN is that it is totally generic and doesn’t reflect reality in many aircraft.

This “AML STC is too broad” debate really comes down to debating how much trust to put into the installer.

In FAA-land they assume the installer is competent, so will use his competence and discretion to know that he can’t just drill some cable holes in the pressurised hull of the King Air, etc.

In EASA-land they assume the installer is incompetent (is really just a wireman) and needs prescriptive installation data.

I think the FAA approach is right otherwise why have an installer qualification system (A&P, EASA66, etc) in the first place?

OK; I have met countless avionics installers who are just wiremen, and some bad ones too, and these “wiremen” do need a guy somewhere who actually knows what the wires do and draws up a diagram which has a chance of working, but that issue is no different in the USA or Europe (adult illiteracy and poor education is pretty well the same in these two places, especially comparing the USA with the UK) yet the USA isn’t covered in wreckage so they must somehow be managing.

My company is an electronics manufacturer in a different industry and we would never give out schematics or software information. It’s naive to expect anyone in the real commercial world to do so.

Same with my products (industrial electronics) but that’s a different context to avionics where the stuff is expected to work for say 30 years, and everybody knows the manufacturer is likely to be gone by then. If I was selling a product into an application where a 30 year life is to be expected, I would expect the customer to demand the schematics and source code, or at least they would demand that it is placed in escrow. (I had a really funny case a few weeks ago where a customer from about 20 years ago (a national electricity company) got in touch and revealed they got their hands on the escrowed info )

Nothing can be done about this now because Honeywell/King are dead and Garmin is the only game in town and their MMs include no useful info beyond board-level changing. Avidyne is clearly struggling… a pity because the IFD540 is IMHO the best box out there.

BTW, are you installing significant numbers of IFD540s, wigglyamp?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Tomjnx wrote:


For example, when I got a GTN installed, which was only a minor change thanks to the AML STC, I still got dozens of pages of schematics that are basically just a copy out of the GTN IM. What for?

One problem with any AML STC such as the GTN is that it is totally generic and doesn’t reflect reality in many aircraft. You couldn’t for example use it as-is in a King Air, even though the aircraft is listed in the STC, as there ae bulkhead plugs, junction boxes etc to connect to. For on-going maintenance, the instructions for continued airworthiness are meant to reflect the actual condition of the aircraft and you couldn’t fault-find using the generic data alone. This is where traditionally EASA and it’s predecessors have been different to the FAA and required aircraft-specific design data in each STC, that allowed installers minimal interpretation. They have now moved considerably towards the FAA approach which is way beyond what we could do even under CAA regs in the past.

Avionics geek.
Somewhere remote in Devon, UK.

My company is an electronics manufacturer in a different industry and we would never give out schematics or software information. It’s naive to expect anyone in the real commercial world to do so.

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

I still got dozens of pages of schematics that are basically just a copy out of the GTN IM

Welcome to the “intellectual property” world of STCs

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

mh wrote:

Economically viable for who?

Garmin, for example.

mh wrote:

The EASA fees aren’t the big chunk.

I’m not sure why you’re so hung on the EASA fees. They’re only a small part of the certification cost. The problem IMO is the unreasonable level of detail that requires the creation of tons of unnecessary documentation.

For example, when I got a GTN installed, which was only a minor change thanks to the AML STC, I still got dozens of pages of schematics that are basically just a copy out of the GTN IM. What for?

Or why is it apparently such a hassle for Garmin to get new firmware releases approved by EASA so that EASA reg owners get new firmware at best a year after FAA reg owners? Apparently the process was so stuck some time ago that Garmin needed to send several high level people to Cologne to try to unblock it. It’s not that it is raining planes from the sky in FAA land…

LSZK, Switzerland

alioth wrote:

decent PCB autorouter.

Does that even exist? I haven’t come across one…

LSZK, Switzerland

Peter wrote:

Fortunately I found a Polish software guy (they don’t make them like that anymore, west of the Iron Curtain) who quickly (the software was graphical but ran under DOS 6.22) found the dongle code and patched it

You’d be surprised. I know a number of very British people who have the requisite skills. Many of us (particularly my generation) grew up writing code in asm. Some of us still do it :-)

Personally I don’t do electronics as my day job, but I find most EDA software licensing conditions so unacceptable I’ll only use gEDA despite its many warts and the lack of a decent PCB autorouter. Even when making things to sell to hobbyists, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t terribly important, I never want to be locked out of my own designs in the way the proprietary EDA tools often do.

Last Edited by alioth at 21 Mar 10:13
Andreas IOM

wigglyamp wrote:

Is it really wrong for a dealer to invest in the hope of making some return for their effort, just as many aircraft owners do in their own businesses?

You can call it what you want, but in the end this has only one single result; the end user is given no choices of who is to fix his equipment. There are lots of this around in the industries, there are all kinds of “certifications” you can get after a 3 day course. The knowledge a person gets is of course usable and valuable, but it is no no sort of proportionality to the false sense of “expertise” these “certifications” have on a common ignorant customer. A good mechanic can rip apart, fix, and put together any aircraft or system he puts his hands on, a poor mechanic cannot even torque a nut without screwing up even after dozens of “certification” courses.

This is the main reason I use Android instead of iOS (which I wouldn’t even touch). I put together my engine myself (I put together my aircraft myself also). I chose MGL due to the open architecture instead of Garmin or Dynon. It is about maintainability. The trend has always been toward use and throw away systems. Instead of fixing a broken part or system, we throw it away when broken and buy a new. There is some logic to this, price mainly, but with the prices of aircraft glass, we are very far from reaching the turnover point for that logic to be effective. For experimental aircraft we are getting close, and it is better just to rip out 10+ year old glass and install new than to fix old stuff, but this is mainly due to the rapid development being done in this area. I think all this glasses are still very far from being matured, the display technology for instance, has a long way to go. I also think at some point we will start to see single, smart stand alone elements that can reconfigured at will, and hook themselves up automatically in a network. In my opinion that is the way all things eventually will go (smart watch for instance), google glasses, VR glasses (the helmet of the F-35). In the mean time it is better to stay away from everything “closed” as much as practically possible.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
42 Posts
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