Raspberry Pi EFIS , the beginnings

[mikeybear]

Hi

Further to my Instrument Panel for the C208, I though I'd have a quick go at an EFIS ,
While this doesn't really fit in with my C208 plans , I wanted to try a few more OpenGL techniques and see how flexible my initial programming was.

So here is the result of about half a day's programming, and a couple of hours drawing.
most of the building blocks are in place , but the movement hasn't been connected up yet.

This seems to be running at about 30 FPS on a 1024x768 screen , smaller than my other project,
but I believe the real instrument runs on a 10" screen at that resolution which is the same as an iPad 2.
The Image I've attached is just the top half of the screen , but duplicating the display on the 2nd half doesn't really slow down the frame rate . So I hope it will run at this speed on the "finished  EFIS"

Hope this is of interest. and I'll post more in a couple of days.

Cheers

Dave

[RayS]

THIS. IS. OF. INTEREST. !!

I just had to pay my "Annual Renewal" for my FlyThisSim.Com Avidyne gauges and I feel it's money not really worth it, but I'll need the 'warranty' should my system ever crash. (Feels more like ransom payment...)

The images are from my Beech 1900D using the Carenado B1900D Flight model.

If you need a tester, or any other type of support, or would like to pursue something beyond... let me know.  I am very interested in your work.

Ray

 

[mikeybear]

Hi Ray,

I would very much appreciate  your input on this project, especially from someone who has experience of this EFIS. My knowledge is of steam gauges , and much of that was from programming the gauges.
One of the many motives of this project is go get an understanding of EFIS.

I'm currently programming the sliding scales for  ASI and Altitude as this is somewhat  different from the other gauges.

Once I have a basic working system , I'll be in touch.

Best Regards

Dave

[RayS]

Dave,

That sounds great. I'd be interested to know which sim platform you're considering for data input. (My hope is X-Plane as that happens to be my platform of choice and it might be the easiest considering data is broadcast natively over UDP.)

Can't wait to see your progress!
Ray

[mikeybear]

Ray,

Yes , I'm working with  X-Plane , on Win 64bit and also Linux.
I've done the UDP comms myself from a simple plugin rather than use the native UDP as I can keep it very simple and I've read various comments regarding the predictability of X-Planes Native UDP.

I now have the ASI and Altitude scales moving and have spend most of my time getting the "dynamic numbers" working, in an efficient manner.

I would hope to be able to have it "flyable"  this weekend.

Regards

Dave

[mikeybear]

Hi,

I've just recorded an video , of the current state of my program.

The pausing, is down to the video recording program , and is not happening in the program.
( the color is poor in the recording, the png is representative of what I see on my monitor, I was flying using my conventional instruments )

All the instruments on the top half of the screen seem to be working, though I've just realised I've made the altimeter display 10' rather than 100' , and the speed and height displays are just displaying the values, rather than the revolving numbers for the lower digits.

The Artificial Horizon needs to be scaled up in size.

All that is working in the bottom half is the direction indicator, I put that in last night along with the button backgrounds so there was something to fill the space when I made the video.

I've been spending most freetime today  replacing the "instrument panel" with a new piece of ply to take a 4:3 lcd panel , instead of a 16:9 one.


Regards

Dave

[RayS]

Holy crap that looks sweet!

I may have the Boeing fonts laying around somewhere.. Let me know if you need them. I 'think' I'm using an image file for them... I'd have to look later on tonight...

[mikeybear]

Hi Ray,

I think I'm just using Times Roman at the moment ,Please dig them out, and I'll see if I can use them.

I separated the plugin to drive this panel and It seems to work , I'll check this when I'm not as tired as when I wrote it

A few questions are appearing, I've based this mainly on one Image I've seen , yours seems to have another gauge on the left hand side  ?

The Decision height indicator , I have this on my normal gauges on the radar altimeter, so its actual height above ground , what is it on the entegra ?

I've also seen red Xs  on the screen , is this just when the "gauge" isn't working

Regards

Dave

[KyleH]

On the G1000, the red X's are displayed when the data for that 'gauge' is invalid.
On starting up, most of the display has x's over it, then as the data sensors come online, they disappear and are replaced with the gauge display.

I'll see if I can get a decent video of the start-up the next time I fly the G1000 plane.

[mikeybear]

Thanks Kyle

It would be appreciated.

Dave

[mikeybear]

The Setup, displaying on a iPad2 9.7" screen  which arrived today complete with RPi, and a Njytouch LCD Panel controller converting the panel to accept the RPi's HDMI output.

[RayS]

Echoing Kyle's post about the red X's in the Avidyne systems. Once systems come online/gyros aligned, the red Xs go away. I'll do a quick video of the Avidyne Startup this weekend.

[gjha97]

Ray, where did you get the panel for this?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[RayS]

Ray, where did you get the panel for this?

I worked with Dean over at http://www.ruscool.co.nz/. It was a custom request.

[mikeybear]

A little more progress

[mikeybear]

I'm making progress, what little time I've had this week has been spend implementing a system to draw changing text ( rather than just numbers which I had before) not much to show, but should make populating the bottom half of the screen a lot easier.

Also Ray's video has been very useful and as a result , I've overhauled the pitch ladder , and made the asi colored tapes set automatically from the aircraft datarefs.

I'll post more pics in a couple of days.

Dave

[KyleH]

Dave,

Here's a video starting up a G1000 panel.
Sorry for the poor focus. The camera had to be close to the panel to mount correctly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4enMgEyvWck
Any questions let me know.

Kyle

[mikeybear]

Thanks Kyle

[zk-tui]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question!

So for this EFIS, you've made a program on the raspberry to display the PFD (on an ipad screen you've connected to the pi) onto which the datarefs are fed from x-plane?

I wanted to be sure I understand what you've done here, because my soon-to-be started project would make great use of this! (737 classic PFD and ND...).

[mikeybear]

There is no such thing as a dumb question,

Essentially yes,

I've written a program using OpenGL which mimics the "instruments" of the EFIS by feeding  the appropriate datarefs using a plugin .

This started off as classical instruments on to a 15" 4:3 aspect laptop monitor. for my C208b cockpit http://www.cockpitbuilders.com/community/index.php?topic=5763.msg41536#msg41536

and I prefer the components of my cockpit to be self contained , so rather than throw another PC at it I decided to play with the RPi 3.

Comments from RayS made me aware of the Avidyne Entegra PFD and I seemed like an interesting challenge .

I now have what I think is most of the software components to finish off the PFD, I'm just going round in circles trying to get the HSI logic to work , and be simple. After that, I intend to connect up the buttons and encoders using the RPi. so it will work well as a "single component"
(My C208 uses Arduino + ArdSim for its inputs.)

Regards

Dave

[KyleH]

Hi Dave,

Just a curiosity, why are you doing an Avidyne display? All the caravan's with glass panels that I've seen are G1000's.

[mikeybear]

Hi Kyle,

I'm doing it more as an OpenGL  programming / RPi interfacing  exercise , I started With Classical Gauges which is what I fly on ,
I then started with a  moving map display.

RayS mentioned the Avidyne and it seemed well documented , and an easier way to learn how these things work. So I started playing ....

Maybe a  G1000 next

Regards

Dave

[RayS]

Dave,

If you're interested I have an Avidyne Entegra instructional DVD I could send you.

Kyle:
Shhh! He's working on an Avidyne! Don't distract him! ;-)

[mikeybear]

Hi Ray,

That would be useful

Regards

Dave