Experimental Class

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 12:46 pm

Anyone else experimenting with their own multifunction displays, EFIS, EIS, ?? For some reason, I'd like to do some on my own and am curious if others are also. I understand that some of the current experimental glass products had their origin in this area.

Post by **Spike** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:01 pm

I know we have a member who does not post too often that is doing his own synthetic vision system. Its pretty slick. Hopefully he will see this and respond.

-- John

svanarts · Post by **svanarts** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:12 pm

Synthetic vision?? I'd like to hear about that. What is he trying to do? See the ground/runway through the clouds? Radar? Infrared? Extraterrestrial technology?

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 1:26 pm

I guess I'll "me too" my own post as what I was originally thinking was EFIS, EIS stuff; but the synthetic vision stuff sounds really interesting.

Afterall, this IS the experimental class, and doesn't have to be just rivets, composites, and aluminum.

Philip Cobbin · Post by **Philip Cobbin** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:32 pm

I have an experimental synthetic as an engineering prototype which uses the Crossbow uNAV sensor in combination with the open source Flightgear flight simulation software.

In addition to driving the 3d flight sim using the Crossbow sensor, I have done some extensive automation to analyze the DAFIF database to generate 3d representations of airspace boundaries, waypoints, glide slopes, navaids, and signage. The project is discribed begining on my home page at

http://cobbin.com

and the "airspace" program used to generate the 3d effects is also published under the

"terragear" project off the main page of the flightgear.org simulation project website.

Curt Olsen the project manager for flightgear at the Univ. of Minn. also has extensive experience in syntetic vision and has used a similar attitude sensor to display a synthetic view in real time on the ground for an rc airplane flying overheadd.

http://www.cobbin.com/

The system requires an graphics acceleration board to do the rendering, I have a toaster sized shuttle 25p which is a 64 bit AMD box and it screams.

Flightgear is at

http://flightgear.org/

besides my cobbin.com websiite, this terragear site also has the current release of the airspace generation code:

http://flightgear.org/terragear/

I am about to release an update which will have fancier texturing, Spike I think just got two jpegs as samples....

Post by **Spike** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:35 pm

Fixed your link buddy. Thanx for stopping by and giving an update. The screen shots (I didn't save them) looked fantastic. Im definately in awe of what you have been able to do!

Philip Cobbin · Post by **Philip Cobbin** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 2:44 pm

You want me to resend the jpegs?

I'm cleaning up my code so I can back to hardware work. I'm trying to add in two 8 channel A/D boards so I track power and airframe information....

svanarts · Post by **svanarts** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:07 pm

This is incredible. The avionics in 5 years will be incredible. I think experimental aviation is in large part responsible for the developments that we have now and are in the works. I can see my dream device in the not too distant future:
A single glass instrument that will tell me my attitude, airspeed, direction, overlaid on a terrain display that will mirror a sectional chart but with terrain. It will maintain my visual perspective from the cockpit, objects far away appear smaller, object closer appear larger. Also, airspace will be depicted in 3D. It will drive an autopilot and have the ability to fly standard departures and approaches. It will also have the ability to perform inflight routing as in, route me around restricted or high density airspace. It will have traffic depiction and also be able to route me around traffic. There will be a standard air-to-air communication channel for these devices to communicate with one another being able to relay information gathered at a distance to participating devices. I'll be able to communicate with this device from my home computer to upload flightplans, and download flight and performance data while the plane is sitting in the hangar. It will also have an engine monitor built in that analyzes the engine operation and makes suggestions for optimum range, economy, power, etc.

And I see it in less than 10 years.

You up for that Phil? You could drive Blue Mountain into the dirt with such a box.

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:19 pm

THANKS! Lots of very good information. And it is exciting.

Is the air space program where the translucent air space objects came from for Google Earth?

Philip Cobbin · Post by **Philip Cobbin** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 4:53 pm

Beats me, not sure what you are referring to. I put up a translucent boundary for the myriod of Class A - E and Special use Airspace boundaries.

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 5:22 pm

They are 3D translucent polygon overlays for Google Earth. The polygons show the various US airspaces in 3D along with SUA areas in 3D; probably from the same source data as you use.

I use them to critique flights by taking my GPS track data in 3D into Google Earth showing it along with all the other data.

bc

Philip Cobbin wrote:Beats me, not sure what you are referring to. I put up a translucent boundary for the myriod of Class A - E and Special use Airspace boundaries.

Philip Cobbin · Post by **Philip Cobbin** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:00 pm

Give me a couple days to clean some things up and I'll update my website. You can download the early system now and I think I have a copy of the corresponding DAFIF database on the site. The new version works off a newer DAFIF (they tweak the fields over time....)...and as a the FAA get's it's act together to add airspace boundaries to there database(s) I'll munch that. I going to try to see if I can crank out revisions to the airspace database on the Faa's update interval....

Be interesting to see if Google used the open source stuff or created their stuff independantly.

Phil Cobbin

Post by **Spike** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 8:11 am

Here are two images of his work guys. Enjoy:

-- John

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 9:08 am

I don't think it was Google. They just allow overlays. Here is where I got the airspace, SUA, and sectional overlays.

http://www.fboweb.com/antest/ge/intro.aspx

Here is a sample. This is Denver class B. The colored ribbons are GPS flight data showing me flying beneath and around the airspace while enroute to/from Fort Collins-Loveland, north of Denver. This is all post processing, not in-flight-real-time like you are working on.

Philip Cobbin wrote: Be interesting to see if Google used the open source stuff or created their stuff independantly.

Phil Cobbin

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 12:38 pm

I guess I'll just ask straight out, rather than indirectly:

I'd like to know more about a few things:

1. Display - The type, mfg, model of the display being used in the current EFIS products. I know that Sharp is a big vendor of these type displays. The sunlight readable ones seem to have brightnesses on the order of 1500 nits, and some say dimmable for night flying to just a few nits. Some vendors tout transflective as being better (lower power) while others stand by their high brightness display. Does anyone know more & care to share with me display makes, models, etc for an experimental project.? I also understand hardware acceleration of the graphics is a good thing. Which chips, NVida????

2. Processor, SBC, OS - There are a limited number of single board computers around that might have enough processing power for this kind of job. Does anyone know believe most have their own multithreaded RT system as you would not want to have the OS get in the way.

3. Solid State Gyro - MEMS - or whatever. The uNav total system seems to expensive. GRT says they have a dedicated processor just for AHRS. But what solid state gyros are available, make, part#, etc?

4. GPS modules, makes, models, Garmin 10????

I know, I want a lot; but just wanting to be an experimental person.

bc

svanarts · Post by **svanarts** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:10 pm

I'd like to see it overlaid on a sectional or else have a sectional just beside the display with the aircraft's position on it. But like I said, that may be a ways into the future.

cjensen · Post by **cjensen** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:35 pm

that looks freakin' sweet!!!

BillyBob · Post by **BillyBob** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 2:08 pm

Here is the Denver one posted above, with the sectional data as opposed to satellite imagry.

Philip Cobbin · Post by **Philip Cobbin** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 4:00 pm

I havent't gotten the hange of how to post pics here so I'll send them to spike...
meanwhile, back at the ranch....the two shots are for the denver area with a framerate of in the 40 frames a second range.

This is runnong on a Shuttle SN25P, an AMD 64 box with a (if I recall right) a 4000 processor, 2 gig of ram and running with a NVIDIA GT7800 acceleration board. On llinux the NVIDIA puts out a glxgears statistic of 13.5k frames per second.

The jpegs are from the version 0.2 release using DAFIF editionn 8. It will be a bit before it shows up on my website. I've emailed a copy to the flightgear project manager for inclusion n the terragear source tree.

captain_john · Post by **captain_john** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 5:41 pm

WOW, that is some cool stuff!

This is why we want to be experimental category!

Keep it up guys!

CJ

RivetBangers.com

Experimental Class

Experimental Class

Me too.

Synthetic Vision: Open source project based on flighgear

synthetic vision...the saga continues...

Thanks

translucent airspace objects...

Re: translucent airspace objects...

SV_ Translucentcy....

Re: SV_ Translucentcy....

denver in 3d