Category Archives: Avionics

Building your own Glass panel

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eagle_ecu_hmi_blogWhile its certainly a lot easier to lay out some cash and pick up a ready to fly glass panel, its highly unlikely you will find one that will communicate with your Precision Airmotive Eagle ECU. That was my challenge. Once I discovered that the Eagle ECU supported the industry standard Modbus communications protocol, the main hurdle had been crossed. The next was finding a display that would function in a bright cockpit and aviation environment. An American company called Horner has been designing and manufacturing programable controllers and control screens for years and I had been using them in a multitude of industrial and agricultural applications with success. It wasn’t until they rolled out the XL7 product line that the final hurdles could be overcome. A display that comes close to my Dynon skyview for brightness. It is touch activated and has hard keys along its right side. The unit has a number of features that I am exploiting for my application.XL7_FaceAngle_1_RGB-300x300

Present design interfaces to a GPS puck, the two Eagle ECUs and the Dynon serial data port. I also included a separate airspeed transducer to act as backup to Dynon. Its been a bit of work making it all come together over the last year. This unit will never replace a Dynon or Garmin for synthetic vision or moving maps but it does sweet work with trend displays and the handling of large packages of data. In the event of a Dynon failure, I can still safely fly and navigate my way to a safe landing site.The programming software which can be freely downloaded from the Horner website allows the user to program applications for whatever their creative minds desire. I’ll explain what I have done as time permits in future posts to this blog.

Here is a summary of the XL7 from the company web site:

  • All units feature a high-resolution wide aspect ratio 7″ WVGA Color Touch Screen with 1000 nits of brightness. The innovative display provides high outdoor visibility and allows the XL7 to be used in a wide variety of ambient condition applications.
  • Built-in digital & analog I/O with two 1MHz high-speed counters
  • Dual 10/100 Ethernet for factory and world-wide networking adding flexibility when linking to factory networks like Modbus/TCP and Ethernet/IP, while performing standard functions such as: web serving, FTP file transfer, E-mail and protocol support.
  • Dual CAN Ports for fieldbus flexibility. One port utilizes CsCAN for Distributed Plug and Play I/O over a 500m distance. The second port provides support for CANopen and J1939 for mobile applications
  • USB 2.0 Ports for programming & FLASH drive support
  • 32GB microSD Slot for Virtually Unlimited Data Logging

Its not my desire to market or prosper from what I am presenting here, just share what I have done and help you roll your own if you are so inclined.

Backup Airspeed Indicator

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ASI2My Engine and Flight System manager is designed to take four analog sensors on the main module. I have added a low range differential pressure transmitter to channel 1. This transmitter is calibrated for 0 to 25″ water which equals 0 to 195 knots/hour. The speed in MPH is calculated in the manager as MPH=SQR (“H2OX1980). I tied the high pressure port of the transmitter to the pitot line from the pitot port on the wing and the low pressure port of the transmitter is connected to the stock RV9A static ports on the aft sides of the fuselage. I’ll use a manometer to check the accuracy of the Dynon and this transmitter with the Engine and Flight manager this week. ASI3The bottom picture shows the tranmitter in relationship to the auto pilot servo motor.

Update March 10:

I didn’t get to using a manometer to verify the accuracy of the the two airspeed indicators (Dynon and my flight system manager) but I did apply a low pressure to the pitot line and then valved it in. Both indicators read within 2 to 4 knots of each other at a variety of different pressures (speeds). Left blocked in, the readings stayed solid for a few hours, indicating no fitting leaks.