Going to the E(xtreme)FIS
As we are about to go get the electronics for the Long ez, Garmin looks and works great, but there’s definitely more to be done. The G3x hasn't really evolved since its release just over 10 years ago, great for 2014, terrible compared to a 60 quid smartphone on amazon. Let’s do better.
I found a great site made by a guy in France who has made an EFIS and EMS from off the shelf prototyping/hobbyist parts. it works great though may need a little sprucing up in terms of looks. I’ll try replicate it to get it working to start, then start down the long road towards a 2024 level system.
People will scream immediately two things;
The hardware and software need to be reliable, stick with the tried and tested
don’t use hobbyist/development parts in aircraft
On the first point, I agree, it needs to be reliable. a board made in the millions is almost certainly as reliable if not more so. If we all stuck with tried and tested there would have been negligible progress - if there is a better way to do something, be better.
In a previous job we built a water level sensor, put it in a Tupperware box and hot glued a solar panel on the top. It was based around an Arduino nano with a custom power circuit, backup battery and satellite communication.
Three units - in the amazon rainforest for 18 months untouched worked perfectly reliably. In fact it far exceeded expectations as we expected failure after a few months (proof of concept on the asset owner’s site) particularly with 100% humidity, 40 degree weather and monkeys stealing anything they can grab (completely true, you have to put things under nets and ties it down firmly). Building around an arduino board is the way forward in the short term, will need a lot more power to do more than read sensors and output basic graphics. Let’s start somewhere and iterate.
Two goals in mind;
Make something comparable to a Garmin G5 (same rough size) with built in EMS
Build a G3x rival system with 3D mapping and terrain akin to Microsoft Flight Simulator terrain with unreal 5 level graphics
Stage one will hopefully only take a few months, aiming for the winter. The second goal will take much much longer so if someone wants to help out lets work together!