Trouble with Seattle Avionics DataManager.... again....

[Marc_J._Zeitlin]

Well, dang - that was it. Turned off the machine, set it to USB 3.0, booted windows, and was able to get DataManager to see it and use it.

Thanks a million!

 

[felix1973]

Sure - that works. And it's what they recommended I do. But even then, you need to spend $79 for Parallels, and then $139 for Windows 10. So it's still an extra $218, and more software to support and deal with, just to be able to download data. On general principle, I said no thanks.

And while you theoretically CAN manually download SA's data on a Mac and then arrange it correctly on the thumb drives, I figured that it would take about 10 hours of work each month to do so - read their recommended process, and look at how many files it requires if you want anywhere near the whole USA. All because they won't hire a 14 year old programmer for a week to re-write the code as a web based app, so that it would run on ANY platform.

Are there really only 7 of us that use Macs? Sheesh.

I borrow my hangar mate's Windows 10 machine he keeps at the hangar. If he ever removes it, I'll have to reconsider how much I want the plates and sectionals.

Marc,

I am using a Mac hardware and my data manager runs perfectly well. This is how I run it:
* VM Fusion Player - Personal use license - free
* Windows 10 as virtual machine. Bought for $32 at kinguin.net

No issues at all.
Cheers
Felix

 

[Solana]

Sadly, the Seattle Avionics database updates are now consistently arriving just barely before the expiration of the current databases, much later that the Dynon database and Garmin database updates. So Seattle Avionics update software is very slow, on occasion the maps have an error, the tech support is almost non-existent, and now they are not as prompt in offering database cycle updates. Things are sadly going in the wrong direction. Very different from the very high quality support and data from Dynon.

 

[swatson999]

Freaking *awesome* program /s. Brand new SanDisk 32GB stick, formatted as FAT32, and this POS program has all sorts of trouble updating the data to it. It either hangs up partway through, or stops loading files on the stick and reports Update Process Complete. Meanwhile, every one of the idiotic little balls for the stick except one shows red. This thing is the WORST software I've run into in years, and they seem to do NOTHING to fix any of its flaws.

If it weren't so cheap, and the data so good (albeit actually repackaged government-issued data), I'd have chucked this crap-@ss program out years ago. PLEASE, Dynon, can you find a different supplier of this data so we can be rid of this awful thing?

 

[Spert]

I put off trying Seattle Avionics charts because of all the problems I heard about with the SA's Data Manager program. But a year ago I decided to give them a try. For the last year I've had zero problems with the DM program, or using the charts on my SkyView Touch. Today I went to SA's website and re-upped for another year. A short time later I fired up the DM program to check and see if the new subscription end date showed up, and it did. So no problems.

I'm running the DM program on an iMac via Parallels VM running Windows 10, and using two different SanDisk Ultra 32GB USB 3.0 drives.

It would be interesting to find out why some folks have problems and others don't.

I have been using it for about 6 months with no issue. Sometimes takes a while due to the large amounts of data, but I have had no problems updating each cycle. I’m using a windows based system.

 

[jmurtagh13]

Yeah, I'm in the group that has never had a problem with SA. I've been running it for 6 years from a Dell Windows10 desktop.

 

[CanardMulti]

I guess I'm also one of the lucky ones with no problems for the past 3 years. Yes, the program is clunky and slow, but it chugs away and eventually gets the job done. I do not run it in the background; I run it live with no other programs on line due to bandwidth issues.

Some data points: I use a slightly older W10 custom built computer with a high end AMD CPU and 32 GB of DDR3 RAM. My connection speeds are *painfully* slow due to rural internet. My thumb drives are USB 3.0 compact Samsung 128 GB - yes, 128 GB - formatted in FAT32. There are lots of 3rd party programs that will format thumb drives in FAT32 beyond whatever limit (if any) W10 imposes these days. The one I use is MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

Note: Every time I plug one of these drives into my computer, an error message pops up saying there is a "problem" with the drive and offers to "repair" it. I decline the "help". I strongly suspect, but cannot say for sure, that the oversize FAT32 formatting upsets it. It might also be whatever SA does to initially prepare the drive to be compatible w/ their program. At any rate, I leave well enough alone and everything seems to work just fine.

Ken

 

[porterjames]

I also am in the "I don't have a problem" group.
With Dynon's next firmware update you can transfer the data wirelessly (if you have a Dynon dongle) from an IPAD to the USB in the airplane.
I for one do not want Dynon to change providers. I have a Lifetime subscription that I don't want to lose.

 

[CanardMulti]

Clip from a Seattle Avionics email newsletter yesterday:

 

[airguy]

They might have a new chartdata manager, but it still hasn't been released to the general public yet, and it certainly hasn't improved their business. Here we are today only two days from data expiration on the charts, and we still don't have it available for download YET AGAIN.

 

[swatson999]

They might have a new chartdata manager, but it still hasn't been released to the general public yet, and it certainly hasn't improved their business. Here we are today only two days from data expiration on the charts, and we still don't have it available for download YET AGAIN.

Hardly surprising...they got bought out back in September 2020. I'm betting that DataManager will ultimately go away, as nobody there seems particularly concerned about maintaining or upgrading it (despite what they say in their blog), or they'd have done it years ago. I think their revenue stream is focused on other products, and of course, now that they got bought...well, we'll see, but I'm not hopeful.

Dynon should just assign a team to doing their own data processing of the (free) government data and develop their own tools, instead of relying on SA.

 

[Corefile]

Hardly surprising...they got bought out back in September 2020. I'm betting that DataManager will ultimately go away, as nobody there seems particularly concerned about maintaining or upgrading it (despite what they say in their blog), or they'd have done it years ago. I think their revenue stream is focused on other products, and of course, now that they got bought...well, we'll see, but I'm not hopeful.

Dynon should just assign a team to doing their own data processing of the (free) government data and develop their own tools, instead of relying on SA.

I sent two emails to support asking question about a problem I was having, and for clarification on instructions on their website.. they never responded to either of my inquiries

 

[swatson999]

I sent two emails to support asking question about a problem I was having, and for clarification on instructions on their website.. they never responded to either of my inquiries

This is why I don't buy lifetime subscriptions from providers. Once they start offering them, you can generally be assured they're on the way out (else why lose the year-on-year revenue stream? They need the cash *now*, so they offer lifetime subscriptions, and if they go bust, well...).

 

[owenssonex]

I just ran the update and was able to get the new VFR information updated on my USB in about 8 minutes. There are a number of things I did that seem to have improved the update performance: (Prior to all of this, my update times were multiple hours)
-I cleaned up my USB drive by deleting numerous files. Especially the X:\ChartData\Plates\ deleting everything but the US folder. The other folders are Central america countries. The folders came back on the next update but I believe this really helped to delete the folders and start new.
-Cleaned up the rest of the X:\ChartData subdirectories to have only the data I needed. The file naming helps identify the data you want.
-Ran a defrag on my USB drive.
-Unchecked the Approach Plates and Airport Diagrams (I'm VFR only, the Seattle Avionics airport diagrams are sufficient for me)
-I have three VFR Sectional Chart states selected.
I believe today's update counted up to about 24,000 files very rapidly. Prior to the above actions, the count up to 24,000 was PAINFULLY slow.

 

[swatson999]

And here's my latest experience...leaving the USB stick in the computer overnight, came back to a *partially* updated USB stick. The Scanned Charts were all updated on both the computer and the stick, but neither the SA Airport Diagrams nor the Approach Plates/Airport Diagrams were updated on either the computer or the stick. Manually doing an "Update Now" and it's downloading them now. Awesome. /s

This is what I mean by calling the program poor and unreliable. It's *not* reliable.

And if you click on the Support link on their webpage, this is what you get:

Server Error in '/' Application.

---

​

The resource cannot be found.​

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.


Requested URL: /support.aspx

---

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.8.4330.0

 

[andresmith76]

Just received an email from SA that new charts are available for download. How about that - new charts the day before the old ones expire. I couldn't ask for anything more - thank you Seattle Avionics!

 

[PilotMelch]

This is why I don't buy lifetime subscriptions from providers. Once they start offering them, you can generally be assured they're on the way out (else why lose the year-on-year revenue stream? They need the cash *now*, so they offer lifetime subscriptions, and if they go bust, well...).

Well, I purchased the lifetime subscription to their charts for Dynon Skyviews back in 2015. Apparently, their offer of a lifetime subscription then wasn't any indicator they were going out of business or "away". It's been almost 7 years now. What a great investment it has been!! I used to have a few problems with the Database Manager they had back then, but haven't had any issues now for well over 3 years, on multiple computers. Smooth as silk for me.

 

[PilotMelch]

And here's my latest experience...leaving the USB stick in the computer overnight, came back to a *partially* updated USB stick. The Scanned Charts were all updated on both the computer and the stick, but neither the SA Airport Diagrams nor the Approach Plates/Airport Diagrams were updated on either the computer or the stick. Manually doing an "Update Now" and it's downloading them now. Awesome. /s

This is what I mean by calling the program poor and unreliable. It's *not* reliable.

And if you click on the Support link on their webpage, this is what you get:

Server Error in '/' Application.​

---

​

The resource cannot be found.​

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.


Requested URL: /support.aspx

---

Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.8.4330.0

I would suggest your problems may (likely) be related more to your USB thumb drive(s), your computer's internet connection, or one or more of the many other software or hardware components involved in updating your chart data. SA's Database Manager gets blamed for issues well beyond their control, just as Microsoft used to for crashing apps built by others and badly written drivers written by others. It's natural to focus on the Database Manager as being the problem when that is what you're focussed on and ignore all the other fragilities in this complex system.

I would suggest checking the following:

Be sure you have the latest SA Database Manager installed (the version is shown at the bottom of the window. The latest version is currently 5.4.0.0540 as of 01/25/2022. You can download the latest from https://seattleavionics.com/products/Chartdata/ if needed.

This goes for Windows itself too. Make sure you have all updates installed, especially drivers.

MOST IMPORTANT: Be sure you have good quality USB Thumb drive(s). USB thumb drives are a type of storage memory that is highly (now say "highly" about 3 more times) unreliable. Anyone familiar with Flash ROM and how there is internal circuitry that maintains the remaining "good" areas of memory and recovers, and then blocks the detected "bad" areas can explain why this is the case. But in short, always buy high-quality thumb drives, with a high-speed rating. Otherwise, you will eventually have issues. And when folks have issues that are directly related to the thumb drives that are blindly trusted they tend to quickly blame the app they are focussed on because there is hardly ever an error message stating there is a problem with the thumb drive. Instead, the OS just keeps "trying" to use it as long as the internal circuitry keeps trying to keep on keeping on. I highly suspect this is the main cause of problems folks are seeing with SA's Database Manager.

Make sure your Internet connection is good. All apps struggle when their "connection" to a server or service is interrupted during a long transfer. Getting the data from SA takes several large transfers, whereas getting a web page in your browser is usually several tiny (by comparison) transfers (first the page, then this image, then that image, ...) With tiny transfers, it is easy for apps to recognize they need to retry the transfer. Apps have to be written to recover from an interruption/disconnection, but they can only do so much, make so many assumptions.

Make sure you have enough free hard drive space on your computer. Windows will bog down quickly when you don't have enough space for it to "page" its memory to the hard drive. Open File Explorer, go to This PC, and look at the free space left on your main drive (usually C. Is it almost full? Is the bar the color red? If so, clean it up by removing stuff that isn't needed (temp files, old downloads, old apps you never use, etc.). Or you can use an app such as Norton Utilities or any number of other PC cleanup utilities. Your other apps will thank you too.

Make sure you have enough free memory (RAM). Windows will bog down when its free working memory fills up. This can happen for many reasons, but it usually gets slow when it is forced to "page" its memory to the hard drive. In summary, it determines what memory hasn't been used in a while and writes it to the HDD for safekeeping (that's "paging"). This frees up working memory for other, more current tasks. Then it pages something else out and brings the other stuff back in if it is called upon again. This process can take noticeable time when there is a lot going on, or your computer doesn't have enough RAM to tackle what you're asking of it in the first place.

After that there are any number of possible issues, such as a problem with your USB ports, or more likely, the USB drivers. There could also be some other process that is using the Internet bandwidth, WiFi router issues, firewall issues, etc. etc.

As I've stated before, I have ZERO problems with SA's Database Manager. Everything happens automatically and is quite easy to do. I just insert the two USB thumb drives and it updates them. Then I put them in my HDX's. Honestly, the process to update the Garmin PFD's is a much bigger hassle for many reasons, and they often don't have their DB's ready until the day before the current DB expires. They have a set release schedule and so does Dynon. I've NEVER seen a problem with either that the DB's weren't available by the expiration of the prior one.

So, everyone having issues should ask themselves, if it works so well for most folks, why am I having problems. The answer likely has more to do with the fact that there is a lot going on, several different systems, software components, hardware manufactures, etc. here that all have to work well, and the mix is not the same for everyone. The Database Manager is just one software component, and in my experience, when everything else works well, that app works just fine.


Finally, I don't know what support link you clicked on to get the 404 error on their website. I'm sure there are several in different places on the website. The URL in the error you reported doesn't even appear on the site anywhere I could tell. I tried at least three different links just now and they all went to https://seattleavionics.com/support/, which works just fine on my computer. Maybe they fixed a problem? Anyway, from my perspective their site is fine right now.

 

[swatson999]

I've had these same problems with numerous computers, standalone and laptop, numerous types and sizes of USB drives, hard-wired, WiFi and broadband connections. I've had it happen at work, at home, and at the hangar office. I've reformatted drives and had them continue to fail to work with SA. I've had drives that *did* work, *stop* working. I know what paging is...I have an MS in CS.

This is more than just my computer or USB stick not working. *THE PROGRAM SUCKS*.

https://www.seattleavionics.com/DataManager.aspx and click on Support (https://www.seattleavionics.com/support.aspx).

 

[airguy]

When you click the "HELP" button on the newest software, it goes into detail about how to set up a USB for use and tips/tricks on getting the best service from the manager. Included in that text is this gem, emphasis mine below.

Dynon SkyView
Data Manager normally runs in the background while your computer is running and downloads new data shortly after the data become available on the Seattle Avionics server (typically the day before the current data cycle ends). US data is updated every 28 days.

For years this was "The Thursday before the current data cycle ends", and now it has been quietly changed to "the day before".

Fabulous.