AP76?

[dragonflyhkg]

Well Dynon,

AP76 - I reviewed my requirements today, and while Dynon continues to sell instruments of "heritage" (i.e. - prior to "Skyview"), no substantial development has ensued for the original product features that were announced to market. It seems that Dynon has moved on.

Dynon could roll out the COO again to make a statement to the market, but my guess is that we're all in for an "upgrade" before we see a positive response to our desires for "development" for our commitment to this product line.

It seems that Dynon has missed the point; the whole product line must move forward to retain its market share and acceptance.

I'll ask one more time;
what’s happening to the availability of the AP76 and the promised autopilot features contained within this device?

Regards,
Dragonfly
(still stuck in lateral modes only!)

 

[DBRV10]

Gooday dragonfly

As far as I can tell you, and I have been a big noise in their ear about the AP76 as has a few others, I believe that they are just not willing to make a statement that may slip, and cause more trouble.

I can not guarantee anything, I can not really speak for them officially in any way, but the discussions I have had while testing other aspects of the AP suggest that it will come some time soon.

They have been working really hard at perfecting or tuning the maths in the A/P for the Skyview, and this has a flow on effect to the Classic product, some of the features they are developing and getting to perform well are most likely integral to any VNAV functionality.

I dare say they will want to test it in the field thoroughly before release, so to avoid some of the problems we saw with the early releases. I am looking forward to testing this on the RV10 as it seems they are very demanding ariframes in the vertical sense.

Hang in their! I will be meeting with them at the factory in a few weeks after Oshkosh, and hope to see good things to come. Of course any official announcements will no doubt come from them directly as a news release on the company website.

Cheers
DB

 

[RobertHamilton]

David, thank you, you are correct.

We have not changed our plans for the AP76. As we have said before, we will tell everyone right away if that plan changes.

Maybe a better explanation of our autopilot strategy would help.  Our autopilot development is a top priority for us, with those developments benefiting both SkyView and the D10/D100/D180 Series.

Since SkyView has shipped in December, we have released 5.2 and 5.3 for the D100/D10/D180 units. 5.3 was a big update for the autopilot in terms of performance. 5.4 is going to ship shortly, which is another large improvement. We are far from stopping work on the D100 series autopilot.

The D10/D100/D180 has the same autopilot features the SkyView does. They run the same algorithms and very similar computer code.  Neither system has any vertical navigation features at this point.

Since we plan to add vertical autopilot coupling on SkyView, that same developments will results in those features on the D10/D100/D180. They aren't separate development projects for us. One system might get them before the other due to testing and other scheduling, but the hard work is the same project for both.

What might be interesting to know is that SkyView has not changed how we have done autopilot development. What has changed is that we decided to focus very much on autopilot performance over outright feature additions, based on customer feedback. We have been working full time on the autopilot, but it's been on making it more solid in the current feature set rather than adding features.  A bonus of these efforts are that they make vertical modes easier to implement with superior results.  We are not to the point of having a time frame for those features to release, but they are all still on our plan.

And best of all, we have had a lot of feedback from both SkyView and D10/D100/D180 (Beta 5.4) customers that the autopilot is performing VERY well.

-Robert
Dynon Marketing

 

[Brantel]

Robert,

Thanks for that post...lots of good info in there!!!

 

[DBRV10]

Gooday Robert

Keep up the good work!

See you in a few weeks i hope!

DB

 

[ploucandco]

Hi Robert,

Any news on 5.4? Target date?

Also, what about an autotrim feature? I understand that it involves hardware and cabling to the trim servos, but that would be a fantastic feature for the vertical mode. I had a first preliminary flight on my Europa XS with both servos (SW 5.3 on a D10A) and the need to retrim (yellow indicator) when speed is changing tells me that I am missing such feature.

Thanks, Jacques.

 

[dynonsupport]

5.4 is due in the next couple weeks. Endish of August, basically, with that date of course pending final release testing.

No autotrim planned at the moment - the advanced autopilot features on both systems are "next up" on both product lines, and that's a good chunk of effort ahead.

 

[vlittle]

I have a servo motor controller design that is capable of taking autotrim commands from any compatible EFIS.

I have developed a protocol for this that is easy for Dynon to implement, but I would be willing to work with anything Dynon can throw at me. This controller will be released as an open-source hardware device on the MakerPlane web site once finalized.

If Dynon is interested in working with me, you have my number.

Thanks, Vern Little
Vx Aviation