First off, we are NOT discontinuing current products in case anyone got that impression. If you want to buy a D100 in a year, you can. We fully understand that NG is not for everyone.
We ARE supporting current customers. We have a trade in program for current products. You can move to the next system without paying full price for everything.
Here's one way to look at it: Your D10A or D100 will trade in for at least what a NG AHRS module costs. Your D10 or D120 will trade in for at least what a NG EMS module costs. A D180 will trade in for at least what an EMS and AHRS module costs.
So instead of keeping your current gen screens, you get the functionality that they could provide on the DSAB bus, and probably make some money at it. Instead of having to spend extra money on some sort of converter.
On top of that, you will actually get all the advanced functionality that the NG modules can provide instead of just a limited set that some converter might be able to do.
The situation where you want a second AHRS doesn't really worry us either. Dynon already sells the lowest priced EFIS units on the market, including our new, incredibly low priced D6 and D60. So if price is an issue, you're going to be staying with us. If price is not an issue, well, then why are you not buying a second NG screen and ADAHRS module? Doing that gives you a HUGE amount of redundancy. You now have two screens and two AHRS units, which are fully networked and redundant, and are still the least expensive things out there.
If you already have a NG EFIS, and you buy a D100, what exactly do you want shared between them? I guess the baro setting would be nice, but there is no reason for them to share attitude data. They each have a local AHRS, and they can't communicate if one fails, so there is no redundancy. What's the point in sending engine data from a D180 to the NG? Now you have TONS of panel space taken up by things that aren't redundant, but burn screen space doing the same thing as one another. Just run the D180 as the EMS- doing EMS on the NG panel won't gain you anything unless you are running the NG EMS module, since the real gains are in hardware in that system. Once you have a NG EFIS in the plane, you won't use the D180 as a PFD unless the NG fails, so the D180 can just be your 100% EMS.
The only reason to really convert EMS and AHRS data is for someone that wants to just buy a NG screen and then use the current product to display on the screen. We think we've covered this pretty well with the trade in program. Given that the screens are going to be the expensive part of the system (both in cost and panel space), not the modules, using data from some other thing with a screen emulating a module doesn't make a lot of sense.
We are always sorry when a customer wishes we were taking a different path, but please do know that we have considered this decision heavily.
We do hope you evaluate the market when you are in the mood to upgrade. Dynon will still be the highest price/performance ratio out there, and as a current customer, that will be even better because you can trade stuff in.
From a software side, of course it's possible to do conversion, but there's no way it's a simple give someone a bit of source code and let them go at it. For instance, the EMS on G1 and the EMS on NG don't even send the same kind of data over the network, so the converter would actually need to know the whole airplane's configuration in order to do the conversion. It's meant to be a closed network where well proven Dynon equipment lives. There's basic assumptions about devices on the NG bus, like we can update their firmware at any time and change messages that they send or use. How is any converter going to keep up to date? A converter is just not a viable product.
