Computer tool for setting up EMS screens?

[schristo]

Is there a computer program available to set up the graphics for the EMS screens then upload the finished layout to the skyview system?

It would be far more effective and useful in polishing the presentation of data working with a mouse at a desk rather than poking at the buttons in the plane...

 

[dynonsupport]

Unfortunately not. But we think that the SkyView-based setup is really slick ourselves!

 

[schristo]

it IS very slick but you guys get to 'play' with it at your desk rather than in a hangar while running down a battery... no big deal, it is easy to do and once it is all set up there is not much to fiddle with.

 

[mmarien]

I had a quick look through the N#####_VER_ems_FILENAME.dfg with the idea of writing something along the lines of what stephen is requesting as while the interface is slick, it's frustrating slow to work with. Most of the file is easy enough to decipher although I haven't spent the time to completely disassemble it. It would be nice to drag and drop the widgets, right click to set the properties, slide the range limits around with the mouse and stretch the widget by dragging a corner.

A couple of questions did cross my mind in the display layout area of the file. What happens if I modify the height and width of a widget to something other that the standard sizes. Would Skyview honour those sizes? Can the width of the widgets bars or arcs be modified? Can I make the bar twice as wide? A fat main tank and skinny header tank would reflect the capacity of the fuel tanks better.

I guess when I have time I could hand code a few deviations in the file and load it back into Skyview to check the results. I always have a backup if I mess it up badly.

That brings up the other question. The installation manual does a good job of explaining the options, but is there documentation for the EMS file itself. It would save the time it took to disassemble.

Finally, is there a chance of crashing the system or does Skyview ignore any obvious errors in the file? How does Dynon feel about someone fiddling with the code in the ems file?

Curious

 

[dynonsupport]

Everything that is in the file should both be honored and protected from being really wrong, but we haven't tested everything for insane extremes of course.

You can adjust for wider / taller/ whatever arcs and bars. The adjustments are there because they work. We would have done "small, medium, large" if there was a limit.

We are ok with you adjusting things in the file- that's why we made the file in plain text, and we hoped some advanced users would do some neat things with it.

We hope to make the editor in SkyView better someday with more options, but it's just one more of those things on the long list right now and isn't one of our priorities. Not sure we ever plan on doing a PC editor, but if someone else wants to do that it would sure be a neat tool.

One thing we will do is make movement in the editor quicker. The delay in large movements now is due to a way a bit of the code works and we do expect to redo that shortly so it will be easier to move things.

We also hope to document the file format better in the future (We already have for making your own sensors), but we also tried to make it as obvious as possible. We're happy to answer questions about it too.

Just one note, anything in the config file can be individually imported. So if you want to just adjust the Tach size, you can literally just import that one line. The file doesn't need to be whole to import it.

 

[mmarien]

Thanks - I also can't make it a priority right now but the idea that it's open to experiment makes it intriguing.

 

[mmarien]

How do the sizes and offsets in the N#####_VER_ems_FILENAME.dfg file relate to the screen? For instance in the Layout_20 a widget has an x and y offset. It looks like they are related to the height of the screen where the height is 100. Is it the same relationship for both the seven and ten inch screens?

Murray

 

[dynonsupport]

Same relationship for both screens. They're arbitrary units, not pixels or any metric or standard. I don't have a quick answer for the bounds on the units and how they map sizes, so your best bet is going to be to experiment a bit to see how numbers relate to widget placement.