Interconnections with Garmin avionics and Trutrak

[kens_cockpit]

I know I am showing my ignorance by asking these questions and I’m close to calling in an expert to do this part of the wring for me. In fact, I have been letting this aspect of the project stall me for 18 months or so now. I wander out to the shed and look and fiddle and come back inside because it’s all too hard for me to figure out. In the end this will be the aeroplane I want it to be but if I could start over I would build this as a day VFR plane. I would be flying by now! I’ve let fancy function creep overtake me. But I’m determined to take control again.
Can anyone help me?

I’ve got the following instruments:
• Dynon D10A EFIS
• Dynon EMS D10
• Garmin 340 Audio Panel
• Garmin 430 GPS etc. Connected to the GI106A (I think)
• Garmin 300XL GPS/Com
• Garmin GTX327
• Trutrak Digiflight II VS
• Trutrak ADI
• Plus backup ASI and Altimeter

I want to do the following:
• Hook up the Dynon d10A Alt output to the GTX 327 transponder
• Hook up the 430 output to the Trutrak autopilot
• Send the 300XL data to the EMS d10 to display as an HSI
• Provide some input to the Trutrak ADI for the DG function

I received a harness with all the Garmin instruments. It deals with the first two connections above. The connections between my Steinair D10A harness and the GTX327 transponder are straight forward.
I also have the Garmin harness P4001 connector pin 56 for RS232 output and 46 and 47 for GPS ARINC 429 out A & B to go to the Trutrak Autopilot pins 25, 26 and 27 respectively on the Steinair Trutrak Digiflight .Once again straight forward I think.

I think I can do the third connection by connecting pin 19 (of the 37 pin connector) on the GNC 300XL with shielded wire to the RS232 input pin on the EMS D10. There’s a post on the dynon support website which gives a bit more detail about this connection. I don’t want to pay for the dynon HS34  for the HSI function when this is just a nice function to have but not my main Nav device. I will have to add a pin to the Garmin harness but after some practice crimping and installing d-sub pins I think I’ll be able to do that.

I’m not sure where to get the track/heading data (not sure which it is) for the Trutrak ADI digital DG function from (I know a DG is heading but i thought I read somewhere that this instrument was designed to display track)

If the ADI is to show track can I use the same output from the same 300XL RS232 output that is going to the EMS D10?  If so should that be done in parallel or in series? Physically how should the connection be; 2 wires from the 300Xl going to each instrument separately or one going from the 300XL to say the Dynon EMS d10 and from there to the trutrak ADI?

Or if heading is to be displayed should I use the Dynon d10A EFIS RS232 output to go to the ADI; and can I do that if it is giving Alt info to the GTX327? Once again can that be done by splitting the signal or connecting the EMS D10 and Trutrak ADI in series on that output?

This is complicated further by the fact that there is a wire in the Garmin harness which was marked “Dynon” and it is connected to Pin 17 of the 300XL 37pin connector which is RS232 input.  Why do I want to input RS232 from the Dynon into the 300XL? Is it to provide the GPS with heading info so that it can calculate wind or something and if so wouldn’t I want that going to the 430 also?

Thanks for reading this long winded post. I look forward to the expertise of this forum to save me!!

I’ll be posting this on the Matronics forum and the VAF one also so ignore it if you go there.

 

[dynonsupport]

Re: Interconnections with Garmin avionics and Trut

The short answer is that the track input for your TruTrak needs to come from a GPS per their instructions. You'll need to get in touch with them for support on that front. Our products can't send any data to their autopilots since we don't generate GPS track or GPS roll steering commands (which is what they are looking for). Once you've got that bit out of the way you'll see that your installation is pretty straightforward.

On the Dynon end, you'll basically be bringing the Dynon serial output to the 327 per our documentation, and one of either the 300xl or 430's RS-232 serial output to our serial input (you can hook up both if you externally switch them), also per our documentation.

As for the 300XL wire marked Dynon - I'm not sure what's going on there. We don't send any data out that is consumable by the 300xl, we only can get data from it.