Is there going to be a new software release or are us experimental owners now abandoned?

sunfish

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Jan 21, 2013
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I get the distinct feeling from the apparent lack of attention to experimental users that Dynon is now going for the big bucks in certified equipment, what then follows is a sale of the company to a big conglomerate. While it’s Dynons perfect right to do that, I hate the idea of having to deal with legacy electronics, supported, if that is the word, by a company that couldn’t care less about after sales service, which is the feeling I’m starting to get.

I had that happen to me before - a great bullet proof reliable product replaced by low quality junk.
 

GalinHdz

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Mar 3, 2008
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What makes you think having not having continuous software releases means no support? FWIW I prefer not to update a known working system than do a non critical update that might introduce a new problem. That is why, unless there is a critical issue being corrected, I wait until a significant amount of time has passed with no reports of adverse operation before I upgrade to the "latest and greatest". An aircraft EFIS is not an "iThingy".

:(
 
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ackselle

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Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
For what it's worth, I've had nothing but good experience dealing with Dynon support. I don't follow how there's any indication they've ignored the experimental world.

Please explain.
 

Steveden

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Jul 10, 2019
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Carnation, WA
I have to agree with Galin, I have no idea where you get that Dynon is becoming a bunch of junk. I also don't get this big obsession with getting all upset when an update gets delayed. :confused: We didn't need updates before we had Dynon panels and we could still fly our planes and for some astonishing reason my airplane still flies whether or not it has the latest update in it now. In all businesses new products and services always get some priority which is understandable, however, I haven't seen any reduction in the quality of their products or services as a result of their certified offering, in fact just the opposite. By the way Dynon has no "big bucks" certified equipment, it's the same price as the experimental equipment.
 

WmInce

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Jul 10, 2019
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The Dynon support I have received (experimental) over the past 6 years has been nothing short of stellar. I have dealt with them 7 or 8 times over that time period. They provide the best in the industry. Who does it better?
 

preid

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Jan 22, 2010
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SoCal
I can understand the frustration of the delay in getting out v16. I know that most of the upgrades are for the HDX and I agree the skyview is passé so I am not holding my breath for anything great for my skyview, but I am waiting for the autopilot and any other tweaks and improvements.
I’ve been with Dynon for over 10 years and I’m not sure what you mean about after sales? support is fantastic! They have replaced my hardware when there is issues. If you look at the certified forums Support it’s just as slow to respond to them as they are to us.
To your point, certified means it has to be close to or perfect when released, so I expect the extended delay in the release is due to needing the fixes to be perfect. I have frustrations with 3rd party support, but none with after sales, they are a great group of folks and I really do think they care, but lets face it, Skyview is 10 year old technology and Dynon has to keep up with others to remain in the market. My Skyview Touch works brilliantly now so upgrades are no longer a "wish list" but an "improvement on" a great feature that works today; there really isnt much there to work on.
If I could choose, I wish there was a smaller experimental version released, that had the skyview tweaks versus having to wait for the certified version to be released months later.
 

DBRV10

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Jun 15, 2008
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Brisbane, Qld. Australia
Sunny.........I have known you for well over a decade, and your glass half empty attitude might be applicable elsewhere in the industry but not here.

I have been testing some of the certified software for several months now and I am going to tell you straight, the certified work is actually yielding good results for the experimental product.

For example I found a bugaboo 9 years ago in the AP software......and despite much reporting testing and data analysis it was never found and fixed. It was a crazy one, and only a few would ever find it. Well an intern working for the engineering team (because of the certified work) was given a task.....find this bug. They did. It was a "come to Jesus moment" and now it is fixed.

This is one example of why I say, be patient. Good things are still happening. Even if you cant see them.....YET.
 

Dynon

Dynon Staff
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It's true that our Dynon Certified efforts have redistributed our development resources some, and that we haven't had as much velocity on our experimental release this time around. There are also some other projects that we're not talking about yet that have been competing for priority. We think you'll be excited about those when we lift the veil soon.

That said, work on v16 continues, with features like supporting the newer ADS-B products, improvements to vertical navigation, and more coming soon. We're a bit reticent to pinpoint a release date, because, as has been pointed out, it was originally targetted at last year.

Speaking to a comment mid-thread: We've been upfront about the fact that over time, SkyView Classic and Touch may not see all of the feature improvements that SkyView HDX does going forward, as there are limits to those systems' user interface and internals compared with the newer HDX. That said, we expect many of the v16 improvements to be available for all.

And, while it's true that this experimental software release is a bit more spaced out than in the past, our after-sales support, service, and customer support is better than ever. We can still support our recently-sunsetted D10/D100 series products, which are coming up on 20 years old, and have no plans to discontinue that support. In contrast, all of our SkyView systems are still in production, we're still developing software for them, and we'll continue to for a long time to come.
 

gtae07

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Dec 10, 2013
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It's amazing how spoiled we can get sometimes :cool:

Seriously, my first "real" job (an internship in 2004) was doing testing in the engineering sim for what was basically the most advanced civilian cockpit in the world, at the time. Flat panel displays, a color moving map with (basically) drag-and-drop flight planning, terrain and weather overlays, etc. Stuff that absolutely blew my mind coming from PPL instruction in a steam-gauge C150. Synthetic vision was something floating about as "maybe we'll be testing that in a development lab in a few years".

In 2013 I flew to Oshkosh with my dad in his RV-6, freshly upgraded with a Skyview. He had synthetic vision, ADS-B datalinks, moving map, terrain, weather, autopilot, etc. in an interface eerily similar to that bleeding-edge multimillion-dollar cockpit I was working with only nine years before. In his homebuilt. And we've only seen more things come along since then.

But my point is, we now have a fairly mature product, and I think we're starting to get to the point of "well, what's even left to implement?" Most of the low-hanging fruit is gone, the market is more or less competitive in feature sets between the various EFIS models, and it looks like most of the potential stuff that's left, beyond perhaps bug fixes, is stuff that is going to take a long time and/or a lot of money to do (prime example: an IFR GPS capability). So I'd expect that new releases with new features are slowing down just because of that.

Beyond that is the certified market. Developing things for certified aircraft vs. experimentals is more expensive and takes longer, even if for no other reason than the paperwork requirements. But rolling features from the certified product to the experimental one is virtually free, compared to the extra time it would take to port a feature originally developed only for an experimental product into the certified one. From that standpoint it makes a lot of sense to do as much of your development as you can for a certified product, because then you cover all your bases at once.


TL;DR: I wouldn't take the wait for a new update as a sign of Dynon "abandoning" the homebuilt market. I think it's just a sign of a mature product, and of trying to keep homebuilt and certified on the same page to keep development costs down.
 

sunfish

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Jan 21, 2013
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I guess I can upgrade if I need to but the truth is that the classic has more bells and whistles than I am ever going to need..... I just like new toys I guess........
 
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