SA Data Manager

[60av8tor]

Anyone else still have problems with this program. This has been, by far, the most frustrating program I've tried using in over 20 years. Sometimes updates, sometimes not, takes over 24 hours to do so, etc. And I only have 4 states slected . How on earth can my iPad app update the entire east coast in 20 minutes but this program cannot do 4 states in a day - if at all? People can bad mouth the big G all they want, but I'd gladly pay more for just half the frustration I have with SA...

Really tired of the monthly fiasco. When it comes panel time for my current project, my avionics WILL NOT be dependent upon SA.

 

[kurtfly]

I have had issues in the past with the SA Data Manager. I fixed the problems by:

**Open task manager and kill all Data manager tasks. Check in the "Processes" tab and kill those tasks also. Re-booting computer does not kill these processes. You must kill them in task manager.

**Un-check all auto download / auto start tasks options within Datamanager. This just starts several processes that conflict with each other. I have seen 4 or 5 processes running at the same time. This caused it to download with errors.

**Make sure your computer does not have any "Auto Off" or "Auto sleep" settings set in the power saving settings.

When you want to download new data start the process manually. Insert the map thumb drive and start update. It takes my computer over night to download the entire lower 48 (VFR and IFR). In the am it will be all green, ready to go... This works for me. Good luck!

 

[jdubner]

Take a look at Avare

Jon,

I feel your pain and will be rid of Seattle Avionics when my subscription expires.  But even now I greatly prefer the free charts in Avare with an inexpensive Nexus 7 tablet.

My workaround solution for SA updates is run a PC overnight once every 28 days.  SA's clunky update program brings the PC to its knees but I accept that since I run nothing else during the upgrade.  Alas, this doesn't do me any good when I'm away from home as the SA app requires a larger screen resolution than my netbook PC's.  So I let them expire and use the charts in Avare which take less than a half-hour to update on a good WiFi link.

Avare is available on Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ds.avare&hl=en

--
Joe

 

[swatson999]

I've complained about this before...SA's program truly is bad. Recently, it got itself confused and proceeded to somehow completely fill my hard drive...over 100 GB of data. I had to find this garbage data and delete it manually.

They really should hire a decent web/applications programming team to improve their tool.

 

[William_Ince]

In these times, the best way to force a company to listen to its customers is "vote with your wallet."  That definitely gets their attention.

On a more positive note, that is why Dynon is such a great company.
They listen to their customers and make timely improvements to their products based upon recommendations and requests from the people who are using the equipment.
Tech support is excellent.  The best in the industry.
Their products are very competitively priced.
What more can be said for a fine company.

No, I don't work for Dynon . . . but if I did, I would be very proud and productive.

 

[swatson999]

I would vote with my wallet, but then I'd lose the chart capability of the SV, and I love having them. I just wish that SA would improve their tool (because the charts themselves are great to have).

 

[60av8tor]

Here is the the reply from SA support:

Great feedback! For what its worth, its the same network that Amazon and Netflix uses. We have over 100,000 use the network daily.

-What type of internet service? DSL, Satellite, Cable?
-Please test internet Speed and Ping. See: http://www.speedtest.net
-Often, we see issues with Security software. Do you use AVG?
-Have you tried a different Network, like at the office or friends (not a neighbor because they will be using the same ISP)
-Keep in mind you are download A LOT of data. There are over 20,000 'images' just for approach plates alone. About 5GB to 10GB each month. Here's is a download time calculator. http://www.numion.com/calculators/time.html
-In Data Manager, click on 'Options' and disable 'Allow Simultaneous Downloads'
-Verify that ONLY Dynon is 'Enabled'. Go through the list on the left side of the screen and disable if any are on. There is a checkbox at the top center of screen.
-I suggest a force download of all new fresh data.
https://seattleavionics.zendesk.com/entries/49969514-How-to-delete-ChartData-from-computer-and-memory-card

A few comments on the reply.

- only TV I watch is generally Netflix - shows stream just fine. Again no problems with any other programs on PC - connected to the Internet or not.

- downloading only 4 states. iPad app I use (have used several with similar results) downloads most of the east coast in less than 1/2 hour.

- simultaneous downloads is disabled and only Dynon selected (from previous tech support advice)

- I have had luck with the clean install method, but really, should this be required every month??? When you do this, and it still fails to update, now you don't even have old data. Ask me how I know

Just like a previous poster, I would also vote with my wallet, and will with my current build, but if I want the capability on the Skyview.... Which is why when the time comes, my next avionics will not be dependent on SA.

 

[ed.meyer]

"Keep in mind you are download A LOT of data. There are over 20,000 'images' just for approach plates alone. About 5GB to 10GB each month."

Does it really take that much data per month? That is up to half my total monthly allowance. Seems like updating only changes in the data should not take nearly so much.

 

[jc2da]

I think part of the issue is in how the data is organized. The VFR charts seem to take the most time. They also consist of the most number of individual files. This last update indicated some 27,000 files for me for 3 states. Even without SA software and only using windows to copy 27,000 files to a flash drive, it says it will complete in like 20 hours. Writing this many small files just kills any modern day system.

To me, that's not SA's fault per se but more in how SkyView uses so many small little files. Foreflight and every other app doesnt work this way. Someone at Dynon may need to look at this if things are to improve. This is all pure speculation on my part!

 

[swatson999]

I think part of the issue is in how the data is organized. The VFR charts seem to take the most time. They also consist of the most number of individual files. This last update indicated some 27,000 files for me for 3 states. Even without SA software and only using windows to copy 27,000 files to a flash drive, it says it will complete in like 20 hours. Writing this many small files just kills any modern day system.

To me, that's not SA's fault per se but more in how SkyView uses so many small little files. Foreflight and every other app doesnt work this way. Someone at Dynon may need to look at this if things are to improve. This is all pure speculation on my part!

A better solution would be a large file (or a few files) with the tiles indexed internally. We did this years and years ago when dealing with ray-casting renderings of (at the time) extremely large datasets (as in, whole planets of data). We needed all levels of detail available so the cast rays could "speed up" as they got further from the eye, so the entire imagery pyramid had to be available all the time. We got a few papers out of it, but I imagine it was long enough ago that technology has far surpassed those efforts. Point being, I think gazillions of individual files is likely *not* the optimum solution here, as it wasn't 2 decades ago.

I guarantee you we never considered using individual *files* for each small tile of the datasets we were using!

I agree, SV and SA need to look at perhaps a better way to organize and access these image files at various resolutions. The "two-USB-stick" solution is really a kludge, plus it highlights a problem of scalability for the (not-too-)distant future...what are you going to do when there are more and more and more datasets to offer for display?

 

[dynonsupport]

I think part of the issue is in how the data is organized. The VFR charts seem to take the most time. They also consist of the most number of individual files. This last update indicated some 27,000 files for me for 3 states. Even without SA software and only using windows to copy 27,000 files to a flash drive, it says it will complete in like 20 hours. Writing this many small files just kills any modern day system.

To me, that's not SA's fault per se but more in how SkyView uses so many small little files. Foreflight and every other app doesnt work this way. Someone at Dynon may need to look at this if things are to improve. This is all pure speculation on my part!

There are a bunch of good reasons for lots of small tiles, and it's actually the standard in the industry. It's advantageous to memory space in embedded systems, and it's the way you get different detail at different zoom levels. It also lets you update only certain files as needed, instead of everything even if only a small change occurs. It's exactly the way google maps works, and actually is the way almost all iPad apps work. It's not unique to SkyView at all. We use this format because it's exactly the way Seattle Avionics already had their data organized.

Of course there are other ways, and there may be better ones, but this system doesn't exist because it wasn't well considered.

I can copy all 50 states from one cheap USB 2.0 drive to another in about an hour. If your system really does take 20 hours to write 3 states to a USB drive straight from the SA app, it would be interesting to try a different drive. What kind of drive are you using?

All that said, we will continue to think of and work on ways to make this system more stable.

 

[GalinHdz]

I can copy all 50 states from one cheap USB 2.0 drive to another in about an hour. If your system really does take 20 hours to write 3 states to a USB drive straight from the SA app, it would be interesting to try a different drive. What kind of drive are you using?

I wonder how you can do that since it takes hours for my download. I do my SA update overnight with nothing else running and I only write 6 states. I have a 50MB INTERNET download connection and have no problem with any other kind of download. When I am downloading data my TASK MANAGER shows the SA Data Manager is only downloading at 2MB. I have 2 USB drives so it takes me two nights to have both drives completed.

When my subscription expires I will not be updating it either.

 

[jc2da]

Sorry everyone. Scratch the 20 hours. I think that must have been an anomaly on my system at the time. Here are some better stats for my drive. I am using the recommended 16GB Cruzer Fit drive on a usb 2.0 port.

I just tried the copy again, and windows is suggesting an estimated copy time of 35 minutes to 45 minutes. Not sure why it changes so much. Interesting.

ChartData folder
3 states: CA NV OR
27,768 items (4.12 GB)

Interestingly, here are the stats on the folders within ChartData.
FG - 4,718 files
LO - 2,414 files
Plates - 18,176 files
SEC - 2,418 files

Actually, the approach plates contain the most files. I was mistaken when i thought it was the sectional data with the most files. Earlier, i was just going by the status messages displayed by SA's data manager, but i must have been mistaken here, too.

Thanks Dynon for the update. Obviously, you are the experts on your own system, and how it works

I was just commenting on the OP. I wasn't convinced this is entirely SA's data manager's fault. It's just a lot of data, which always has its difficulties. It just takes time as well dealing with so much data and so many files. Not sure there is a easy answer per se.

Instead of running an update once a month, i think ill try keeping SAs data manager running so it can update in the background. Thus, theoretically, when i just plug in the flash drive, it just needs to copy from the hard drive to the flash drive. It is this step i would like to optimize most. I have to do this twice for two flash drives.

For instance, if i just drag and drop the 27,768 files (4.12 GB) to the flash drive, it takes 35 to 45 minutes which is a 1.0 to 1.5 MB/s transfer rate.

However, if I take just a single large file and copy to the flash drive, it can sustain a 6 MB/s transfer rate. Thus, the 4x to 6x difference represents just the overhead of all the individual files, roughly.

 

[jlakins]

I had long update times 3.5 to 5 hours depending on the number of files being updated.
I bought a $19 usb 3 card and two SanDisk Ultra Fit usb 3 flash drives.
Copying the complete data set to the usb drive took 23 minutes.
I have not done a update yet but I expect it to be 15 minutes or less.
For a total of $40 I went from frustrated SA user to satisfied.

Jimmie

 

[rfazio1951]

I also use a USB 3.0 stick, and I update 15 states in about a half hour. I noticed a major improvement when I went to the USB 3.0 stick.

 

[60av8tor]

Instead of running an update once a month, i think ill try keeping SAs data manager running so it can update in the background. Thus, theoretically, when i just plug in the flash drive, it just needs to copy from the hard drive to the flash drive. It is this step i would like to optimize most. I have to do this twice for two flash drives.

I always do this - get the message that I have data ready to be written to my thumbdrive. Made no difference - still painfully slow.

So, from the other posts, I bought a 3.0 drive. Did 4 states in about an hour. Much more tolerable than before.