We need to talk about the dimming problem

[Rhino]

Looking further into the documentation, I have no idea why it says 0 to 36 volts. The potentiometer knob operates directly from system power. That means the range you should get from the knob should be from 0 to either 12 or 24 volts, depending on your system voltage. There's more to the menu settings than just changing the BRIGHTNESS SOURCE to EXTERNAL. Possibly one of your other settings isn't correct. From what I can see, the Skyview does not dynamically change the brightness with changes in voltage. It has four set brightness levels, and just switches between them based on the voltage received from the dimmer knob. That would explain why you only see a jump between brightness levels instead of a continually varying level. It also supports the possibility that one of the other settings is wrong. I wish I could speak from experience, but I've never installed a Dynon dimmer module. It appears you need to set EXTERNAL BRIGHTNESS VOLTAGE to your system voltage, and experiment with the MINIMUM BRIGHTNESS VOLTAGE until you get the results you need. Maybe someone else who's done this can chime in.

 

[bruceh]

The Skyview dimmer knob is connected per the installation manual. Power to the red wire, ground to the black wire and dimmer input to the violet wire that is connected to both SV displays on pin 25 on the 37 pin connectors. The Brightness menu shows the Voltage being produced on the violet wire from the knob (basically, it's a variable resistor). It ranges from full bus voltage down to 0.1V.

I played around with it today (during daylight) and it seemed to be better behaved. Maybe the settings just needed a reboot cycle to stick?
I'll keep adjusting it to find the best set of parameters, but currently the brightness curve it sets is pretty coarse - more like a super dim (too dim for night flight), somewhat bright (too bright for night flight), then bright and then daylight bright.

Thanks!