| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 25/06/2017 : 19:44:47
Hi Guys,
Looking for an upgrade of my electrical vario system (very old Avionic GS500) to reduce to power demand a bit and clean up the glider instrument panel. Right now thinking about a LXNAV S80. This is a nice digital vario with electronic TE compensation, accelerometers G-force meters and AHRS capability ("Attitude and Heading Reference System") and GPS/Flarm and PDA connectivity.
I wonder if someone has already successfully connected the S80 with LK8000 and has two way connectivity... Or should the development team first make a driver for it?
Right now I have it set up that the Redbox is wired with a BT module from Glidertools, which allows two way communication with the Flarm. declaring a task in LK8000 via BT is no problem at all. Via the second GPS port on the BT module, a GPS wire runs to a GPS filterbox, FLARM IN port, which acts as a splitter and a filter for the transponder .. it has a transponder out port with 4800 baud and only the GPS sentences, so the transponder now also acts as a ADS-B transmitter.. beside this special transponder out port it also has two GPS/Flarm splitter ports, one of which is now connected to the Flarm display, and the other one is not used at the moment.
So I wonder if connecting the S80 to this free GPS port on the filterbox would work.. I expect that the signal TO the S80 would work fine, but I wonder if the signal FROM the S80 would reach the PDA or Smartphone via the BT module...
But this is something to figure out later..
FIRST, I need to know if the S80 would work anyways with LK8000 and if two way communication works with one of the available drivers, or that a driver should be developed.. If you need an S80, I am prepared to buy one in about two weeks time (I will be gliding the next two weeks :-) ) and send it to you, because I do not need to install it in my glider till coming winter, this would give you many months to tinker with it...
Ok, let me know if this sounds like a plan to you guys..
Kind regards,
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| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 21/12/2019 : 00:39:13
quote:
Originally posted by AlphaLima
Marco you should try NANO3 driver of the 7.1f. intended to become the general LX driver model.
There is a complete setup page for the driver settings.
Thanks Alphalima! will certainly try this next year, The Mini is in maintenance now :-) |
| AlphaLima |
Posted - 13/12/2019 : 13:45:36
Marco you should try NANO3 driver of the 7.1f. intended to become the general LX driver model.
There is a complete setup page for the driver settings. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 30/07/2019 : 17:08:06
Just to follow up on my last message..
I have been flying for about 40-50 hours the past few weeks
- I did not have the Check Sum Fail messages anymore
- I had two times the com connection was lost on the Wifi module, after several hours into the flight (Message: FLARM connection Lost).. A COM reset solved the issue in both cases, IGC file was OK though.
- Mc Auto setting transfer to the S80 is hit or miss... Most of the time it sets the Auto Mc value at the beginning of a flight, and got stuck on that value for hours and suddenly it starts moving again, without any manual manipulation of the Mc value at all, not on the S80 nor LK8000.
- External wind works fine now with the new S80 Firmware.
- I have been flying with my phone in Aircraft mode only, which means no GPRS connection during flight, which was needed for ADSB tracking transfer.. But OGN (Glidertracker.Org) tracker works fine, and is better anyways.
- Transfer of waypoints to the S80 does not seem to work anymore, not in beta and not in the stable version.
But for the rest, I am very satisfied with the setup right now.
Coming winter I will try to get rid of the Bt module for the radio connection, and also try to have the 4800 Baud Rate from the wifi module to the Transponder working.. Which would make the filterbox obsolete, and clean up the back of the panel even more. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 25/05/2019 : 10:46:44
Hi Alphalima,
Somehow Automcready worked yesterday in the stable 7.0 version! But not always, sometimes the Mc pointer on the S80 got stuck at a certain value, only after changing it manualy and then on auto again it worked again..
At least it is progress!
EDIT: I Used the LXV7 driver instead of the LXV7-EXP driver, this must have something to do with the above issue, with LXV7-EXP driver the AutoMcready transfer to the S80 did not work.
What did not work was that the S80 takes over the Waypoints after I have passed a waypoint and it moves to the next automatically.. guess this was a temporary glitch as it used to work fine earlier. It also worked fine in 7.1 Beta...EDIT is this also a LXV7 versus LXV7-EXP driver issue?
In 7.1 Beta External wind worked fine with the S80, in 7.0 it did not work yesterday.
Another issue I had is that now and then I got the message "Check Sum Fail" both in 7.0 and 7.1 beta... But it did not seem to bother LK8000 at all, kept on working as normal.
in below link the run time log of the 7.1Beta flight I made last thursday, with LXV7-EXP driver.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwLVlMmhG_gja1VtdXdUNi1qZUk/view?usp=sharing
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| AlphaLima |
Posted - 24/05/2019 : 09:53:24
It does not work because it is not yet merged. I need a device for intensive testing before we can merge it. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 23/05/2019 : 23:37:50
Made a 5 hour cross country flight today using 7.1 Beta,
External wind works! Very happy about that.
But Automatic mcready sent from LK8000 to the vario still does not work, manual sending Mc values does work.
Keep up the good work!
Marco
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| AlphaLima |
Posted - 21/05/2019 : 09:51:05
any of the LXV7xxx and the LX16xx driver since Version 7.1b of LK8000.
https://github.com/LK8000/LK8000/commit/cc462c576d1ce2698706174d004f35baaa93c82f#diff-7969d1bf1d1635164ca3614813f8ecdd |
| makerley |
Posted - 20/05/2019 : 20:14:43
The most recent firmware upgrade to the LXNAV S80 indicates the ability to send wind data to another device. To select a device in LK8000 … Config/LK8000Setup/Device Setup … there are three choices (for the S80) – LXV7 or LXV7 easy or LXV7_Exp, plus comport selection.
Can anyone tell me the correct Device selection and the correct comport to receive the wind data? (hardware is LXNAV S80 with cable connection to Craggy Aero Ultimate)
Thanks for any help,
Mark
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| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 11/07/2018 : 16:17:27
Forgot about the dampening... I do not know anymore what I set it too, just check the manual and play with the settings during flight until you find it acceptable for you. I may have to adjust again, because I still find it too slow, it seems the indication is about 1 second behind. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 11/07/2018 : 16:09:45
Hi Allessandro,
How to calibrate your S100 is provided in the manual, you must do some test flights in smooth air conditions (early morning, before the thermals come loose), the setting you end up with is dependent on the aircraft, position of the pitot/static ports you use, etc.. So providing you my settings will not help you, you must find out your settings yourself, by doing the test flights...
To speed up the process, you must study at home or in your aircraft on the ground how to get to the settings pages in your S100 before you do the test flight, this way you can quickly change the setting whilst performing the test runs ( a dive to high speed, fly horizontally at high speed and pull up slowly and check what your vario is doing)
One tip I can give before hand.. turn off the automatic switch over from vario to speed command.
It is not difficult at all and actually fun to do!
The speed difference can be adjusted just by looking at your normal ASI and compare this with the value on the S100, adjust as necessary... In my case the TAS was 10-15km/h too fast on my S80.
About the external wind data, I had a discussion with Alphalima because I did not see any wind data in LK8000 when set to external. I sent an NMEA log to Alphalima and he discovered that the S80 does not send out the wind data NMEA sentece at all.. so no external wind from the S80/100, I have now set it to ZIGZAG in LK8000, Alphalima claims this is even more acurate than the LX instruments deliver. But I will get in touch with the dutch importer of the S80/100 varios, maybe he can motivate LXNAV to add the wind NMEA sentence by a software update.
Regards, |
| Alessandro_1978 |
Posted - 11/07/2018 : 14:27:30
Hi marco
i have a S100 but the general setup is the same of the S80
a couple of questions:
"I have now calibtated the new LXNAV S80 vario electronic TE compensation, and all set to my preferences. Default the vario needle is set quite dampened, I have reduced this to less dampening so it moves quicker if something changes. Also the speed was 10km/h faster compared to my normal ASI, but also that can be adjusted electronically. "
can you list here your setting?
"Today I discovered in LK8000 I can set the wind calculation to External, so the wind data is used from the S80 in stead of my crappy circling"
i cannot have the external wind on LK8000 with S100. could you please confirm you can get this data from S80? how did you setup the instrument?
thanks
Alessandro
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| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 22/04/2018 : 23:01:40
By now I have made my fist flights with my new panel. Very happy with how it works out in the air, all instruments can be read very well, radio works very well with the new microphone, static and interference free
I have now calibtated the new LXNAV S80 vario electronic TE compensation, and all set to my preferences. Default the vario needle is set quite dampened, I have reduced this to less dampening so it moves quicker if something changes. Also the speed was 10km/h faster compared to my normal ASI, but also that can be adjusted electronically.
What I still have to do is loading waypoint database, maps and airspaces, so I also can use it for navigation and final glides.. as backup for LK8000 of course.. The main function of the S80 is Vario and Speed To Fly, I have tried the STF bar last week, and works great!
Today I discovered in LK8000 I can set the wind calculation to External, so the wind data is used from the S80 in stead of my crappy circling .
Mcready can be adjusted manually, but still have to find out if the MC value on the S80 ia also adjusted if the auto Mc of Lk8000 is changed, this would be very nice if this works.. I was planning to test this yesterday, but only after take off I discovered that the connection was broken. I could not adjust the S80 by LK8000 at all during the flight, and I could not figure out what was wrong during the flight... only on ground i found out the NMEA output was turned off somehow.. probably because I have switched off the S80 using the aircraft main power switch, in stead of turning the s80 off with a long push on the volume button (this saves all changed settings).
Also tested the connection of the KRT2 Radio by means of a second Bt module I received from a guy I met on the Yahoo Mini Nimbus users group, It works very well.. but not together with the other Bt module that connects with the S80, so I will send the module back to him this weak, and continue to work on the wifi solution.
Next weekend first competition of this year for me.. lets see how that will work out.. I will bring the mobius camera's with me, so I can record the flights and make a video report of it... So, fingers crossed for good weather.
[EDIT]: The competition was cancelled due to very bad weather in the Netherlands, it started raining early afternoon on Saturday, and it did not really stop till today! So that promissed Video will come later :-) |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 30/03/2018 : 07:43:18
For you information, below the final data scheme. I hope this may help others to install their LXNAV vario's
EDIT: corrected the scheme with the correct LK8000 device and port setting. As said before, there is no need to setup a seperate device for the FLARM. also made the picture a bit smaller to show up better in the forum. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 29/03/2018 : 20:34:33
Yeah!
With the cable as described in my previous post (wire #2 in the IGC RJ12 cable cut) I can now declare a task to the FLARM, just like before, like the S80 is not there. After declaration, the Red Box restarts (flashing power led in the flarm display) and takes a while before it operates again, in the old situation that did not happen, only the com ports were reset, which was a matter of seconds. Now declaration takes just a second, but restarting the flarm may take a few minutes.
It is not required to setup the FLARM as a seperate device in LK8000, everything runs via the S80 ( I have set up with device LXV7_EXP).. very nice it works like this, very happy with the end result. |
| Marco from Hangar 5 |
Posted - 25/03/2018 : 21:00:21
owkeee
Installed the data cables with the splitter and the special home made S80-PDA to Bt-Port A cable as shown in my previous post.
The home made cable works fine! I have two way communication via bluetooth with the S80.. I can set the Mc on the S80 from LK8000 and visa versa, I have flarm data in LK000.
BUT, after installing the splitter, I cannot declare a task from LK8000 to the red box (via the S80), and also the S80 itself cant declare a task... declaring a task from the S80 to the red box DID work yesterday, without the splitter.. So the bits attached to the third port on the splitter, the GPS filterbox and via this box the flarm display, must interfere with the declaration.
I suspect that the display interferes with the declaration, because the splitter is fully wired of course.. data sent from the display will also go to the S80 and then it goes wrong.
To prevent this I have made a cable as shown below. The wire that sends data back to the flarm is as far as I know pin number 2 on the RJ12 plug, I have cut this wire #2 in the cable between the splitter and the GPS filterbox, and removed about 2cm and then put it back together again. This makes sure no data is sent from the flarm display back to the flarm..
This is also consistent with the NMEA Out port B on the Bt module, which I have used to connect the GPS filterbox in my old situation and in that situation I was able to declare a task to the red box and the display worked just fine!
I am pretty sure this will work now as planned :-) But will keep you guys posted
And a picture of the completed cockpit, including the placards.
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