iEFIS Discovery Lite temporarily unavailable

[rainier]

We are having some delays in getting the MX2 (ex Discovery Lite) assembled due to our production facility running at capacity.
In the meantime however it is giving me a chance to work on the actual EFIS software. While initially the intention was to port the G3 pretty much as is and make it work on the G4 under Linux - this was done and is working well, the additional time available has been spent on a quite a big overhaul. While the user customizable screens are still available as before the visual appeal of the various items has been greatly improved , moving away from the traditional flat colors.
The biggest change however is the addition of a built in screen designer. For those familiar with our screen designer on a PC - it is somewhat similar but there is now a new screen file which gets generated on the EFIS if desired. This is loaded after all other screen files for a particular page (so there is one new file for each page). Here you can place your own screen items and each has a property editor with all the relevant settings you also find on the PC based designer. Placing the items (which also now includes a built in selection of premade groups of items) is simple. Editing and moving them just as easy. Several nice aids exist such as making backups of the user screens or even taking the current built in or screen design files in the screens folder and creating a fully editable single screen file from that. You can use the user screen file in addition to the existing or as only file on a page. It's really quite powerful.

As this is easy to use it now allows the built in screen files to be very simple with just the very basics. This is nice as it means the screens are far less cluttered with items you may never need. Say for example you want the familiar radio control on your screen - it's no longer available on a built in screen - you use the built in screen designer and simply place it where you would like it and then tell the designer what size you want it (this item has only one property to set).
Several engine displays are built in as groups (for example an oil group would have oil temperature and pressure with graphical and text readouts) so you can use these to create your own engine displays - or you could use the individual items as before in a screen design or any mixture - the traditional built in selectable engine and fuel displays are also still available (as you can extract these to a user screen you can even use these as base for your own modifications or additions).

Up to now drawing items on the screen was done in a background/foreground fashion - the background would contain items that are CPU intensive to draw or are drawn at a rate lower than the screen refresh (maps for example). In the past with a screen design this had to be taken into account (so for example it required additional effort to make a small map show on a horizon display). All this is now past history - the drawing engine has been redone as well so for new screen designs the background no longer exists. If a item requires a background or off-screen image it will handle that itself transparently now.

As Linux is used it is possible to use OpenGL and use the graphics processor which is a Vivante. The G3 also has a graphics processor but this can only be used under Linux as the holder of the intellectual property refuses to divulge how to use it and only provides a binary driver that runs under Linux. Even though linux is used the Vivante graphics processor interface has been reverse engineered and the project is called Etnaviv (Vivante backwards). This means open source OpenGL drivers are now used on our G4. When I started one this two years ago Etnaviv was still a bit buggy and would easily crash but after a few revisions (at least one bug I was able to isolate and report to the developers) - it now seems stable and have not seen any issues for many months.

The intention is to release the G4 as open source at some point - hence the effort spent on Linux and the graphics engine as well as a very nice and easy to use development environment that requires zero cost on the developers side (i.e. nothing fancy to buy, no compiler or tool licenses - just a usb cable and RS232 cable is needed apart from a PC or laptop running Windows 11 - if you don't need to change the provided Linux then all you need is any old PC running at least Windows 7). The Linux development side (for the uboot bootloader and LInux kernel and drivers) is done in a virtual machine running under Windows 11 (that has native support for Ubuntu Linux).

In all the G4 is the largest upgrade of the EFIS firmware since probably the change from the monochrome Ultra EFIS to the Engima EFIS.

[bvolcko]

Rainier,
You are a wizard. Most of your last post went straight over my head, I'm not a computer guy. Ke4ep up the good work. I have a Discovery Lite in my Xenos motor glider...love it.

[rainier]

Getting close...

[rainier]

Many things have happened with the G4 development. Here are some highlights.

Built in screen designer - no need to use a PC. In fact its now almost required. The standard "built in" screens are now fairly basic and no longer cluttered with items you may never need. It's now extremely easy to add what you need and decide where you want it so that's the way forward.

For those that do screen designs - an additional screen file has been added called "user". This is loaded after all the other screen files are loaded. You can also, if needed export the current screen files you see on the screen to a user file and that means you can change everything.

The screen designer now knows "groups" - effectively collections of items that belong together. Take a typical altimeter tape for example - it usually is made up from a dozen or so individual items. Now you can have it as one premade item. There are many such premade items built into the system and you can even create your own.

We can now do jpeg images for backgrounds as well as a redesigned weight and balance system that can now also be fully defined on the EFIS itself.

G4 systems can be used in landscape or portrait modes by a simple menu selection.

Upgrade kits for existing G2 and G3 iEFIS systems are available meaning you can even give your old G2 a new lease of life.

[Nellie2110]

Rainier,

This is some really exciting news, and I'm thinking I can't wait to get my challenger updated. There are a few questions...

You answered my question about screens, because I have made some custom ones I want to keep, but does the same ideas go for sound files. I have used the enigma sound to create some custom call outs, does it work just like G2 and G3.

Same kind of question for the onspeed beeps, in another thread you explained how to create a file for beeps to work with the AOA. G4 also work the same way?

Lastly is there going to be a PC simulator for G4, would be awesome to get a look and mess around with it to see if it's a good fit(can't imagine why it wouldn't be).

Thanks
Nick

[bvolcko]

I have a discovery lite. G3 I believe. Can I upgrade it?

[rainier]

I have a discovery lite. G3 I believe. Can I upgrade it?

All Discovery Lites are G3. They however cannot yet be upgraded to G4 as the G4 processor board is about 1mm too wide to fit the very tight space available in the Discovery housing. Unfortunately there is just no way to make it fit.

The Discovery Lite has been replaced with the MX2 (which essentially is a Discovery Lite but with a higher resolution display that can be used in Portrait and Landscape modes). As with all G4 systems the "lite" versions are now CAN bus compatible with the MX1 or the previous "Lite" versions (selectable by setup menu option). In MX1 compatible mode a bunch of panels (up to 8) act as one system to a large extent while the "Lite" setting is restricted to 2 panels as before with only minor interaction between the panels.

So the MX2 is the first true G4 that takes the G4 CPU board natively (in this case it can fit as no adapter PCB is needed).

If there is a revision to the G4 CPU board we will try and make it a bit smaller.

The G4 upgrade fits all Explorer and Challenger models but at this stage unfortunately not the Discovery.

As for existing (G3) custom screen design files - these are 100% compatible with the G4 as is the setup.dat file.

[rainier]

Rainier,

This is some really exciting news, and I'm thinking I can't wait to get my challenger updated. There are a few questions...

You answered my question about screens, because I have made some custom ones I want to keep, but does the same ideas go for sound files. I have used the enigma sound to create some custom call outs, does it work just like G2 and G3.

Same kind of question for the onspeed beeps, in another thread you explained how to create a file for beeps to work with the AOA. G4 also work the same way?

Lastly is there going to be a PC simulator for G4, would be awesome to get a look and mess around with it to see if it's a good fit(can't imagine why it wouldn't be).

Thanks
Nick

Screen files and setup.dat files are 100% compatible with the G4.
Yes the AOA custom sounds etc are all compatible.
Yes there is a G4 simulator which should be released next week - it's very similar to the G3 but of course adds Landscape and Portrait selections and support for the MX2.

As for the simulator screen designer the biggest change so far is the addition of item groups (with many premade groups and you can create your own).

There are still quite a few future additions possible in all sorts of ways but I have already fallen into the rabbit hole of feature creep causing delays so it's time to get the G4 out and then add things later. For example we can now display pdf files so that's an interesting thing for plates. Also the support for USB has to be worked on - it's working nicely with a range of items like keyboards, mice, trackballs, USB disks but I also want to look at USB cameras.
I have worked on the boot systems (Linux u-boot) and it's got interactive support via LCD screen and the rotary knobs to support various system maintenance tasks - you use this to upgrade the system and also to make system image backups and restore them. So despite now having a Linux system the previous simple single file upgrade mechanism is still there - but internally much more sophisticated in that it can even upgrade the operating system (kernel) itself should that be needed.
The system still runs off an SD card as before (which is nice in that it is easily replaceable) - different to the past is however that it now is a partitioned SD card using the Linux EXP4 journaling file system which is very robust. Downside is that you can't do much with that SD card in a Windows PC - however if you are running a Linux system there is no issue.
The boot system is installed on the SD card but also into a small flash memory chip on the G4 and that is used by default so you can actually put in a blank SD card - boot into the recovery system and then install an image with a working system - either your own backup or a premade image that you can download from our website. You can also write that image to the SD card on a PC (Windows or Linux). So I think I have all bases covered.

Our systems where always famous for very fast boot times and I am happy that this is still the case even though we are now using a pretty heavy weight operating system. From power-up to EFIS display up and running its about three to four seconds.

The EFIS now uses a graphics processor and OpenGL (the main reason we had to move to Linux). This does the 3D terrain and runway drawing as well as video rendering (color conversion and image scaling is done in shader). It has two A9 processors but one of them is effectively dormant at this stage as one of them is quite adequate. However there is future potential here. A third processor is on the chip as well - a Cortex M4 and this is used to handle all of the hardware interfacing (Linux is not terribly good with that) - having a third processor running in parallel with full visibility of system memory (running in its own address space and not burdening the rest) has turned out to be a beautiful feature of this chip.

So - will there be a G5 ? Perhaps - ST is in the process of releasing their next upgrade from this chip. Dual A15 cores running at double the speed, even better graphics processor, still the nice hardware oriented cortex processor included and to top it - an AI core added. Hmm, what can we do with AI in an EFIS....

[rainier]

MX2, the replacement for the Discovery Lite has started shipping.

[Steffen]

preparing order…

is the video in feature available or what do I have to take care of to get it?