Blue Mountain Avionics EFIS 1
Still in it's infancy, the EFIS1 held lots of promise. Back then, it was housed in a plastic box and was pretty much hand made. We discussed whether this was a viable option, and put down our deposit. Several months passed by, lots of development went on. It was ready before we were really, but if it's ready, we'll take it!
Below are some screenshots of the E1. The display is nothing short of awesome. The terrain mapping resolution has to be seen to be believed. Take a look at the Guided Tour on the Blue Mountain Avionics website. Pretty slick stuff.
We opted for the internal flash memory (now standard), and the digital autopilot. The Blue Mountain site shows this in greater detail than I could ever hope to here. Below you can see the E1 fired up for the first time at home. The VFR airways shown are converging on the Salem VOR. Keyboard is used for setup, and the DVD is used for updates only, although Greg announced at Sun n' Fun this year that downloadable updates are coming soon. This stuff just keeps getting better.
Our whole panel revolves around this display. I made sure that it was positioned perfectly for the pilot. Everything else can be worked around to suit. See our panel plans to see what was going on during all this time with the design!
Our autopilot servos are mounted aft for the elevator, and attaches to the elevator bellcrank by the baggage bulkhead. The roll servo will be out in the starboard wing, connected to the aileron bellcrank. Since I haven't done too much with our QB wings yet, I haven't got to a point where I have pictures to post.
Here is the first time I fired it up at the hangar. We're almost a mile from the airport reference for YIP! Salem VOR is at the top left. Michigan is pretty darn flat, but if I mess with the altimeter setting, I can make some of the terrain show up red, meaning it's higher than us, and we may hit it! Not now we won't! This baby ain't going anywhere for a while yet!
I contemplated long and hard about how to mount the CPU. Originally, they were being mounted on shock mounts. Later on, this was found to reduce the accuracy of the autopilot, so solid mounting was called for. CPU has to be in level flight attitude. Our support tray is hinged of the upper firewall angle, and attaches under the sub panel via some leveling screws.
Here, the leveling screws are actually tie wraps! Just temporary you understand. The whole tray swings down, so we're able to remove the unit if necessary for future upgrades.
Fabricated the brackets. Now the screw are in place. Once I've established level, I'll make spacers to hold the whole thing rigid.
Magnetometer support bracket... A little over engineered? Note the brass screws... No ferrous materials allowed.
Here the autopilot controller is mounted to the subpanel just behind the CPU and in front of the display. The display is pretty slimline, so plenty of room back here for stuff. The round piece that is sticking out is actually the altimeter.
Here I've started wiring the autopilot controller. I made a crossover cable to go between the CPU and the controller, since I only needed it to be a couple of feet long.
This is the elevator autopilot servo. I partially borrowed the idea for mounting this from Dave Nickolson and his RV-9A. Thanks Dave! His installation pictures can be seen on the BMA Discussion Board here. Do you like my outboard supports made from scrap shipping crate?!
Also, it's kind of hard to see in this shot, but I ended up reinforcing the connection between the rib that the servo bracket is mounted too and the bulkhead. The rib had a tendency to pull away from the bulkhead, which I wasn't happy about. I just used some 3/4"x3/4"x0.063" angle.
The little tab that covers the output shaft is there in case something comes loose. It will prevent the arm from coming of the shaft. Hopefully, this little puppy will never be used.
I did finally get around to replacing that wood with some metal! All this is removable for service should the need arise.
I got hold of some dinky little MIL spec socket screws to mount the servo properly. I've tugged on this as hard as I could, and it ain't going anywhere!
I got around to wiring the magnetometer in too. I made my own cable from three conductor shielded, and used the shield as the ground conductor. Works too, since the HSI on the EFIS1 paints numbers! I went around the block on this trying to get an all plastic 9 pin D-Sub. I found one, but then there wasn't a means of positively attaching it to the magnetometer. In the end I ended up using a regular crimp type D-Sub connector.
6/4/2004 2 hours
Today, I went by the hangar to update the E1 with the latest software release... Much anticipated event. Well, it seemed to go through the update pretty well, then it rebooted itdelf, and came back up and froze almost instantly. Oh deary. At first I thought maybe it was no GPS signal giving the hoo-har coz it said it was erecting. So, wheeled the plane out of the hangar to get some sunshine. I poered her down for a few mins, hooked it back up and this time, no magnetometer. Hmmm.... It's connected... All was fine previously at the 2.14 level. I tried hitting escape to get to the shell, and it did get me to the menu, however, it was locked up again by then, so I couldn't choose to enter the Shell.
Anyways, I decided it wasn't going to happen, and figured I'd wrap up for the day, I did mount the back up alternator voltage regulator though.. Took all of 5 minutes.
Got back home, jumped on the web and wrote up my issues on the BMA discussion board. People on there are quite helpful, and the staff are always looking at it too, even when they're meant to be holidaying! I remembered reading about a jumper change in an Engineering Note that mentioned a jumper change, and 'MD' confirmed what I figured was my problem. Greg Richter also confirmed this may be the issue a few hours later........
6/6/2004 0.5 hours
So, this evening I stopped by to perform jumper change. Removed the box from the plane, peeled her open and imagine my surprise when I found said jumper change to have been performed already by the factory! So, I put the lid back on, called it a night and hit the BMA discussion board again. I'm not in too much hurry really, and if I have to send it back, then so be it. The unit has to go back anyways for the extra serial ports option, since I need more than one.
6/12/2004 1 hours
After speaking with Bob Northrup on the phone last Friday, he gave me some things I could do to check my system, so today, I went down and checked it out. I managed to get to the shell OK, and check my calibration for the G-Meter, and made sure I hadn't inadvertently done anything daft in the past. All looked good. I tried to bring up EFIS software, but it still hung. Well, that was the point I decided to try to go back to 2.14, since now I could access the shell through the menu, I should be able to see the DVD and run the restore command. WRONG!
Seems to me like the DVD is the culprit, as when I try to read it, it says "Error reading drive, abort, retry, fail" so that was that. Tomorrow, I may try to take my DVD drive from my home PC and try that. Maybe that will work.
6/13/2004 0.5 hours
Spoke with Bob Northrup on the phone again today, and we talked about the DVD drive. I may have one of the dodgy ones from ways back. So anyways, I want to do the card reader upgrade anyways, and the serial update, so I'm going to send the unit back for those to be done. I went to the hangar to get the CPU and DVD....
Got home, and out of curiosity, I tried the drive in my PC.... It worked! Hmmmm.... Interesting. Oh well, I can use it for one of my PC's I guess... I recently robbed one of them of a CD drive, so this one could replace that.
8/2/2004 Update
BMA now have my E1 in their possesion to work their magic. They will be upgrading the unit to feature multiple serial ports and a compact flash card reader. They'll also make sure it's all updated to the latest software release, and is functioning as it should. Looking forward to getting it back!
8/17/2004 Update
BMA called to let me know my E1 is ready to be shipped back to me. Not bad really, two weeks turn around! Turns out I'd fried the motherboard. Great. So, obviously not a warranty item, it set be back a few bucks. Oh well, live and learn. So, it's winging it's way back to me now, complete with extra serial ports and a flash card reader. Yummy. Soon, I'll be hooking it up to the SL-30 Nav/Comm!
8/22/2004 5 hours
Now that the E1 is back in my hands, I figured I'd get it up and running again. Everything looks great! I was hoping to start hooking it into the avionics stack today, but a lack of three strand shielded cable put paid to that. Anyways, I got her fired up and started to figure out how to lay the cables for the display. The video cable is quite long (6ft), which is great if you're a canard freak like BMA Owner/Electronics wizard Greg Richter, but in an RV, a shorter cable would be perfecto. Unfortunately, you're not supposed to cut it. Well, looking at this, I think I'm going to look around for a shorter cable. There MUST be something out there somewhere!
I also received the Flash Card reader to use instead of the DVD drive. I have to say that this is a massive improvement. Solid state is the way it's heading these days, so I figure this will work a treat. I took the time to discard the bezel supplied and mounted it directly to the panel. Looks quite nice, and not too overpowering like a DVD drive. I had no intentions of leaving the DVD drive in my plane while flying anyway, and this has definitely sorted that issue out. Sweetness.
I also started doing some pitot/static plumbing... I've really gotta do something about that fat loop of transatlantic phone cable....
Here's a shot of her fired up.... No terrain display because I couldn't get a GPS link inside the hangar. Although, later on, I opened the door and it found enough satelites to get a position.
I did some other miscellaneous wiring too today, but not really enough to warrant updating other pages....
9/2/2004 3 hours
Yesterday, I received the amplifier for the xpdr grey code output from BMA. I was a little disappointed that I had to pay another $101 for this with shipping. Looking at it, it seems a little big. The documentation says just plug and play. I wasn't so sure it would fit between my E1 CPU and the encoder plug.
So tonight, I stopped by the hangar to try it out. Basically, it turned out to be too long. I figured that I may be able to get it inside the actual E1 CPU, but I remember it being a tight squeeze in there. I opened up the box, and to my delight, there seemed to be enough room in there for it! It just slotted in between a couple of the PCB boards. Sweet. So, things were looking up.
I'll take some pictures of it next time I'm there. I didn't have my camera with me.
Now my xpdr has altitude!
After working on the panel and the radio stack wiring, I decided to start working on the E1's gauge inputs, namely the fuel levels and volts.
Fuel levels were fairly straight forward once I'd figured out what happens to the signal through the sender and Van's gauge (back up). Vans gauge outputs a 5v signal, and I use this for E1 too. BMA recommends the capacitance fuel senders for the RV's, but since I have a quick build, there's no chance to get the capacitance senders. Looks like crappy floats for me then!
Calibration was easy. I double checked the outputs from the sender with my multimeter, and found it to be between 0v and 2.5v approx. So I made a cal table at certain points shown on the Van;s gauge. Now, this is only temporary, as when the wings go on, the calibration can be done properly by adding known quantities of fuel to the tank.
The Engine Gauges pop up when the senders show 0 gallons too! Sweet. There is a red area on the gauges, but it's tough to see it with my lousy photography!
Next, I set about doing a voltmeter. Well, the book has an example of this, so again, it was fairly straight forward. I had to build a voltage divider for mine as the voltage input can only accept up to 10v (I think. Some later models can accept up to 30v!) So, here's my voltage divider. Pretty easy really. Two 10K resistors.... I shrink wrapped the whole thing after taking this shot. It all fits inside the D-Sub plug shell for Analogue 2. Red wire is the input from the bus (protected by a 1 amp fuse) and the pin at the top is the voltage reading pin. Lower left pin is the ground.
And, here it is in action. I'm running of my battery here, which is in turn being charged by a Battery Tender. So, only a measly 12.2v and dropping slowly since I've been sucking more out of it than the charger can replace! Sorry about the lousy photo.
