While not building the plane, running the business and taking my son rowing
I have been working on a few little microcontroller projects for my plane.
Most of these are now operational in prototype form and I was wondering if I
could get a show of hands if people were interested in obtaining kitsets of
parts. I have no intention of making printed circuit boards for these so you
would have to make them up on vero or prototype board. All of them use less
than six components so it's an easy job.
1/ Electronic Current Meter
This sits in line with the main bus feed and uses a hall effect sensor to
measure current and display it on an LED bar graph. RS232 serial output of
current is provided. The cable (max diameter 3mm) passes through the sensor
so no break is required in the wire.
2/ Slave gauges for AV10 and RMI engine management systems (can be extended
to any engine management system that has RS232 data logging upon request).
Intercepts the data stream and displays numerical data on large format 4
character LCD displays. RPM and MAP are intercepted as standard. Any two of
the additional parameters can be selected by jumper wires.
3/ As (2) but also acts as a constant speed controller for the Airmaster
prop either in Airmaster mode (Takeoff, Cruise, Climb) or in TonyK mode
(Select prop speed, lock speed and then fly by MAP).
4/ Fuel level gauge. Developed from a concept provided by Europa. A pressure
sensor is tapped into the sight gauge line which weighs the head of fuel in
the tank. Display output is to a 10 LED bar graph or VDO fuel gauge. Each of
the 10 steps may be calibrated to any fuel level permitting either linear
displays or custom configured displays. This does require changing the top
located pitot outlet of the fuel sight gauge to a bottom located static
outlet. RS232 output is available. Please let me know the type of gauge
you'd be interested in using as it will influence the final stages of
development.
5/ Electronic check list and clock. Using a 2 line LCD display and a two but
ton interface this runs through the preflight checklist. In flight an
emergency checklist can be selected. Clock displays local and UTC time.
Depending on how tight I can get the code I may add a flight timer and check
timer. RS232 output of time is available.
6/ Concept mode only at this stage - AOA/stall indicator using two
barometric pressure sensors to feed off the top and bottom wing surfaces. I
already have a working bar graph display that shows the pressure
differential, I just don't know how to relate that to AOA and stall.
7/ Any other ideas?
Depending on the interest level for each one I will focus on finishing that
particular project off first.
Prices would vary depending on the kit parts but I expect all of them to be
around USD50-70 excluding the displays. The large format 4 character LCD's
are around USD70, bar graphs around USD10, VDO gauge USD 60, 2 line LCD less
than USD25.
All of the projects have been designed to allow their code to updated
through a simple reprogramming process though this does require a small
adapter to be used to interface a PC parallel port to the processor and
making available three of the microcontroller pins. Programmer cost works
out around USD20.
Please reply direct to me unless you have general comments to post to the
group about these devices.
Regards
Tony
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Tony S Krzyzewski Kaon Technologies Ltd
Managing Director PO Box 9830, Newmarket
Ph 64 9 520 4631 Auckland
Fx 64 9 520 3321 New Zealand
Reply to tonyk@kaon.co.nz
Networkers visit www.kaon.co.nz
Aviators visit www.kaon.co.nz/europa/
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