midair in Bay Area Nov 7

On Wed, 18 Nov 2020 14:30:21 -0800, wrote:

The question is how should the FLARM team do that? A graceful
degradation in performance coupled with annoying beeps, as some have
suggested, is surely preferable to ceasing to function altogether,
especially given that lives may be at stake and not just the lives of
those who failed to upgrade their firmware, but also the lives of those
who's FLARM firmware is up-to-date, but who may end up colliding with
someone who's FLARM is disabled because the firmware is out of date.

Good point: you really need to read the manual for your FLARM unit AND
the display to understand what should appear at start-up because thats
when it will tell you about faults and out of date software. You need to
read instructions for both due to the large number of different displays
that can be used. The way my FLARM, a RedBox with the 40mm clockface LED
display, indicates a fault will be very different from what another Red
Box with an LX or Butterfly OLED display, a PowerFlarm, or what the FLARM
built into an LX Nav vario is likely to show.

I'd suggest that, since the FLARM team can't know what display is
connected, then the FLARM team can't do anything much different from what
they do now to indicate faults, i.e. send the fault code to the display
and let that decide how the format and display it, so really is up to the
pilot to know how their unit says 'FAULT!' and understand what it means.

I generally watch my FLARM come up when its powered on, at least long
enough to see the LED test flash. I also look at it as part of pre-launch
checks and will not launch without Power and GPS showing steady green, Tx
flashing green and everything else off: this is what mine should be
showing when it is stationary on the ground.


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Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org