LXNav V7 vs Butterfly vario?

Note that LXNAV and LX Navigation are different companies; this cannot be pointed out often enough, as many people mix the two. LX Navigation has donated a MiniMap a few years ago, but getting technical information about the LX160/LX1600 product family was impossible for me, no reply to my emails. Therefore, no good XCSoar support.

I've contacted LX Navigation about their LX1606 vario and they replied with the documentation in a matter of days. No problems on my side.

Butterfly was very interested in XCSoar support, and has promised to donate a Vario to us, but that has not happened yet. XCSoar has no driver for the Butterfly Vario yet. If you're looking for a Vario to connect to XCSoar, wait until we are able to promise good interoperability. I'm positive that this will happen soon.

The Butterfly vario apparently can be configured to behave like either an LX, a CAI302 or a Triadis Vega vario. Since XCSoar supports all those devices there really shouldn't be many problems in connecting the two.

Its declared successor from ClearNav has no XCSoar support, and I suppose there will never be. ClearNav did not publish protocol documentation. I asked for documentation, but Richard Kellerman (who I'm not related to) rejected, saying his business is not interested in interoperability with XCSoar. Don't buy if you want to connect it to XCSoar (or any other free software)..

As Evan stated already the ClearNav will use the CAI protocol, so I see no need to publish any protocol documentation from their side. We might just have to disable those workarounds for the ClearNav vario.