Low cost ADS-B Options

On Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 5:09:16 AM UTC-7, Dan Daly wrote:
Interesting. This will be the first competition for FLARM Technology. I wonder if they will adjust their princely pricing to keep their anti-collision market share. Would this work in an area that is not within ground ADS-B coverage?

I am not following what you are thinking. This is not direct competition for FLARM/PowerFLARM. This is an 1090ES Out ADS-B + source solution. It is a great thing to see happening, but it does not include any ADS-B In capability. ADS-B In solutions exist for GA but won't work at all as well as FLARM for many glider pilots, are not designed for high-traffic density glider on glider type scenarios, and won't easily fit in/integrate with most glider cockpits/avionics.

This ADS-B Out solution is great for providing visibility to ATC and GA aircraft equipped with ADS-B In (preferably 1090ES In). Another benefit of 1090ES Out carriage is it will provide longer distance visibility to PowerFLARM equipped gliders, which might appeal to some folks, like those buddy flying (PowerFLARM systems sold in the USA include 1090ES reception as standard). Maybe the best thing about this is its another sign ADS-B things are moving and that there are hopefully reasonable cost solutions coming for some clubs and FBOs that have to equip their towplanes with ADS-B Out to meed 2020 carriage mandates... and equipping them with affordable 1090ES Out is great for compatibility with gliders with powerFLARM and it's 1090ES In capability.

I have to agree with Darryl on this.

It's great see cheaper ADS-B Out GPS sources coming out to provide better position reporting to ATC and a way for gliders to light up TIS-B services and ADS-B In on other aircraft.

What's missing is a suitable commercially available dual-band ADS-B In box that receives 1090ES, UAT (if anybody is equipping with UAT), is TIS-B compatible AND puts out NMEA sentences so you can look at traffic on your Oudie, ClearNav, LX or other glider flight computer display. I'm not going to mess around in my cockpit with glide computers as well as an iPad running Foreflight.

Even if an NMEA ADS-B box were available for sale it still would only provide traffic alerts based on general proximity. I am not aware of any software currently in existence that does anything more than warn of traffic in a big hockey puck of airspace around you. None of it does collision course estimation or real collision warning to my knowledge and even if one of the GA solutions did attempt such a feat it seems unlikely that it would be optimized to not drive you up the wall with collision warnings the second you got into a thermal with another glider. Flarm does a pretty good job with both collision alarming for maneuvering gliders and filtering out nearby, but non-conflicting gliders.

I have a home-brew ADS-B receiver running a modified version of Stratux to output NMEA to my flight computer, but I think of it as a complement to Flarm, certainly not a substitute. A cheaper GPS source that works with Trig transponders will make a big difference in terms of making ADS-B In reliable since I won't have to depend on ADS-B Out from other passing aircraft to light up TIS-B traffic reporting from the ADS-B ground infrastructure, but we are still a ways from having a good ADS-B In solution for gliders - other than Flarm.

9B

On Sunday, July 31, 2016 at 2:04:41 PM UTC-7, Darryl Ramm wrote:

I am not following what you are thinking. This is not direct competition for FLARM/PowerFLARM. This is an 1090ES Out ADS-B + source solution. It is a great thing to see happening, but it does not include any ADS-B In capability. ADS-B In solutions exist for GA but won't work at all as well as FLARM for many glider pilots, are not designed for high-traffic density glider on glider type scenarios, and won't easily fit in/integrate with most glider cockpits/avionics.

This ADS-B Out solution is great for providing visibility to ATC and GA aircraft equipped with ADS-B In (preferably 1090ES In). Another benefit of 1090ES Out carriage is it will provide longer distance visibility to PowerFLARM equipped gliders, which might appeal to some folks, like those buddy flying (PowerFLARM systems sold in the USA include 1090ES reception as standard). Maybe the best thing about this is its another sign ADS-B things are moving and that there are hopefully reasonable cost solutions coming for some clubs and FBOs that have to equip their towplanes with ADS-B Out to meed 2020 carriage mandates... and equipping them with affordable 1090ES Out is great for compatibility with gliders with powerFLARM and it's 1090ES In capability.

On Sunday, July 31, 2016 at 4:04:41 PM UTC-5, Darryl Ramm wrote:
On Saturday, July 30, 2016 at 5:09:16 AM UTC-7, Dan Daly wrote:
Interesting. This will be the first competition for FLARM Technology. I wonder if they will adjust their princely pricing to keep their anti-collision market share. Would this work in an area that is not within ground ADS-B coverage?

I am not following what you are thinking. This is not direct competition for FLARM/PowerFLARM. This is an 1090ES Out ADS-B + source solution. It is a great thing to see happening, but it does not include any ADS-B In capability. ADS-B In solutions exist for GA but won't work at all as well as FLARM for many glider pilots, are not designed for high-traffic density glider on glider type scenarios, and won't easily fit in/integrate with most glider cockpits/avionics.

This ADS-B Out solution is great for providing visibility to ATC and GA aircraft equipped with ADS-B In (preferably 1090ES In). Another benefit of 1090ES Out carriage is it will provide longer distance visibility to PowerFLARM equipped gliders, which might appeal to some folks, like those buddy flying (PowerFLARM systems sold in the USA include 1090ES reception as standard). Maybe the best thing about this is its another sign ADS-B things are moving and that there are hopefully reasonable cost solutions coming for some clubs and FBOs that have to equip their towplanes with ADS-B Out to meed 2020 carriage mandates... and equipping them with affordable 1090ES Out is great for compatibility with gliders with powerFLARM and it's 1090ES In capability.

I was talking to the guys a uAvionix at Oshkosh this weekend, and they have a truly interesting ADS-
B solution that may actually work well for us glider folks.

http://www.uavionix.com/products/ping200b0/

They had the prototype they were testing at the show, and it truly was a tiny device. Hopebully they will follow through with the box, and get it blessed by the feds. Tiny physical size, 500mA power draw, and weighs 50 grams. Let's hope the pricetag doesn't break the bank.

Peter

On Monday, August 1, 2016 at 2:02:27 PM UTC-7, vontresc wrote:
[snip]

I was talking to the guys a uAvionix at Oshkosh this weekend, and they have a truly interesting ADS-
B solution that may actually work well for us glider folks.

http://www.uavionix.com/products/ping200b0/

They had the prototype they were testing at the show, and it truly was a tiny device. Hopebully they will follow through with the box, and get it blessed by the feds. Tiny physical size, 500mA power draw, and weighs 50 grams. Let's hope the pricetag doesn't break the bank.

Peter

That is intersting, and it's great to see broad innovation happening in things related to ADS-B.

But it is worrying that the specs they present makes this not look like a Mode-S transponder. They mention no Mode-S or any other transponder related spec/standard. It might even have no 1030MHz receiver hardware at all. Once concern there in the UAV market would be the lack of compatibility with TCAS. You don't want airliners flying into UAVs, including UAVs that are out of control and have no way of avoiding the airliner. If the device is really intended to be a transponder then they have awful marketing.

The company is small and just received $5M in investment. Nothing they make meets TSO approval, but OK they are just getting started, hopefully they have folks with a background designing and manufacturing TSO approved avionics--but the company has been solidly targets the low-end UAV space. I question why they would want to worry about manned aircraft. The marketing and other costs alone just related with that for a new vendor are going to be significant. Maybe worth watching, but they need to improve their marketing/clean up/better state their claims if they think they are going after the manned aircraft market (and they certainly claim they are). They started out with a focus on receivers, which is great, but it's a very different thing to do say a TSO-ed ADS-B transmitter for general aviation.

Unfortunately reading stuff from them smells a bit too much like hype. When they talk about the PingNAV GPS source is "ADS-B Out compliant" but the needed specs are really not there, even as a promise of future compatibility. If they mean it's going to be TSO-C145c compliant or "meet the performance requirements of" then frigging say so, they have an strange way of not stating that clearly--which might be partially inexperience in the avionics market. They do clearly call out "meets requirements of" the GPS-source part of TSO-C199 (i.e. TABS). And I'm not sure it makes sense for a drone/UAV manufacturer to seek TSO approval on such a device. And TSO-C199 approval or even "meets requirements of" is not enough for ADS-B Out equipage today (certainly not in certified aircraft). Now if gliders lost their transponder/ADS-B out exemptions I'd actually like to see TABS carriage available as a means of compliance for ADS-B Out for gliders.. or available for voluntary equipage/non-mandated carriage.

BTW another interesting company in the UAV space is Sagetech (http://sagetechcorp.com/index.html). They've been shipping pretty impressive miniature transponders and ADS-B out systems for UAVs for a while. and have a less hyped feel than Uavionix.

Anyhow I guess it is good to see stuff happening. Not that I necessarily am too excited about lots of UAVs sharing airspace with manned aircraft.... but we get to sit back and see who delivers stuff here.