PowerFLARM choking on too many targets?

Today I flew the first day of the Truckee FAI contest. We had about 14 planes in the launch area at once. All pilots had Flarm (and transponders) which was great.

My setup is a PowerFlarm Brick (V6.02) with a FlarmVIew display (latest firmware, and powered by the brick). V7 and Oudie are also connected to the brick, but powered separately.

When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few targets at most to display. On landing there were again many targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Also, the PowerFlarm brick experienced MANY GPS failures during the last two flights. The Oudie kept switching to secondary GPS (internal). TO be fair, the Colibri II also showed some GPS dropouts on the same flight, but not nearly as many.

Additional thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt Herron

That's strange, Matt. The problem may have been that the FLARMview cannot display UFOs.
Were you within 200NM of Area 51? Truckee should be about 30NM out of range.
They were supposed to be conducting GPS jamming at Bald Mountain, some sort of fun for military geeks and space aliens alike.
Jim

http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/gps/g...terference.pdf

Several pilots at the recent Nephi event experienced the same issue which appears to be related to the latest FlarmView firmware V2.20; we sent Uros various descriptions and videos of the issue so I hope he'll fix it soon. As you say, it seems to be driven by too many targets overloading something in the latest firmware.

One pilot was able to successfully downgrade him FlarmView to the previous firmware and it eliminated the issue. I personally just turned off the sound alarms as my LX9000 also displays flarm targets. Zooming out to at least 2.4 mile radius appeared to alleviate the problem although adjusting the display zoom before the unit recycled was a challenge; it's not actually going through a complete reboot, just displaying the splash screen and then returning to the display at minimal zoom radius.

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 10:52:41 PM UTC-4, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM,
the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few
seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the
task when there were just a few targets at most to display.
On landing there were again many targets in close proximity
and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Um, so why didn't you title your post:
"FlarmView choking on too many targets?"

Have you discussed this with LX and/or your LX dealer?
Certainly not the first time this has been reported!

On Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 7:48:17 PM UTC+8, Dave Nadler wrote:
On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 10:52:41 PM UTC-4, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM,
the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few
seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the
task when there were just a few targets at most to display.
On landing there were again many targets in close proximity
and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Um, so why didn't you title your post:
"FlarmView choking on too many targets?"

Have you discussed this with LX and/or your LX dealer?
Certainly not the first time this has been reported!

Dave
When it initially happens there is no way to tell if it is being caused by the PowerFlarm or an issue with the Flarmview. All you see is the Flarmview cycling like it is losing power which comes from the PowerFlarm.
I was at Nephi and yes we did send info about issue to LX and spoke with dealers.
I reverted back to the previous Firmware on my Year old Flarmview and it worked fine. We tried that on a newer Flarmview and it would not work.
So as Matt indicated initially it is hard to tell if it is a Flarmview issue or a PowerFlarm one.
And up to this point I have not seen this reported anywhere and discussed in detail till now.
Hopefully there will be a fix soon

Randy

Um, so why didn't you title your post:
"FlarmView choking on too many targets?"

I fly with 10-14 PowerFLARM-equipped gliders. Our club standardized on Butterfly displays early on, one or two private owners have FLARMview. We haven't seen this behaviour.

When I had a similar problem with my Butterfly about a year ago, it manifested only with specific unit settings (imperial units - kts, nm, ft), oriented vertically. You might try changing from whatever units you use to the other (metric), and change orientation, to help troubleshoot the problem. The more the data, the easier the fix. I also took a cellphone video of the problem, posted it to youtube, and sent the link in. It took Butterfly folks about a day to fix and produce a beta version for me.

The Butterfly is not as bright as flarmview, but the support is very good, and they're (the equipment, the factory support folks, and the Canadian dealer) easy to work with.

I'm curious how many of the gliders had transponders as well as PowerFLARMs - it seems to me that might double the I/O the processor has to deal with. Only one local glider has a transponder here...

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 9:40:30 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Several pilots at the recent Nephi event experienced the same issue which appears to be related to the latest FlarmView firmware V2.20; we sent Uros various descriptions and videos of the issue so I hope he'll fix it soon. As you say, it seems to be driven by too many targets overloading something in the latest firmware.

One pilot was able to successfully downgrade him FlarmView to the previous firmware and it eliminated the issue. I personally just turned off the sound alarms as my LX9000 also displays flarm targets. Zooming out to at least 2.4 mile radius appeared to alleviate the problem although adjusting the display zoom before the unit recycled was a challenge; it's not actually going through a complete reboot, just displaying the splash screen and then returning to the display at minimal zoom radius.

Thanks. Very helpful to know whats going on. I will attempt to downgrade. To answer another poster, all gliders had transponders on and squawking 1202.

Matt

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 7:52:41 PM UTC-7, Matt Herron Jr. wrote:
Today I flew the first day of the Truckee FAI contest. We had about 14 planes in the launch area at once. All pilots had Flarm (and transponders) which was great.

My setup is a PowerFlarm Brick (V6.02) with a FlarmVIew display (latest firmware, and powered by the brick). V7 and Oudie are also connected to the brick, but powered separately.

When there were more than about 5 targets being tracked by the PowerFLARM, the FlarmView display started to reboot repeatedly and rapidly every few seconds as if it were being power cycled. It behaved normally during the task when there were just a few targets at most to display. On landing there were again many targets in close proximity and the FlarmVIew display started to reboot again.

Has anyone experienced this? I don't know how to tell if it is the Powerflarm's fault, recycling the power to the FlarmVIew display or the FlarmView Display itself getting overwhelmed by so many targets.

Thoughts?

Also, the PowerFlarm brick experienced MANY GPS failures during the last two flights. The Oudie kept switching to secondary GPS (internal). TO be fair, the Colibri II also showed some GPS dropouts on the same flight, but not nearly as many.

Additional thoughts?

Thanks,

Matt Herron

I flew with a FlarmView 57 at Nephi 50 + gliders and did not have an issue.

PowerFlarm 6.02 Flarmview 57 Fw2.20

Richard
www.craggyaero.com

On Monday, July 20, 2015 at 9:40:30 PM UTC-7, wrote:
Several pilots at the recent Nephi event experienced the same issue which appears to be related to the latest FlarmView firmware V2.20; we sent Uros various descriptions and videos of the issue so I hope he'll fix it soon. As you say, it seems to be driven by too many targets overloading something in the latest firmware.

One pilot was able to successfully downgrade him FlarmView to the previous firmware and it eliminated the issue. I personally just turned off the sound alarms as my LX9000 also displays flarm targets. Zooming out to at least 2.4 mile radius appeared to alleviate the problem although adjusting the display zoom before the unit recycled was a challenge; it's not actually going through a complete reboot, just displaying the splash screen and then returning to the display at minimal zoom radius.

To be clear, I am running version 2.02 which appears to be the revision before 2.2. Therefor downgrading probably did not fix the issue. 2.02 has the same "rebooting" problem.

Matt

I haven't done detailed testing, but FWIW I have seen a similar issue with my FlarmView57 on the latest firmware. I don't believe it's the PF rebooting because when the display comes back it hasn't lost GPS lock or anything.

--Noel