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Open source EFIS. Here is the first one...

Rainier Lamers

Well Known Member
I have today released the full source code as well as free development tools including compiler for one of our older EFIS systems.
This is the monochrome Ultra HXL which is still an active product of ours and in regular production.

You will find a download link for an installation program on the Ultra page at www.MGLAvionics.co.za. This will install compiler and the Ultra HXL project ready to use. It requires Windows XP but will probably run OK on later versions.

The source code is released under the Free Software Foundations GPL license which grants you a lot of freedom but requires you to equally grant anybody else the same freedom for any changes or additions you make (i.e, you can't keep things for yourself).
You may use the source code and the compiler in any way you see fit, even create products in competition to ours (but with open source).

The Ultra HXL is in many ways an ideal testing ground for us to find out how open source could (or could not) work for an EFIS system and we are doing this as a test case. The project is relatively small and a reasonable programmer should be able to grasp the system and make changes fairly quickly.

One big thing though: This is released without a promise of any support by myself or MGL Avionics. I probably do not have the time to support your changes or find bugs in your code or figure out why something does not work.
This you must understand. You get all of this for free - but you are on your own.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
I dont speak geek, so I have no idea what you are talking about------

BUT, it would appear that once again MGL has pushed the envelop on the entire glass panel microcosm.

Congrats :D
 
Cool, looks like this would give a great for someone not wanting to start from scratch.

To bad I have to blow the dust off my windows emulator to work with it. I know there is a lot of opensource solutions for windows. But the linux community seems to be more into this idea then windows developers. Just saying.

Cheers.
 
Congratulations Rainier!

this should be pretty much standard for any "older" devices.
there can be much more useful life in older products that way instead of them being "bricked"...
or in case a company goes out of business (which i do not wish for anyone) or simply loses interest to develop further (such as when focussing on a newer generation of system).

obviously the target demography is probably rather small in this case, as you'd need to have one of the units in use and at the same time have some IT skills... but i congratulate you on the start!

regards,
bernie
 
Rainier, I played around with AVR Pascal IDE and the ultra HXL source. Looks good. The GettingStarted.pdf is helpful.

It's been a while since I worked in Pascal. I forgot how easy it was to read.

Chris.
 
Product insurance

This is an excellent gesture.

For those who don't speak geek: Think of it as product insurance. By taking this step, MGL are basically saying, "Even if we discontinue this product or go out of business, our customers won't be left in the lurch."

Users of their Ultra HXL products will always know that, "someone else," can pick up the software, continue to develop it, and support it even after MGL moves on to bigger and better projects.

There should be more of it, IMHO. Well done.

- mark
 
No biggie.
Should work just peachy under Wine.

Rainier

Cool, looks like this would give a great for someone not wanting to start from scratch.

To bad I have to blow the dust off my windows emulator to work with it. I know there is a lot of opensource solutions for windows. But the linux community seems to be more into this idea then windows developers. Just saying.

Cheers.
 
It's been a while since I worked in Pascal. I forgot how easy it was to read.

Chris.

Yes.
That's EXACTLY why I insist on using it for most of my work.
It removes the extra "translation layer" that your brain needs otherwise to figure out what a piece of code does.
I felt so strongly about it - I wrote my own compiler for it a long time ago as there was simply nothing good out there that would be suitable to put on a small micro chip.
I used to sell the compilers for various processors as shareware back in the days when I was still working for a boss. After MGL was started I had to give that up due to time constraints. Pity...

In many ways EP is similar to ada, the language created for mission critical applications and I used similar reasons to create Embedded Pascal - with one crucial difference - the code needed to be similar enough to Pascal so it could compile without changes in Borland's Delphi compiler. This basically means that code development happens not on the actual instrument but under Delphi. Much easier, much quicker and much more visibility of the code as it executes. It also means that all these nice simulators of ours are not any additional work - they exist as part of the development process anyway.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
Why ?

The Ultra HXL is an old instrument by EFIS standards and the open source for this does not mean that much in real terms (although much of the code may be useful to some for other purposes).

This is a test for us (and for me) to see how we will go for the future, in particular the iEFIS range of instruments.

These are the choices:

a) Closed source but open interfaces (much like current MGL systems)
b) Open source based on current code but with things like Jeppesen support etc removed (has to be - sorry, Jeppesen and others will not allow this).
c) Open platform - i.e. we provide Linux and Android and you're on your own.

or

Any mixture of the above...

The reason I am doing this is that I believe there is a lot of programming talent out there and quite a few "flying" programmers would love to get their keyboards into this. Potentially this could result in a very good system and of course in that case everybody benefits. Yes, of course it would also mean that anybody could easily make their own EFIS hardware and run the open source systems on that (Chinese come to mind...). Some may think that is a bad thing - I don't.
I think it's going to happen anyway - regardless if MGL has anything to do with it.

The current Ultra HXL open source release will allow me, on a very small scale, to probe if and how we will tackle the future with respect to open source.

Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics
 
The reason I am doing this is that I believe there is a lot of programming talent out there and quite a few "flying" programmers would love to get their keyboards into this. Potentially this could result in a very good system and of course in that case everybody benefits. Yes, of course it would also mean that anybody could easily make their own EFIS hardware and run the open source systems on that (Chinese come to mind...). Some may think that is a bad thing - I don't.
I think it's going to happen anyway - regardless if MGL has anything to do with it.


Rainier
CEO MGL Avionics

I believe you are correct. In my opinion we are not too many years away from a market where we will purchase the generic hardware we want then acquire whatever software we wish to run in our panel.

The tablets now available are just going to accelerate this process.
 
I think it's going to happen anyway - regardless if MGL has anything to do with it.

Yes, I completely agree! It will happen. And there are a couple of things in the works already out there. If I had more time I would be finishing a similar project I started a while back.

Chris.
 
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