10.3 Released!

You'll need to enable the "Remote IFD Tuning" option on the Setup Page (under the Radio category).  At that point, the com radios from the other IFD can be accessed by pressing the left knob (just like Nav radios are accessed).  Once displayed, turning the knobs will adjust the frequency for the radio on the other IFD.  See page 1-32 in the 500 series Pilot Guide for full explanation.

We have an IFD540, we upgraded to 10.3 last week. We use SkyDemon. And we have one user who uses the IFD100 app to plan at home and transfer to the 540. One of our members used the plane over the weekend. He could not get SkyDemon to connect to the 540. I told him that he needed to turn on the Wi-Fi in the setup menu. He could not get it to work.

Is there a problem with the connectivity with SkyDemon?

Is there any instructions or video how to connect the iPad to the 540?

Having checked the IFD documentation page, all of the documents are for the previous version.

I will be flying the plane tomorrow so I hope to be able to setup the IFD to work with SkyDemon and the IFD100 app.

Thanks in advance.

Yes there is.  On its own, SkyDemon will not connect to the IFD.  Therefore, SkyDemon will not get information from the IFD (e.g. GPS position) nor will it be able to send data to the IFD (e.g. flight plans).  I've been in contact with Tim Dawson of SkyDemon and he is aware of the problem and the solution.

In the interim, fortunately, there is a workaround.  The problem is that SkyDemon isn't announcing its presence to the IFD.  Therefore, the IFD isn't aware that there's a device connected with an app that wants to share data and doesn't have an opportunity to ask the user to accept or reject the connection to that device.  But if you start the IFD100 app on the same device on which SkyDemon is loaded, then the IFD will recognize the device and you can accept the connection.  Once that's done, start SkyDemon and it will communicate normally.  You can stop the IFD100 if you like.  It's a temporary solution, but at least you'll be able to use SkyDemon until a fix is published.

Of course, that workaround only works on an iPad since IFD100 is only on that platform.  If you're running on Android, the same technique could work, but it would require another Android app that has the capability to connect with an IFD.

+1

I really hope Avidyne considers an update just to fix this issue.  Having to reset the last frequency at every startup sounds like a huge PITA.  I am holding off on updating to 10.3 for now because of this issue.  I hope this fix comes quickly.

David

I'm very surprised we haven't seen a fix for the frequency issue by now.  Now that they know exactly how the problem manifests, they should be able to track it down rather quickly and find out what was changed to cause this new and unwanted behavior.  I really hate being reminded that my IFD-540 is screwed up every time I power it up.

Rationalize it all you want, call it a "first world problem", but that just seems like a fanboy response to me.  I'm certainly an Avidyne fanboy myself, but I don't see any need to cut them slack.  They are a top tier avionics manufacturer, and they need to be held to a high standard - anything less isn't fair to them or us.

1. Something happened with the code that created an undesired, and unintended result.

2. This result was not caught in all of the extensive testing that was done.

This of course begs the question, "what else got messed up that wasn't caught during testing?"

I might be able to live with the broken frequency issue for a few months - though REALLY irritating. The loss of hard wired data from my stratux to the IFD would be a non-starter. That is an awesome feature for me... Maybe the WiFi will eliminate this need, but I'm not sold yet.

Do we have a comprehensive bug list vs. feature list yet?

I have a ticket open on this now; in my case it's hardwired to an EchoUAT used as an ADS-B receiver.   Has been working well with 10.2 for some time; stops working with 10.3 after about 15 minutes or so.   Power-cycling the IFD gets it working again, for a short while.  

Thus far Avidyne has been great to work with trouble shooting this.  

No.

Using Stratus 3i. -- My setup also required that Foreflight be able to access the traffic/wx.  (that is what made it unstable in my opinion)

It did sort of work, but was not stable. -- looking forward to a day when Foreflight plays nice with open-adsb.  (not holding my breath)