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Black Box

Modeling aircraft systems, like electrical stuff, hydraulics, pneumatics? Feel free to ask support.

Black Box

Postby jonititan » Wed Oct 04, 2017 9:49 am

Is there any interest in a black box sub system for aircraft?
It occurred to be it would be pretty cool to have an ARINC 573 / 717 compatible flight data recorder for flightgear flights.

I've started getting a hang on the properties system so I think it might be within my capability.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Johan G » Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:38 pm

Sorry for the late reply.

I think the sheer amount of data to be recorded in real life* will have an effect on frame rate. But do try anyway.

FlightGear have a means to define custom protocols that can write to file. One can set up what parameters to record and in what format through an XML configuration file. Both text and binary formats are possible.

To find the right properties the property browser will be of great help. Keep in mind that many properties are aircraft specific.

For details see the FlightGear wiki article Generic protocol (perm)

* About 80 parameters as per ICAO Annex 6, Part I, Appendix 8, table A8-1, Parameter Guidance for Crash Protected Flight Data Recorders. This is often formalized into national law, for example in USA the CFR Title 14, Chapter I, Subchapter G, Part 135, Subpart C, Section 135.152, Flight data recorders.
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Re: Black Box

Postby wlbragg » Sat Oct 07, 2017 6:08 pm

Not knowing what data is contained in the "black box" one might be able to leverage the aircraft-data system that is already available. Look at the c172p (c172p.nas) and see how the "save switch state" is done. You could easily save all the required data (maybe) and then using the GUI on demand under [Black Box] or another mechanism such as after a crash make an actual "black box" hot, (click-able), and display the data.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Hooray » Sat Oct 07, 2017 6:29 pm

Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Black Box

Postby wlbragg » Sat Oct 07, 2017 7:25 pm

@Hooray
Good point, I was thinking more to the state of each switch setting at a set point in time (specifically the end time). You might be able to use the flight recorder to pull the switch state at any given time during the flight along with the other time sensitive data.

@jonititan
It would require an entry, there called "signals", for virtually every bit of data you want to poll at any given time. There are many already defined. Unfortunately there are many more aircraft specific that would need to be identified and logged.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Hooray » Sat Oct 07, 2017 7:35 pm

Speaking in general, the data requirements here are heavily overlapping with the fgtape/replay systems and the multiplayer system.
The most recent development related to his is Richard's Emesary work: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Emesary
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Re: Black Box

Postby jonititan » Mon Oct 09, 2017 3:29 pm

Thanks I'll have a look at those links.

This idea was more for teaching and learning with students on FDM courses and having the ability to generate arbitrary data from a flight simulator as a way of enabling flight operations quality assurance research.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Hooray » Mon Oct 09, 2017 5:45 pm

There's a plethora of related options, including some much better suited for the kind of use-case you have in mind.
For instance, there is a dedicated property logging system writing properties to CSV (comma separated values) files.
Equally, there is at least half a dozen of I/O interfacing options in the form of various I/O protocols, as well as scripted options.

For starters, see:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/Property_browser
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Logging_properties
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Generic_protocol
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Property_Tree/Sockets
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Re: Black Box

Postby jonititan » Tue Oct 10, 2017 11:36 am

Thanks I have been going over the wiki quite a bit.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Haversine » Sat Feb 24, 2018 4:30 pm

Hi Sirs,
Im new with this sim...
I was looking for ways to playback flight data downloaded from real FDR´s or FDAU/QARs and I found Flightgear. I dont have any experience with this sotfware yet, I´m just insterested to know if is there a playback funtion (like Xplane does with the FDR feature) or if its possible (via coding in the source code), taking the data from a tabular list or CSV with the parameters that are pretended to be replayed.

Regards.
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Re: Black Box

Postby Hooray » Sat Feb 24, 2018 5:15 pm

Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Black Box

Postby Haversine » Sat Feb 24, 2018 11:09 pm

Hi Hooray,
Thanks for your quick response!
I´ll take a look to those links.
Thank you
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Re: Black Box

Postby Alant » Sun Feb 25, 2018 1:05 am

Years ago (1980´s) as an Aero engineer I had senior contacts in the UK AAIB (Aircraft Accidents Investigation Branch). If Flightgear was available to them at that time we could have become very famous.

The ability to write, and read, ARINC standard data seems to me to be a good idea. Bearing in mind that most, if not all, Flightgear aircraft do not have detailed simulations of aircraft internal systems ( and therefore there is not much data to read/write) I do not think that the overhead would be great,

If it is not too complicated to be compatible with an established standard this must have advantages over inventing our own.

Flightgear also has its own lightweight protocols for MP etc, so I am not suggesting that these should be discontinued, I am only writing about flight recording and playback.

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Re: Black Box

Postby Haversine » Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:28 pm

It would be great if someone in the community takes this challenge to develop a module able to read data from tabulars or CSVs from real FDRs, according with the FRED standard in terms of sample rates etc.....Its true that Xplane has a FDR module that is able to read parameters from a CSV later called .FDR file, but sadly the quantity of parameters is very limited, and the sampling rate is not appropiate if we want to respect the timing of the playback.

A module designed for people with low experiencing in coding....I do imagine a more intuitive and friendly user interface between the aircraft model (its moving elements as ailerons, gears, reversers, indicators, switches, flight dynamics, etc) and the data taken from a file, considering obviously, sensors type (unsigned, discretes, etc), parameter scaling, range, sampling rate...and so..

I could contribute with some old real FDR data for testing.

If this is possible, FG could turns out a very powerful tool for training, analysis and investigation.
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Re: Black Box

Postby wkitty42 » Mon Feb 26, 2018 2:36 pm

@Haversine: that person could be you ;)

the module could be written in any of several languages and the output fed into FG... the module might also be written in FG's NASAL script and run from within FG... since it appears to be a specialized task, those interested in it would be the best candidates to create and maintain it...
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