Engine Bar Graph

[Walter Casey]

First requested in 2008

You may want to review:
http://www.lycoming.com/support/publica ... I1094D.pdf
for recommended operation temperatures.

[katieb]

Mike,

Just my opinion after flying behind GRT equipment for close to 500 hours...

I can't speak for Greg and Jeff as to why they initially designed the EFIS display the way they did, but I agree with them. As a pilot, I would rather NOT see so much yellow and red down there on the engine page during normal operations. In our system, when a parameter is out of limit, it flashes red and gets your attention. It's one of the advantages of a glass panel to not have extra red and yellow colors all over the place, as this will eventually desensitize you to the red and yellow colors when something IS out of limits. Our system is easy to read and immediately clear about what the reading is without having to search for a small white line in all the colors. If it's green, it's good.

Katie

[Jerry Schneider]

I agree whole heatedly with Katie's reasoning.

The only time I want to see red is when I there is an alarm state I need my attention brought to.
When the amount of red is limited to alarm states, there is less time spent interpreting the screen, and less chance for missing an out of limit reading.

[Walter Casey]

[Jerry Schneider]

In submarines, (a very unforgiving environment of which I'm very familiar), 2 colors are used for the majority of critical instrumentation. Red & green. If it's not green it needs to be dealt with or compensated for. It's either good or not good. If it's "kinda-not-good", I want to know about it, and not be distracted by multi-colored data and interpretation lag-time.

It boils down to "color-phraseology".

I set most of my limits to alarm at the "yellow" level so I get more time to deal with them. The color yellow has very limited use as a cautionary. It also distracts from the primary ability to recognize changes in systems status. Yellow may be OK for airspeed, and GRT deals with that by changing the color of the displayed speed when that level is reached. But IMO, yellow has no place in critical systems, like engine monitors, especially if there is no "yellow condition" to be dealt with, as in the Dynon methodology of continuously showing yellow. Sure looks pretty, but it distracts from the primary mission.

In a nutshell, I feel its better to be told there is something I need to be thinking about, as opposed to looking at a bar graph and having to determine if there is something I need to think about. These alarms/limits can be set to personal preferences as to the margins we determine to be sufficient to protect our $40K engines.

I think some maybe people may have forgotten the reason we had yellow on the steam-gauges of the past..... Because they were painted on. We had nothing better to warn us. And most people are resistant to change, (a common human trait.). Therefore, the yellow seems necessary.

Today, fortunately, we have the ability to be able to not have to contend with such distractions, and thereby have a greater level of safety. Again, IMO.

There is also the ever present argument as to which is better... Vanilla or Chocolate? Personal preferences always play a role too.

While there are many reasons to like the GRT over Dynon, (which is why I have 2 of them), if the tipping point were engine monitor colors, I'd have to recommend GRT. Hands down.

[Walter Casey]

[Walter Casey]

Link to iLevi http://www.aviation.levil.com/iLevil.htm

[GRT_Jeff]

It's still on the to-do list. The way we would do it is like the red limits. On the bar graphs, the red/alarm limits are shown as thin, horizontal, red lines at the limit points. The filled area, numbers, and label all change to red when you cross the limit. We would do the same for yellow. If you cross the line, the filled area, numbers, and label would change to yellow. When everything is normal, the filled area is green, the rest is black, and you would have up to four thin lines marking the minimum and maximum yellow and red limits.

[Walter Casey]

Jeff,
Thank you for your response. I am not sure what you are proposing, perhaps a drawing would clarify your plan.

[Bobturner]

Walter,

Not sure what your map complaint is. Mine works fine. Perhaps you are trying to display too much. Just turn off stuff you do not use.
XM had a problem for a while, with users having to re-activate their radios. I had to do this for my xm car radio. It seems much better now. This was an xm problem, not GRT.
You can save your settings to a memory stick.