GDL-39 Output

[jnmeade]

Does anyone know what devices the GDL-39 will talk to besides tablets with Garmin Pilot? Will it talk to the Dynon SkyView, for example? Will it talk to an iPad and can it be displayed on ForeFlight?

 

[LDJones]

Does anyone know what devices the GDL-39 will talk to besides tablets with Garmin Pilot? Will it talk to the Dynon SkyView, for example? Will it talk to an iPad and can it be displayed on ForeFlight?

Definitely no to the last one.

 

[Henning]

Since day one Garmin has been ****ing me off with their proprietary interfaces.

 

[oldShar]

It IS supposed to talk with the Dynon and GRT products

 

[Mike I]

The GDL-39 will talk to the iPad and to any application on it, including ForeFlight, for Location Services (not ADS-B ). So, it will work as a highly accurate WAAS GPS without needing Garmin Pilot. While that's probably not as helpful as you might want, as ADS-B is the main selling point, it's inaccurate to say that it doesn't work together.

 

[Marauder]

I've said this before, the first company that offers an ADS-B receiver that sells for less than $799 and will work with anyone's app will get my business...

 

[John221us]

I've said this before, the first company that offers an ADS-B receiver that sells for less than $799 and will work with anyone's app will get my business...

Well the problem with that theory is that it is the application vendor that decides if it is goint to work with that piece of hardware. I can't speak to the price.

 

[Mike I]

Well the problem with that theory is that it is the application vendor that decides if it is goint to work with that piece of hardware.

Not necessarily. It would be logical for the ADS-B manufacturers to make a data interchange format like exists for GPS (NMEA 0183) so that almost any GPS can provide information to almost any device. There just needs to be motivation for the manufacturers to devise a standard and adhere to it.

 

[Marauder]

Not necessarily. It would be logical for the ADS-B manufacturers to make a data interchange format like exists for GPS (NMEA 0183) so that almost any GPS can provide information to almost any device. There just needs to be motivation for the manufacturers to devise a standard and adhere to it.

And that my friend is the rub. Standardization on a specific communication standard will open up competition. Funny how all the ADS-B portable receivers are priced at $799, isn't it? They all must be buying the same components from the same suppliers for the same price

 

[chartbundle]

Reading the GDL-39 protocol is sort of interesting. Where many of the other vendors seem to just stream the ADS-B data as it's received the GDL actually translates it into little data files and when you request them you get fully decoded data with all the ADS-B style encoding removed(no bit packing, no funny lat+lon encoding, etc) The biggest downside is that since it uses Bluetooth even with the protocol information on iOS you can't build an app without Garmin blessing it to use their Bluetooth devices.

 

[allanwright]

Nice job decoding the GDL-39 output. How did you do it? Is the data format the same on the serial ports?