iFly GPS Forum

The long and painful saga of Avidyne's march toward certification of its IFD540 and IFD440 panel-mounted GPS units appears to have concluded, with units slowly starting to roll off the production line and out to pre-buy customers. Units should start becoming available at retail within a few weeks, and production rates are expected to ramp up quickly.

Avidyne has announced wifi and Bluetooth capability in these boxes, though that capability is not yet utilized. Avidyne has also expressed strong interest in finding ways to integrate popular EFBs with their system. See: http://www.avidynelive.com/forum_post..., for instance.

Avidyne also seems to generally prefer open protocols and interoperability, so I am optimistic that they will embrace cooperation with platforms that have a desire for interoperability with their system.

I would love to see iFly be one of the first products to work with that wireless linkage. Have you guys reached out to Avidyne to discuss this possibility, or will you?

Not sure what you mean, Jim. The wifi/Bluetooth infrastructure is built-in to the boxes rolling off the line today.

Who's going to buy a car untli there are gas stations available to fill them up? Who's going to build a gas station until there are enough cars on the road to make it viable?

Somebody's gotta start building interoperable tools that take advantage of wifi/Bluetooth connectivity before wifi/Bluetooth connectivity becomes a useful feature.

I'm just trying to encourage Avidyne and AP to consider working together to make their systems interoperable.

No, the wifi/Bluetooth hardware is already present in the Avidyne boxes being manufactured today. However, there's nobody on the other side of the signal to actually talk to, yet. (There are also FAA certification hurdles to eventually be dealt with, of course, so it's not a capability I expect to get turned on tomorrow.)

I certainly respect AP's privacy; I'm not asking them to disclose anything. I'm simply voicing a request that they consider partnering with Avidyne, that's all. Avidyne has an active user forum just like this one, and I have made the same request there. They have already responded that they're unfamiliar with iFly, but interested in looking into it.

Right now I've got peanut butter and chocolate sitting on the shelf next to each other. I'm just trying to ooch them a little closer together.... :-)