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NOTICES WARRANTY Aventech Research Inc. products are warranted to be free from defects in material and workmanship under normal use and service for a period of one year beginning on the date of shipment. This warranty extends only to the original buyer or end-user customer of an Aventech Research Inc.
In order to set up and calibrate the system, the user will utilize Aventech’s aimcfg PC-based software utility. A user’s guide for the aimcfg software utility is provided in Section 4.
With your AIMMS-20 system you will have received one of two Air Data Probe types depending on the airframe for the planned installation, an under-wing version as shown in Figure 1 or a sting-mount version as shown in Figure 2.
However, the compromise is that MEMS-based measurement devices have poorer long term DC stability. The AIMMS-20 system compensates for this DC instability using a single-axis GPS carrier-phase system which is described in Section 2.3.
The CPM also acts as the main interface between the aircraft spray navigation system and the rest of the AIMMS-20. Aircraft power is provided to the AIMMS-20 through the CPM module which steps the input voltage down +12 VDC and distributes it to power the balance of the modules through the Controller Area Network (CAN) cables.
Figure 5: AIMMS-20 Central Processing Module 2.5 Communications The four AIMMS-20 modules communicate with each other via a high-speed, digital serial Controller Area Network (CAN) bus. The four conductor cable connected between the modules provides power to each of the modules and communication between them.
3 AIMMS-20 SETUP AND CALIBRATION 3.1 Preparation of Laptop / Computer The first step in setting up your AIMMS-20 system is to install the aimcfg software utility provided with the system onto a laptop computer which will be used to interact with the system.
The resulting data file provides the required information so that the calibration coefficients that have to be programmed into the AIMMS-20 can be determined in order to provide a real-time wind solution. Two different procedures exist for flight calibration. The first procedure is required to determine aerodynamic errors induced by the aircraft itself (see Section 3.3.2).
E-mail the log file on the USB FLASH memory device to support@aventech.com or the e-mail address of your dedicated Aventech support engineer for post- processing. The new calibration parameters will be e-mailed to you for programming into the AIMMS-20 system.
Connect the DSub-9 connector labelled COM1 with a black hood to your computer at this point in order to communicate with, and setup, the AIMMS-20. Once the communications cable is connected, and the AIMMS system connected to power, turn on the AIMMS.
Section 4.2). 4.4.3 View Broadcast Data Aircraft state and meteorological data is computed in real-time by the AIMMS-20 and broadcast out the COM2 port of the CPM (grey hooded DSub-9 connector on the provided serial cable. If this serial port is connected to your computer, it is possible to view this information directly in real-time as shown below, e.g.
“raw” data. Selecting this menu item starts the collection of all sensor information that is passed between the four modules of the AIMMS-20 system via the COM2 serial port of the CPM connected to your computer. A dialog box will be displayed showing the filename being used to record the data, and the number of bytes currently transferred.
4.4.6 Update Firmware The AIMMS-20 CPM firmware is field upgradable. Updating the CPM’s internal firmware is performed using the “Update Firmware” menu item and is described below. Simply follow the instructions provided by the aimcfg software.
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Once the user has selected the firmware update file using the “Open” button, a dialog box will be displayed instructing the user to insure the AIMMS-20 is powered down. Press OK once you have verified that the system is OFF.
The process from power reset to completion should take a few minutes. 4.5 Setup The “Setup” menu item displays a window which allows the user to enter and program general operational parameters for the AIMMS-20 system. These parameters include: 1) Internal data log status and period ...
AIMMS20-OM After the data is downloaded, an AIMMS-20 Setup Form is displayed showing the setup parameters currently stored in the system. When the setup information is downloaded for the first time, it will consist of factory defaults settings which were programmed into the system at time of manufacture.
These parameters are obtained by analysis of flight data obtained during special calibration maneuvers (see Section 3.3) and will be provided to the end user by Aventech Research Inc. The dynamic heating efficiency parameter should always be set to 0.42 as this is a function of the air-data probe design and not subject to change.
APPENDIX A: AIMMS-20 SERIAL COMMUNICATION FORMAT A.1 Introduction The AIMMS-20 offers bi-directional RS-232 communications using a binary packet format. The default broadcast packet is called the Standard Meteorology Data Packet, which is output at a user-defined rate up to 20Hz. An optional Aircraft-State Data Packet is also available, which includes aircraft position, velocity, attitude and aircraft- relative flow (TAS) vector, each in three dimensions.
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