https://uavionix.com/products/skyecho
I waited about a week
LX Avionics UK is also advertising it
I got it from their website, sent with FedEx and it arrived in 4 days.
Here is a small review I put together during the first flight with SkyEcho.
Thanks a lot Dimme for all the good info in your video.
I will wait a few months more. My final options are Skyecho2 and XGPS170D.
Apparently there is a new stable firmware out that supports FLARM-in: https://uavionix.com/update-skyecho-2-system-software/
I have not tested that one but will take it up with me next time and let you know.
Dimme wrote:
I have not tested that one but will take it up with me next time and let you know.
Please do. I tested a PowerFlarm portable in a Cessna 172 and it was completely useless both for transponder and Flarm targets. I suppose the reason is the metal structure of the aircraft shielding the antenna. It was very noticeable that targets evan at close range appeared and disappeared as you banked the aircraft! It would be interesting to hear if the SkyEcho2 antenna/receiver works any better.
For anyone that has the SkyEcho 2, there is a hidden URI that you can visit on the device with some interesting information:
From there one can easily deduct that the device uses the same chip for temperature, altitude and air pressure measurements. By digging around a bit more in the firmware one can also find that the Wifi and few other functions are controlled using an ESP-WROOM-32 chip. In fact I bought a standalone devkit for the ESP32 from here and flashed the SkyEcho 2 firmware on it and it worked! (throwing a bunch of errors on the serial port due to the missing peripherals of course). I think a little more digging around and it might even be possible to write an open source firmware for the SkyEcho 2 that will finally do what we want.
I recently got a PilotAware Rosetta. I was surprised how much traffic it did show – all the airliners, but quite a lot of GA seems to be radiating ADS-B these days, and it’s getting FLARM info from OGN ground stations so we could see a lot of the glider traffic. It can show this on Skydemon and a bunch of other tablet EFB software.
Yes you see a lot of traffic that the OGN-R ground stations radiate on the PilotAware frequency. However this is something that is only widespread within UK. Therefore PilotAware is not that useful here in Sweden.
I just cannot understand why doesn’t all aviation stick to one standard. Some go with FLARM, some with PilotAware, some with UAT, some with ADS-B. Just stick to one f-in standard and make a single standard receiver that shows everything. Stop introducing new technologies all the time. In my opinion ADS-B out on 1090 should be mandatory everywhere where transponders are mandatory. The technology is there, it is not expensive, mode S transponders radiate it with a small addition and receivers are cheaper than a plate of sushi. It should be everywhere!
