Can VAL INS-429 control Garmin D180 autopilot?

I have a Dynon D180 and AP74 autopilot controller. I'm adding the VAL INS-429 to my panel and wanted to know if I can connect the 429 to the D180 to control my autopilot. It has the Autopilot UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, CDI Flag, VDI Flag, Audio, etc as you can see in this pinout

Can a Mod correct the title please? It of course should say Dynon D180 instead of Garmin. It was late last night when I wrote it....Thanks

It appears you have to have the HS34 to integrate the analog resolver inputs to display the INS nav on the HSI. I suspect the autopilot would work from there but you would have to confirm with Dynon...

Thanks, I contacted Dynon and now I?m waiting for a reply.

rocketbob said:

It appears you have to have the HS34 to integrate the analog resolver inputs to display the INS nav on the HSI. I suspect the autopilot would work from there but you would have to confirm with Dynon...

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Not interested in displaying the 429 info on the D180, just want the 429 to control the autopilot. If that can?t be done I?m considering selling the Dynon servos and installing a stand alone Trutrak or Trio autopilot that both the D180 and the 429 can control, for redundancy.

Pilot135pd said:

Not interested in displaying the 429 info on the D180, just want the 429 to control the autopilot. If that can’t be done I’m considering selling the Dynon servos and installing a stand alone Trutrak or Trio autopilot that both the D180 and the 429 can control, for redundancy.

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You have to have the HS34 to interface with the 422. The HS34 digitally sends the nav signal to the D180.

None of the other autopilots accept resolver inputs. The only one that Trutrak had in the past that could accept an analog nav input was the Sorcerer which is no longer produced.

rocketbob said:

You have to have the HS34 to interface with the 422. The HS34 digitally sends the nav signal to the D180.

None of the other autopilots accept resolver inputs. The only one that Trutrak had in the past that could accept an analog nav input was the Sorcerer which is no longer produced.

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I've now written to Dynon, Trio, and Trutrak. If I just connect the VAL to the Dynon and the D180 shuts down, will the signal from the VAL still reach the Dynon servos and control them? That's the big question if I want redundancy.


If the Dynon servos can't be reached by the VAL during a D180 failure then I think if I want redundancy I'm going to have to buy a standalone autopilot that can be controlled by both the D180 and the VAL.

As other-Bob said, the answer is no. All of these autopilots (trio, TruTrak) are fully digital, and cannot accept analog outputs from ils or vor receivers. When you run ils or vor signals thru an efis, it will convert them to digital signals that the autopilot can ‘read’. While these autopilots can operate ‘stand-alone’ as wing levelers and altitude hold mode, if you want them to follow a glide slope they need an efis* to convert your gs signal to the right format, or a waas gps which can provide GS information for an LPV approach. (To the best of my knowledge, that data is usually only available to a two wire ARINC connection.)
*Early Dynon efis units wouldn’t deal with gs info. I don’t know about the 180.

The D180 does not follow vertical guidance (glideslope) - none of the Dynon legacy products do. Localizer, yes, glideslope, no.

Carlos - I think you're missing a valuable piece of the "big picture how does it work" view.

The EFIS IS the autopilot controller. Not the servos - they're dumb, they just crank in as much control input as the autopilot controller tells them to crank in. NOBODY makes an autopilot servo that has all the smarts of a built-in autopilot controller.

Also, in the experimental world, nobody really makes a stand-alone modern autopilot that will handle the VOR-ILS signals to steer the airplane. There's a reason for this. To steer the airplane the autopilot needs to know a BUNCH of information in addition to the VOR-ILS data. For instance, it needs to know which side of the airplane is up - it needs attitude information. It also needs to know which way it's pointed - heading information, or, even better, track information.

I know your intent is to produce a simple "like the old days" autopilot. Those are available. The guys in the certified world are yanking them out as quick as they can in favor of modern, digital autopilots. Why? Because those modern, digital autopilots do SO much more than their "steam" predecessors, and do it SO much better.

If your desire is to have a stand-alone autopilot, I would counsel you to consider installing a device like the GRT Mini-AP or Garmin G5. Yeah, sure, they are EFIS devices. Just program your brain to think they are a dedicated autopilot controller, with all the EFIS stuff there as a fancy backup to whatever other "primary" flight instrument you opt to have in your panel, like the D180. By going this route you will open up the opportunity to add at some time in the future a GPS navigator that uses ARINC 429 signalling to do all the REALLY neat stuff like LPV approaches.

Or, just stick with your D180 and accept that it's the brains of your autopilot. Many people have gone this route and found it works very, very well, save for having to hand fly the vertical portion of the ILS.

The INS-429 supports the SL30 protocol over RS-232 so it may be possible to do that way.

I've wired Val nav's to G5's multiple times which worked fine but I haven't tried interfacing them as a nav source to run an AP.

Canadian_JOY said:

The D180 does not follow vertical guidance (glideslope) - none of the Dynon legacy products do. Localizer, yes, glideslope, no.

Carlos - I think you're missing a valuable piece of the "big picture how does it work" view.

The EFIS IS the autopilot controller. Not the servos - they're dumb, they just crank in as much control input as the autopilot controller tells them to crank in. NOBODY makes an autopilot servo that has all the smarts of a built-in autopilot controller.

Also, in the experimental world, nobody really makes a stand-alone modern autopilot that will handle the VOR-ILS signals to steer the airplane. There's a reason for this. To steer the airplane the autopilot needs to know a BUNCH of information in addition to the VOR-ILS data. For instance, it needs to know which side of the airplane is up - it needs attitude information. It also needs to know which way it's pointed - heading information, or, even better, track information.

I know your intent is to produce a simple "like the old days" autopilot. Those are available. The guys in the certified world are yanking them out as quick as they can in favor of modern, digital autopilots. Why? Because those modern, digital autopilots do SO much more than their "steam" predecessors, and do it SO much better.

If your desire is to have a stand-alone autopilot, I would counsel you to consider installing a device like the GRT Mini-AP or Garmin G5. Yeah, sure, they are EFIS devices. Just program your brain to think they are a dedicated autopilot controller, with all the EFIS stuff there as a fancy backup to whatever other "primary" flight instrument you opt to have in your panel, like the D180. By going this route you will open up the opportunity to add at some time in the future a GPS navigator that uses ARINC 429 signalling to do all the REALLY neat stuff like LPV approaches.

Or, just stick with your D180 and accept that it's the brains of your autopilot. Many people have gone this route and found it works very, very well, save for having to hand fly the vertical portion of the ILS.

Click to expand...

I understand the autopilot controller is the D180 and that's why I mentioned that if I wanted a backup I'd most likely need to sell my Dynon servos and buy a stand alone autopilot and be legal doing Localizer approaches. That's why I wrote to Trio and Trutrak to see if the VAL would control them.

I wrote to Dynon to see if the VAL could send signals to the D180 and control the servos that way, but I also asked them if the D180 shut down that would break the continuity to the servos. I'm still just researching everything AND I MIGHT JUST hand fly the ILS and be done with all of this

Pilot135pd said:

I wrote to Dynon to see if the VAL could send signals to the D180 and control the servos that way, but I also asked them if the D180 shut down that would break the continuity to the servos.

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Short answer, no need to wait for Dynon.

- D180 understands the signals being sent by VAL - they're what we call an SL30 serial data format.
- No autopilot servos in the world understand the signals being sent by the VAL.
- There is no "continuity" between the VAL and the servos, ever
- The only continuity is from the D180 to the servos.
- Without the D180 to whisper sweet nothings to them via the data bus, the servos are just dead weight. They only speak one language, Dynon data bus language.
- Same goes for any other manufacturer.
- The D180 is the box that does all the fancy math on the VAL data to produce the sweet nothings the servos need to hear in order to spin in the right direction and with the right amplitude (that's why we call it the autopilot controller)
- even the traditional GA autopilots like the Century series have an autopilot controller to do all this data massaging - their servos likewise won't work without the autopilot controller. The controller is the brain. Muscles don't flex without a brain to tell them to flex.

Suggestion... Learn to fly and love the D180 and its autopilot. It will fly the airplane the VAL using heading and altitude. Then learn to fly the airplane with the VAL providing data to the D180. Then one day, just for fun, pull the breaker on the D180 and hand-fly the approach using just the display on the VAL. This range of activities will pretty fully exercise all the equipment and reversion modes. After a few hundred hours behind the D180 you will likely wonder why you spent so much time pondering how to bypass it as an autopilot controller - the legacy Dynon equipment doesn't cr*p out all the time. It's solid equipment.