Here are some pictures of my glass cockpit prototype.  It's only 1/3 of the whole thing.  When I am done, there will be 3 independent systems voting on what actually gets displayed.  I'll have all the features you'd expect in a modern aircraft.  However, my cost will be an order of magnitude less then anything else out there.  Everything you see on this page was purchased new for under $750.  Multiply that by 3 and you still are only at $2250.  That's real cheap for a triple redundant EFIS.  My RV8A will also have dual electrical busses.  That way, I can turn one off and still run on the other one.  The entire design has no single points of failures.  Even the software has redundant execution paths.  For example, I derive the directional data from the GPS, however, I also take into account the magnetic compass input that I built into my black box.  Since there will be 3 of these each, I have no less that 6 different ways to find my heading.  The other systems have similar backups.


This is the first pass... it's working... but the needles are not on.  This is an early version.  I also have a modern looking EFIS version, but this looks so cool!
My later versions actually have a moving map display instead of the Turn Coordinator... I can swap them at the touch of the control.  In the real airplane, I'll be able to switch displays at will.  With just a single touch.  Engine managment data is not planned in this system, however, if I ever decide to market this, I'll certainly add it.


 
This is a top down view of the Flight Computer innards.


 
It's Alive!!!  Notice my fancy and expensive case... I'm just using this foam board until I get the "exact" measurements of the Piper Navaho Chieftan that we will be installing it in for test.  The foam is very close in size, however.



Ok... I work for Microsoft, so I had to use one of our GPSs... however, that black box, well that's a black box! ;-)  Actually, it's a device that I "invented" to tell me the Attitude of the airplane... it's actually a small comptuer that is reading 6 accelerometers and it's updating the main computer at a rate of 115kbps.  It screams only 3 numbers, but it does it real fast.  I then perform a bunch of math on it to figure out what the airplane is actually doing.  I build this little bugger for under $100. 



Here you can see the whole mess on my little work desk.  (Ok... it's actually not "My" work desk... it's my Daughters Art Table... but since she's not here right now...)



The only "user interface" device is this touch screen.  The monitor didn't come with it... I added it.  Pretty cool, huh?



It's working!!!


 
This is a view of the computer itself... including the Video Driver, Touchscreen USB Interface and the Screen Adjust buttons.  The rest of the stuff fits inside this case on little "foam" shelves... but I'm working on the cooling at the moment, so I leave it open so that it can breathe.



This picture is just a screen shot of the most recent version of the 6pack page.  See the GPS Moving map... and that cool looking Attitude Indicator.  (There is a bug in the AI... the "airplane" graphic is missing - not sure where it flew off too!)


Ok... now here is a real sneak peek.  This is a picture of my first pass as the EFIS "Modern" display.  (Click the image to see a video of the fisrt version - I've got a better video, but I need to work on trimming it down.) This version is still crude, however, it shows you the flexibility of my package.  (What you don't see is the 3d terrain, the overlayed moving map as well as various navigational data elements. <grin>)  But I think you get the idea.  The big red X indicates that system has detected a fault and has terminated.  I see a lot of these in the current version... as I'm still trying to determine what a "fault" actually should be.  In this instance, you can see that there are THREE different altitudes being displayed, so obviously, that part of the unit has failed... hence the X.  In addition, there is no "Attitude" information being feed into it, so the horizon is currently "off."

I'll have more to come, but right now, I'm writing a bunch of software.  We're getting ready for Danville so it has to look awesome!