New Datalink Spec

[Kawba]

Hi all,

Apologies in advance if this is not the right place or allowed!

We build a free EFB app (FlightDeck EFB) and have supported GDL90 for our traffic screen for a few years. It’s worked well, but as we look ahead we’ve been thinking about what other data we’d like to use in the app, and how we could make it easier to design & integrate with different hardware.

To explore this, we’ve put together a draft spec called SADL (Simple Avionics Data Link): https://github.com/gnk-softworks/SADL. It’s aimed at non-certified avionics and is intended to support sending and receiving a wider range of data than GDL90. The spec is published under a CC BY 4.0 license so it’s open, reusable, and not tied to any single project.

This is our first attempt at writing a spec like this, so it will definitely need changes and improvements. The main idea is to make it easier for different apps and devices to work together, and we’d like to shape it with community input rather than just going it alone and having a proprietary standard..

I figured given the nature of this community and the stratux hardware there may be some folks here interested in this sort of thing, we’d love your feedback. Whether it’s comments on the current draft, suggestions for use cases, or even reasons why it might not be a good idea, all input is welcome.

Thanks,
Kawba