Kanardia Amigo User manual

Amigo — Manual
© Kanardia d.o.o.
October 2020
Revision 2.0

Amigo — Manual
Contact Information
Publisher and producer:
Kanardia d.o.o.
Lopata 24a
SI-3000
Slovenia
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
A lot of useful and recent information can be also found on the Internet. See
http://www.kanardia.eu for more details.
Copyright
This document is published under the Creative Commons, Attribution-Share-
Alike 3.0 Unported licence. Full license is available on http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode web page and a bit more human read-
able summary is given on
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. In short, the license
gives you right to copy, reproduce and modify this document if:
 you cite Kanardia d.o.o. as the author of the original work,
 you distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license
to this one.
Credits
This document was written using TeX Live (L
A
T
E
X) based document creation
system using Kile running on Linux operating system. Most of the figures were
drawn using Open Office Draw, Inkscape and QCad applications. Photos and
scanned material was processed using Gimp. All document sources are freely
available on request under the licence mentioned above and can be obtained
by email. Please send requests to [e-mail].
Revision History
The following table shows the revision history of this document.
2 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual
Rev. Date Description
1.0 June 2018 Initial release
2.0 October 2020 Servo motor settings and tuning capabilities,
new screenshoots, new definitions, prepared
to work with Horis and Emsis as well.
3 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual CONTENTS
Contents
1 Introduction 6
1.1 Icons Used Trough the Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.2 General Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Technical Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2 Operation 7
2.1 General Precautions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 UserInterface............................ 8
2.3 StatusLine ............................. 9
2.4 Autopilot Lateral Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4.1 Track Hold Mode – TRK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.4.2 Horizontal Navigation (HNAV) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.5 Autopilot Vertical Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5.1 Altitude Hold (ALT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.6 External Button Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.7 Disengaging The Autopilot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.8 Options ............................... 15
3 Settings 15
3.1 Units................................. 16
3.2 Screen................................ 16
3.3 About ................................ 17
4 Autopilot 17
5 Installation 18
5.1 Mounting Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.2 Connections............................. 18
5.3 TheAUXPort ........................... 19
5.3.1 External Button . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6 Maintenance & Repair 21
4 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual CONTENTS
7 Limited Conditions 21
7.1 Two Years Warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
7.2 TSO Information — Limited Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual 1. Introduction
1 Introduction
First of all, we would like to thank you for purchasing our Amigo. Amigo is
an electronic device, which enhances autopilot functionality. Amigo can not
act alone and it must be combined with some other Kanardia device. This
can be Nesis, Aetos, Horis and Emsis PFD. In addition, it must be connected
with autopilot servos.
This manual describes the technical description, operation, installation and
tuning.
1.1 Icons Used Trough the Manual
A few icons appear on the side of the manual, which have special meanings:
This icon denotes information that needs to be taken with special
attention.
This icon denotes background information about the subject.
This icon denotes an installation tip.
1.2 General Description
Amigo is an electronic device which is used as a remote unit for Kanardia
autopilot system. It serves for easy changing of the autopilot parameters like
desired track and altitude. It is also used for autopilot tuning.
Amigo can not work standalone and it must be connected with other Kanardia
devices to exchange information. You can not use third party devices. The
connection is made with a CAN bus. Typically, Amigo is connected with:
 Nesis, Aetos, Horis or Emsis PFD device. They all host an AD-AHRS-
GPS device internally, which is essential for proper AP operation. The
AD-AHRS-GPS device provides attitude, altitude, airspeed, heading
and GPS data required by an autopilot.
 Two servomotors, which are connected to the command system in order
to steer an aircraft.
6 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual 1.3 Technical Specification
Amigo has a high-brightness IPS LCD display. The panel has two rotary-push
knobs and two simple buttons, which are used to operate Amigo.
On the back side, Amigo has two primary CAN bus connectors, which allow
simple autopilot integration. A RS232 connector is also provided for possi-
ble future extension of Amigo functions. It also host two secondary CAN
connectors, which are reserved for future use, too.
1.3 Technical Specification
Table 1 shows some basic technical specification of Amigo autopilot controller.
Description Value
Weight 170 g
Size 100 x 48 x 30 mm
Operational voltage 7 to 32 V
Power consumption 2.4 W
Current 200 mA at 12 V
100 mA at 24 V
Operating temperature -30 ∼+85 ◦C
Humidity 30 ∼90 %, non condensing
Communication CAN bus, 29 bit header, 500 kbit, Kanar-
dia protocol
Table 1: Basic technical specifications for Amigo.
Figure 1 shows vertical version of Amigo. Amigo exists also in horizontal
version. From technical point of view are both versions are identical.
2 Operation
2.1 General Precautions
The approved Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) always supersedes the in-
formation in this manual.
Refer to the approved Pilot’s Operating Handbook (POH) for emergency pro-
cedures.
7 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual 2.2 User Interface
50
102
31
7 18
Figure 1: Front and side view of the Amigo with its principal dimensions.
Dimensions are given in mm. Figure is not in scale!
2.2 User Interface
Amigo user interface was carefully designed with an ease of operation in mind.
The result is a device with only two rotary knobs and two push-buttons which
provide an easy access to most commonly used autopilot functions.
LCD display is divided in two parts. The top part (or the left part) refers to
the lateral modes (directional modes) and the bottom part (or the right part)
refers to vertical modes (altitude modes).
Figure 2 illustrates knobs, push buttons and LCD screen division.
1
O Lateral knob – TRK: Rotating the knob changes the reference track.
2
O Navigation mode – HNAV: Short press on the button activates the hori-
zontal navigation mode. The navigation data for this mode must come
from some other device, Nesis for example. If such data is not available
the command is ignored.
3
O Vertical knob ALT: Rotating the knob changes the target altitude. The
knob is also used for selections.
4
O Option knob – OPT: Short press on the key selects the optional parameter
for vertical mode – vertical speed. This is the target vertical speed to
be used during climb or descent towards the target altitude.
8 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual 2.3 Status Line
1 3
7
2 45 6
2
4
3
1
7
5
6
Figure 2: Amigo controls and screen layout.
5
O Lateral info: This part of LCD display shows lateral mode information.
6
O Vertical info: This part of LCD display shows vertical mode information.
7
O Status line: Displays status of the autopilot limiting conditions.
2.3 Status Line
Amigo LCD screen always displays status line in the middle for vertical orien-
tation or in the bottom right for horizontal orientation. The status line tells
if conditions for the AP operations are met. Figure 3 shows an example.
Figure 3: The status line.
 IAS . . . shows a small slider. If indicated airspeed is within limits for the
AP operation, the slider will be green. When the airspeed is close to
the either limit, but still inside the valid range, the slider will become
yellow and when it is outside limits, it will be red.
9 © Kanardia 2020

Amigo — Manual 2.4 Autopilot Lateral Modes
 V. . . stands for vertical speed. Same logic as for IAS applies also here. If
current vertical speed is within limits, the light is green, close to limits
the light becomes yellow (amber) and outside limits the light is red.
 R. . . stands for roll angle. Again, green, yellow and red lights are shown.
 P. . . stands for pitch angle. It can be green, yellow or red.
When any of the above mentioned parameters is red and autopilot is en-
gaged, the autopilot refuses to take control. Also, when AP is active and
any of the status parameters becomes red, the autopilot will automatically
disengage both servo motors. An error window is shown, which explains why
the autopilot is not accessible.
Please refer to the Autopilot manual for more details on how to set the pa-
rameter limits.
2.4 Autopilot Lateral Modes
Amigo consists of two lateral modes: track hold (TRK) and horizontal naviga-
tion (HNAV). Default lateral mode is the track hold mode, which is displayed
every time Amigo powers up.
 To activate TRK mode, rotate the TRK knob – this will change the
reference track and immediately active the track hold mode.
 To activate horizontal navigation mode, short press the HNAV button.
The AP will now follow horizontal navigation from some other device
(Nesis or Aetos are required).
2.4.1 Track Hold Mode – TRK
In short, TRK engages roll servo motor to maintain selected reference track.
When a TRK mode is inactive the first increment/decrement of the TRK knob
sets the current track value for the reference and automatically engages roll
servo motor. Any following rotation of the TRK knob changes the reference
heading value:
 Reference track value can take values from 1 to 360◦with 1◦resolution.
 Rotating the TRK knob clockwise increments the reference track.
10 © Kanardia 2020