Le Journal de l'Aviation: ECA Group Introduces its Compact Tablet TP10 Compatible ARINC 429

Published on Le Journal de l’Aviation, May 2017

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Written by Romain GUILLOT

The aerospace division of ECA Group took advantage of the latest edition of MRO Americas, the major maintenance fair held at the end of April in Orlando, Florida, to present its new TP10-A429 tablet, a diagnostic tool for Aircraft systems compatible with the ARINC 429 standard bus.

This compact ARINC 429 reader / transmitter was launched just before the MRO Americas. It is intended for operators and maintenance companies, but also for aircraft manufacturers and equipment manufacturers. "Our ergonomists have given much thought to the design of the tool to arrive at a compact, intuitive and complete form factor, because the tablet integrates the integrated databases for the ARINC 429 standard" says Eric Boislève, Eca Group Sales & Marketing Director 

Aziz Tahiri, Technical Marketing Manager, explained that in order to discuss equipment with a "troubleshouting" to put an aircraft back into service, it is necessary to be able to interface with its systems, or in ARINC frame simulation 429 to see if the message is indeed received or, conversely, in ARINC frame reception 429 to verify that the message is indeed transmitted. "

The advantage of this type of tooling is that it is possible to detect and identify the failure the quickest possible without having to dismantle all the LRUs or all the embedded equipment until the problem is solved. "The airplane already allows us to make the first diagnostics, but it will incriminate a chain of systems rather than a particular equipment" explained Éric Boislève. "Detecting the root cause is not always obvious. "

Of course, similar tools using this principle already exist on the market, but  they have the form of calculators, with small touch screens, many buttons, which induces a difficult navigation. Aziz Tahiri also explains that the languages ​​used on these tools are often complex, arriving fairly quickly with notions of frame in binary, which also implies a complex implementation that influences the time of troubleshooting.

"ECA Group's TP10-A429 product is very innovative, with a touch screen of nearly 10 inches which allows to navigate in a database which capitalizes all the equipments of the plane and all the buses ARINC 429," announces Aziz Tahiri. He also pointed out that ECA Group's software ergonomic teams have given a lot of thought to the user interface to make the system as user-friendly and efficient as possible to minimize downtime.

He adds that the TP10-A429 tablet is based on a Linux architecture so that ECA Group has a complete autonomy over the lifetime of the product, notably in the management of the obsolescence of electronic components . "The tool has been designed not to degrade itself in an aeronautical maintenance environment, especially to resist rain or hydraulic fluids of Skydrol type.

Aziz Tahiri finally announced that other products of this type were already in the pipes of ECA Group, still strongly focused on the compact and intuitive appearance. To be continued...

See Also : ECA Group releases its new ARINC 429 compact reader-transmitter