Data Status Updates and Notices

Data Status, Updates and Notices

The device keeps its navigation data (airports, navaids, procedures, obstacles, terrain, water, roads) in signed packs from the navdata service, navdata.aerocommons.org. The pyefis-data updater installs them and records their state. pyEFIS shows that state in three places: the Data Status screen, the DATA flag, and the About screen. This page also covers the software notice shown at start-up.

How packs are built, signed and verified is in the makerplane-data wiki: Navigation Data Currency. Installing pyefis-data and its daily timer is on Setting Up a Device.

The Data Status screen

One row per installed pack: its name, its status, and a detail such as the cycle and its effective dates. The row's colour is the updater's verdict:

Colour	Means
Green	Current.
White	Expiring soon, or missing.
Amber	Expired, or outside its effective window.

The words in each row come from the updater as it wrote them; pyEFIS only colours them. Data status unavailable — run an update to populate it. means the updater has not written a status yet.

Button	What it does
Continue	Go to the panel's boot screen.
About	Open the About screen.
Update	Check for and install newer packs.

How you get here. Touch the DATA flag where a screen carries one. The Data Status screen is never the boot screen: a panel that names it as the default boots to the screen behind Continue instead.

Updating

Updating needs an internet connection or a USB drive with packs on it. Do it on the ground.

1. Touch Update. pyEFIS asks the updater what sources it can see. With neither a connection nor a USB drive it says so, and nothing changes.
2. A list of packs opens, grouped as Navigation Data, Water, Roads, Terrain and Charts, with each pack's size and status. The packs already installed are ticked. The footer shows the total size, flagged if it exceeds the free space. Use switches source and Change picks the storage drive.
3. Touch Install selected. A progress bar shows each pack in turn. Cancel stops the install and goes back to the list.
4. If the data needs you to accept a notice first, it is shown with Accept and Decline. Decline installs nothing.
5. Update complete., or Update finished with problems — your previous data is still in place. with the rows showing which pack failed. A pack that fails leaves the previous one in use.

The screen re-reads the status every minute and each time it is shown.

The DATA flag

A small DATA outline, on screens that carry the Data Annunciation instrument. It is hidden while every pack is current, white when one is expiring soon or missing, and amber when one has expired. Touch it to open Data Status.

The bench panel does not carry it. Add it from the configurator palette's system category.

The About screen

• The pyEFIS version and the software notice.
• Installed data packs: each pack with its cycle and any notice its publisher attached.
• Notice acknowledgments: each time the software notice was accepted on this device, newest first: when, by whom, how (typed at a terminal, accepted on screen, or auto-accepted on a bench unit, which is marked as not a person's accept), and the versions it covered.

Back returns to Data Status. pyEFIS adds the About screen to every configuration, and the Data Status screen's About button opens it.

The software notice at start-up

Each start, a strip across the bottom reads: "pyEfis is experimental software for Experimental / Amateur-Built aircraft. It is not certified. It is provided as-is with no warranty, and any use of it is at your own risk."

• It needs no tap. Touches go through it to the instruments underneath.
• It clears after 8 seconds once the notice has been accepted for this pyEFIS version, and after 20 seconds if not.
• The acceptance is a record in ~/.local/state/makerplane/acknowledgments.jsonl (or $XDG_STATE_HOME/makerplane/, or the file named by $MAKERPLANE_ACK_LOG). pyEFIS reads it and never writes it.

Accepting. Run pyefis-accept-notice at a terminal on the device. It shows the notice through pyefis-data and asks you to type accept; it exits 0 when accepted. pyefis-accept-notice --check only reports. Accepting a data notice during an update does not shorten the start-up strip, because that record names the updater's version, not pyEFIS's. See Setting Up a Device.

Customizing

None of the three screens has options in the configurator; pyEFIS adds Data Status and About to every panel. By hand:

Instrument	Option	Default	What it does
Data Status (data_status)	update_command	pyefis-data	The updater Update runs. The shipped screen uses ~/.local/bin/pyefis-data.
	continue_screen	the boot screen	Where Continue goes.
	about_screen	About	Where About goes.
	status_path	~/.makerplane/pyefis/status.json	The updater's status file.
Data Annunciation (data_annunciation)	target_screen	DataStatus	Where a touch goes.
	status_path	as above
About (about)	back_screen	DataStatus	Where Back goes.

See also

• Setting Up a Device
• How the System Fits Together