bnepethomas

Hi Gus My code is ugly, but can be found here (C# and Sketch). https://code.google.com/p/bne-arduino-multi-oled-receiver/ My plan now is to leave Overpros code as it is, as it can send to a UDP Port, have some code listen on that port, and then forward to my generic UDP to OLED code. cheers Peter

And a slightly silly question - is there are a we can export the screens without using up another monitor port? I'm really struggling for spare video ports in the pit. cheers Peter

I missed this reply, thanks for that, will test tomorrow night. cheers Peter

thanks Gus Lit up the Simmeters gauges this evening, needed a second USB controller in the PC as I'd exceeded the maximum number of devices on the Intel USB 3.0 controller. Close-up of the VHF radio ILS/TACAN/CDU Next to do is grab Overpro's OCR code and modify it to drive the OLEDs cheers Peter

Thanks - unfortunately there's been some challenges on the RWR side of the house, haven't given up hope, but given I really wanted this thing flyable before the end of this month decided to throw the old lcd in there. Planning to light up the rest of the simmeters this week. cheers Peter

Some piccies, hopefully electrical work completed, now to merge scrips and program switches, getting close to finishing this one, shots include normal operation along with fire and general indicators tests, there is light at the end of the tunnel!:

Nice work, as far as sending information to OpenCockpits, its nice an simple basically a series of strings with variable=value. I like to use a simple UDP to TCP bridge, that way I can stop and start things without TCP hangups. Some c#, lua and soic code here: https://code.google.com/p/bne-dcs-soic-cmd-lineconverter/source/browse/ Just be aware OC LCD interfaces only like numerics, not alphanumerics. cheers Peter

No piccies this update - but thought I'd share the spreadsheet I've used for switch layouts using the Brydling card, found it very useful for planning and testing. Also here is a utility I developed for testing switches with the Brydling card. I couldn't easily find a utility for visualizing 128 Joystick Buttons, so threw something together using c# and slimdx (yes it is bodgy, has no error checking, my coding lecturers would be failing me if they saw it... etc etc ;)). Source code and exe on google-code here: https://code.google.com/p/bne-joystick-tester/source/browse/ What makes it a little different from most is I use text-to-speech, that announces whenever a button is pressed. When you are head down checking buttons, this becomes a very good thing. cheers Peter Brydling_a10_as_built.zip

Here's some tips and tricks on panel building with Leds for backlighting, may save some reinventing. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107808&page=12 cheers Peter

Getting closer to having this thing flying, time to move from unit to system testing. Final cable tidy up and painting comes after I've proven that there is no blue smoke awaiting to escape from the circuitry. Super happy with the Brydling card, whilst diodes are needed, the matrix approach certainly reduces the amount of cable needed in the pit. Yes mum - I will tidy up the wiring... Port Side - Something I'm glad I did in this pit was have a subframe underneath the panels, means I can get the electronics and breakout boards close to the panels in a serviceable manner. The little board on the right hand side is a Leo Bodnar card that takes the rotary's and converts them to joystick pushes. Starboard side - two dimmers, one for the panel backlighting, the other for flood lighting. The Ardunio on the left is for driving the OLEDs via the I2C bus.

Nice work. cheers Peter

Definitely interested in such a thing, have good software working with open source H/W is a good thing. Cheers Peter

Thanks guys Here's the link to the encoders. 12mm Rotary Encoder Switch With Keyswitch,10pcs http://r.ebay.com/rPLcRj I use a mix of knobs, the ones supplied with these encoders and some from Open Cockpits. cheers Peter

Hi guys - here's how I'm putting my panels together, based on learnings over the years: Find the panels, note the bottom two are solid black, top one is white, with two coats of flat black enamel. Part of the reason for three layers is strength, as well as back-lighting dispersion, the middle layer puts a bit of distance between the top of the flat led and the front panel. In the F16 (http://www.viperpits.org/smf/index.php?topic=2614.0) I'd used Mikes panels (which are A-Grade) plus EL-Sheets for back-lighting. Mikes panels had a metal base plate, so the first time I saw acrylic as a base I was a little concerned about strength, but have yet to run into any issues. You'll note a couple of things about the base-plate, the holes for the leds are already lasered out and there is a scrawl indicating up and which end the positive lead of the led should be. This is done to stop a numpty like me mounting everything on the wrong side.... easily done when you've got a bunch of panels on the bench .... And yes for this pit I'm using leds over el-sheets as there are no noisy inverters, and leds are easily replaced. Using acrylic for the base also reduces possible issues with back-lighting electrical shorts One problem I had to solve early one was how to write text on the black acrylic, found these at the local trade tool store, a paint pen, works a trick Next was how to glue leds to base plate, as super-glue doesn't do a good job if the surfaces aren't perfectly mated, found this glue at the local model store (and yes it does a great job of gluing fingers to plastic if you are not careful): Next glues the leds in place, note the base plate is sitting on a piece of wood so the face of the leds is flush with the front of the base plate. Also, all of the leds are orientated in the same direction, makes wiring up a bunch easier. Leds now glued in place, the countersunk holes as for the protoboard attached to each panel Next wire up the leds, as I'm using a 12V PWM dimmer, add a 220 ohm resistors with each series of three leds. I try and add the leds in groups of three, if you have two leds left over (like this panel), use a 500 ohm resistors. Add a connector to connect to the protoboard. Using nylon stand-offs mount the protoboard. As the panel has an OLED display, mount the display. It sits in the middle board, again countersunk holes are used to hold the OLED display in place. I'm using a serial bus (I2C) between the Arudinos and the OLED displays. Check things align front and back, you may wonder what the big gap is on the right hand side, this is for lighting the panel name. As the panel name sits over the mounting rail itself, its more challenging to back-light. Instead of cutting holes in the rail, the leds are offset from from the lettering, not perfect, but it works. Getting closer: Recheck backlighting and OLED display works, yes those leds are darn bright: Attach front panel and knobs (almost looks like a brought one) To reduce the likelihood of a major tragedy, I colour code the connectors, the best paints I've found are Tamya Acrylic, again from the local hobby store. The colors make working with the panel so make safer, especially when you've got you head and hands underneath the pit working on cabling: One panel almost ready for action (need to add diodes for push button), for the colors I use: 1. Uncolored for push buttons and switches 2. Yellow for Leds 3. Orange for any output that can't be dimmed (eg Magnetic switches) 4. Dark Green for backlighting 5. Light Blue for Rotary encoders 6. Light Green for OLED displays. Hope this saves someone a bit of time when trying to work out how to assemble a panel cheers Peter

I feel your pain with the CNC cutting where it shouldn't, its soul destroying when the panel is so close.... and then the machinery attacks....

:) I'm sure before I'm finished there will be more scratches on the panels, and the ones with the good measurements are courtesy of Levinsky who has patiently stenciled them out by overlying them on real drawings. My measurements are the dodgy ones ;) But now its getting close I want re redo the NMSP that isn't backlit as it stands out in the dark. That'll happen once I get this thing flying! And seconded on the F16, if there was a Kickstarter I'd be in the queue!

Getting closer, mounted the OC output cards, three are needed, two for indicators that can be dimmed, and one for magnetic switches and other stuff driven through relays (not dimmed): Backlighting progressing, the backlit panels really stand out compared to the non-backlit: And the first of the OLED interfaces:

Here's what I purchased, nice and compact, and the look good. There is a 16 and 20 character per line available. IIC / I2C 2002 OLED Module Display For Arduino / PIC / AVR / ARM http://r.ebay.com/anOBP7 Getting them up and running was dead easy using I2C interface. You have a couple of choices use an Arduino per display or do a bit of work and have multiple displays off a single Arduino. What I also like, is they are white, so you can change the colour by insert a piece of colored acrylic in front. cheers Peter

Generally, if its UDP last speaker wins, but I have tinkered with Helios too much, just gone straight to c#. You can use the same socket to rx data from multiple receivers I make separate copies of data to send to display devices from export.lua (well actually use scripts call from export.lua just to keep things clean). cheers Peter

Nice work, if you are interested in interfacing with OLEDs let me know, much nicer than LCDs. and a little more flexible than LEDs

Hope I'm answering the right question - heres what I've got for the A10 /* -- ILS Frequency -- Major Digits -- Look up table ils_major_digit = {"108", "109", "110", "111"} local DigitPointer = math.floor((soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(251)*1 0)) + 1 table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8010=" .. ils_major_digit[DigitPointer]) -- Minor Digits -- Needed to add a 1.1 as the maths sometimes rounded to .999 which causes errors in lookup DigitPointer = (soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(252) * 10) + 1.1 DigitPointer = tonumber(DigitPointer) -- Lookup Table ils_minor_digit = {"10", "15", "30", "35", "50", "55", "70", "75", "90", "95"} table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8011=" .. ils_minor_digit[math.floor(DigitPointer)]) -- TACAN -- 1st Major Digit table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8020=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(263) * 10 + 0.1)) -- 2nd Major Digit table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8021=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(264) * 10 + 0.1)) -- Minor Digits table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8022=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(265) * 10 + 0.1)) -- XY table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"8023=" .. soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(266)) -- VHF AM -- Major has values 3 to 15 table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"143=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(143) * 20 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.AM, 139, 0.5, 0, 15) table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"144=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(144) * 10 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.AM, 140, 0.9, 0, 9) -- Moves through incremental numbers so will return interesting values table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"145=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(145) * 10 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.AM, 141, 0.9, 0, 9) -- Moves through incremental numbers so will return interesting values table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"146=" .. string.format("%0.0f", soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(146) * 100)) -- VHF_radio.AM, 142, 0.75, 0, 75) --VHF FM table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"157=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(157) * 20 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.FM, 153, 0.9, 0, 15) table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"158=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(15 * 10 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.FM, 154, 0.9, 0, 9) table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"159=" .. math.floor(soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(159) * 10 + 0.1)) -- VHF_radio.FM, 155, 0.9, 0, 9) table.insert(soic_conv_flightData,"160=" .. string.format("%0.0f", soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(160) * 100)) -- VHF_radio.FM, 156, 0.75, 0, 75)

Nice work on this, its always the first Hello world that is the hardest... well may be the first time the blue smoke escapes from the ICs :)

Thanks for sharing this, I'm in the need of some more Rotary encoder ports, the A10 pit needs a bunch of them. cheers Peter

Hopefully through the worst of the mechanical assembly of the pit. Rails, panels, CDU, and throttle now screwed in place, need to find the right height and spot for the stick. The UFC is a bit of a placeholder, could do with some extra width. How its time to put the pieces all together and see what goes boom....

Have you got the value for the Preset dial? Its something I"m interested in?