bnepethomas

Yes siree- here's the details http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=107808&page=6

Thanks for sharing the source via GIT, I'd like to drive some DED displays, so this will be a great start. cheers Peter

Thanks Guys - getting to the pointy part of the project, putting it all together. Need to level things out a tad, but its nice to see things coming together. CDU is from Open Cockpits (who now have a black version), code from Levinsky, works a treat. Using 20*20*1.5 T-Section, with 20*12*1.4 L-Section for the mounting frame.

Hi Hans Thanks for the pointer on the switches. Re the push pull 'switches' in the fuel panel, they are aircraft circuit breakers, still tossing up on which way to go with those. Not sure how often they'd be used. cheers Peter

Thanks for sharing - good find.

Hi Craig Here you go, you should be able to get them either from Allied Electronics or Digikey. 676-3240 7101TZQE 676-3265 7203TZQE 870-0579 S1AL-RO 870-0580 S3AL-RO cheers Peter

SMDs for backlighting will work, but it does mean another PCB, and some more soldering. I explored that, and whilst it worked, it was a little slower. It you use acrylic here's what you can do: From start to finish it should take around an hour per panel to glue leds in and wire up. Cheers Peter

My F16 is built using EL sheets, it was a great solution at the time, but the transformers are noisy, and the EL sheets do degrade. Net-net the A10 is Leds and I'll probably change the F16 to leds over time. Having acrylic sheets as the back panel, along with lasering the holes makes leds a good just. By having a 3mm spacer plate you get good spread of the light.

If you work it out let me know! Also had one of those moments last night, had been designing in pots for things like trim and volume (like FSX and falcon support.), then thought I'd better check.... bummer looks like I'll be needing a bunch more rotary encoders. Not a major challenge, but I'm sure glad I thought to check. I had a bunch of intercom pots with switches from a 727 I was planning to use. cheers Peter

Ta Boltz, the F16 was a great project, and if there was a Kickstarter for the F16 for DCS I'd be a the front of the queue. The refueling will be be the same. Here's a little trick for the top case of the indicator, instead of trying to fold sheet metal, cut 1.5mm acrylic sheet, glue and paint, works a treat. cheers Peter

Getting close mounting the panels in the pit. Mainly focusing on the ones that are useful in the game. Another good days production with Levinsky. The odd shaped box in the top right is the AOA indicators.

:) they are a bunch cheaper than the Korrys and a whole lot easier to mount. I had some real indicators, and much to my frustration found the legends were stamped in. So needed a plan-B, here they are lit up

Changed the acrylic that was used for the top panel, what looked white was only Opal which didn't provide the greatest contrast, with the solid white the letters stand out much better with only around a 25% loss in backlighting. Also worked out how to get the text onto the push buttons. Put three coats of white at the top of the button and then five coats of black across the entire button. that way the text is a nice white, without any white appearing around the symbol at the base of the button. Here's the before and after for the buttons

Happy days Gents - have it working. Use the Joystick button settings in the GUI that toggle the SAS channel state. So whenever the switch is closed at toggle event is executed. I then capture the switch opening with the C# code which sends the LUA command with a zero parameter which always turns the switch off. The good news is the sim never automatically turns on the magnetic switch (only the pilot does that), but the sim can turn off the switch. And if for whatever reason the physical switch state gets out of sync with the sim switch state, at worst I only need to toggle the switch once. The still is a couple of left-field scenarios where it isn't perfect, such as turning the switches on when there is no power to the aircraft, where, because I energise the coil based on the switch position, it will hold even the the sim would like to move it to the off position. Given this isn't in normal operational conditions I'm happy to put up with that. Thanks for the replies on the topic. Cheers Peter

Thanks Gadroc - that makes a lot of sense. I now have an evil plan, basically when the switch is closed I'll use the native toggle function via the GUI in DCS, and when it switches open, send a 0 in LUA script. That way, at worst I should be only a click away from synching the physical world. Will do an update this weekend. Peter

Thanks hugely for that Boltz, I know I had to do that for the push buttons on the CDU, but wasn't expecting that for the toggles. That's a nice easy fix. cheers Peter

Ta Deadman -you are very correct the witch and current to hold it in place are different. I'm pretty much replicating Helios, so I should go and check out that world and see if the tricks of the trade can be learnt there. The one advantage Helios has over me it you can draw the switch on the screen to match the position on the switch, where as I can only really move the switch one way. The way I have to setup currently is the magentic switch is connected to a joystick button, and based on the transition to either on or off I send a different LUA command (same as Helios I believe). The other half of the code monitors the switch state from the DCS and turns the coil on when the switch is in the on position, and turns the coil off when the switch in the sim moves to the off position. But I've just reread Boltz reply, and maybe I've missed the real obvious, I've been sending cdusendToLUA("C38", "3004", "1.0") but it looks like may be I should be sending cdusendToLUA("C38", "3004", "0.1"); For the coders in the room the project is up on GoogleCode at http://code.google.com/p/bne-dcs-joystick-to-command/

Ta Boltz Yes siree, I'm using export.lua, mainly due to only the toggle option being available for Yaw/Pitch SAS with the in game GUI. I'm using the 1.0 and 0.0 for the command I'm sending, but I am wondering if that the cause of the problem - i.e. does the game think that I'm still holding the switch in place. Obviously I don't want to send a 0.0 after switching it on as that'll switch it off. I'm going to test the behavior using the in game GUI (as opposed to export.lua) and see what happens. Cheers Peter

Ta Deadman - VP is my home town, and where this pit building tragic started :) Got the Mag switches running in the F16 nicely, they are simple in Falcon 4 as the Shared Memory exposes coil state. What I'm doing currently is monitoring switch position state (via LUA export), which by itself works. The fun bit is imputing the switch state into the sim when the switch is moved physically. Currently the Sim only has a toggle state, which is no good if the switches are mismatched to the sim state at start-up. So I send a command to via the lua interface to reflect the position of the physical, I'm wondering if I'm doing something dumb with the command. Cheers Peter

Been banging away at a general purpose magnetic switch interface, using C#and OpenCockpits USB Output card. Got a quirk to resolve where the buttons stay on, even the aircraft is powered down, wondering if anyone else has had success in interfacing magnetic switches? Here's the video of them in operation. AWmDgvURfXM

Some more lasering with Levinsky, this time the lighting panel. Takes around 1.5 hours to mount and wire up the leds.

:) typos galore, nothing like doing a science project at the last minute late on Friday night. Good to know about the errors before redoing the panel. The buttons are home made, took some green push buttons, painted them black lasered out the text, filled that in with white paint, then lasered out the symbols. cheers Peter

Yeap siree, thats one of the things I do need to touch up, as well as reducing its width, found out I'd grabbed the wrong template...doh!!!! All part of the fun of building your own bits and pieces

What can I say, emotional scared by that photo ;) Here's something a little friendlier to the eyes, tinkering around with options for the center console

Ta guys, it's amazing what you can do with a laser and a bit of time.