bnepethomas

Terribly sorry to hear about your loss, my thoughts are with you and your family Mike. Peter

Ta for that cheers Peter

GoogleCode is a great place to throw source code up to, and works nicely with Git. cheers Peter

Had some time of a laser with Levinsky, used some of the great approaches used by glider to bang together electrical panel. Only slight difference was using 2 * 3mm layers of black acrylic, and the top plate is 3mm white acrylic painted with black paint, and then lasered. Real happy with back-lighting, once nice trick is cutting the 5mm holes for the leds in the back plate, this makes it real easy to install and wire up the leds. This was in a well lit room: And for those wondering, at 12V panel uses just under 80mA for backlight, there are several strings of three green leds, used a 220ohm resistor for strings with 3 leds, and 440 resistor for strings with 2 leds. Using PWM for dimming.

Have held off on the UHF, rumor has it the UHF LUA code may be better behaved, but until that time its the VHF radios, TACAN and ILS. Currently this is running of a Opencockpits LCD card, and the Leo Bodnar card to converter the rotary encoder to Joystick clicks. Cheers peter

bnepethomas 1

And finally got brave and took apart the OpenCockpits CDU to install the matching buttons for the A10, it isn't laid out exactly same same as the A10, but will still do the job.

The Caps are fitted to the switch, no flanges or glue needed :), I scored the switches from ebay (OMRON B3F-4055) and the matching caps from Digikey (SW259-ND KEYCAP 12MM SQ WHITE FITS 12MM), no superglue needed (as I'm guaranteed to glue my fingers together :)). The Laser was used to cut the panel, its the only way to go. Cheers Peter

Spent some quality time with a laser building out some proof of concepts for the UFC and Radio, so much easier cutting our squares with a laser than compared to manually doing it.

Just adding my interest in two sets for side panels

I'd like to see pretty much anything that displays a light, or gauge. Then we can connect up to warning panels like: http://www.ruscool.co.nz/bell206.html#annunc Gauges like http://www.simmeters.com/ And most importantly real toys like these: http://www.ckas.com.au/6dof_low_cost_systems_62.html or for those with a little more space http://www.ckas.com.au/motionsim35_38.html

Finally got to tie some pieces of scripting together, with the OpenCockpits LCD card. Initially just throwing all outputs onto a single LCD display, they will be split across multiple displays when put into the pit. Using Leo Bodnar's BUO386X to take rotary encoders and convert them to joystick button presses. Now its time to get some more panels done. Some interesting learnings with the LUA scripting when getting the frequencies, it certainly isn't the world of integers! Also what was a little surprise was the minor digits on the UHF radio, instead of stepping through 0-25-50-75, the discretely roll, thing to what out for when putting I/O code together. For those that are interested, the code is up on goggle code https://bnepethomas@code.google.com/p/bne-dcs-soic-cmd-lineconverter/ jPwa5GZGmgw The guts of the radio export looks like /* -- 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)*10)) + 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(158) * 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) */ cheers Peter

Hi Guys I'll apologise now if its obvious, but how do you get the display for the Channel and Frequency via LAU for the UHF radio? I've got TACAN, ILS, and VHF radios working nicely, but hitting the proverbial brick wall for the UHF displays. Though it should be something like: UHFRadio = GetDevice(54) freq = UHFRadio:get_frequency() But it seems to be returning nothing like what I'm seeing in the pit. Ta peter

Ta Niclas Programmer ordered. cheers Peter

Thanks Niclas, I got three of the boards, one has the new bootloader, thinking it might be timely for me to purchase a programmer, what model PIC does the board use? Cheers Peter

Thanks, lots of useful info, would have missed the anti-collision switch, but am I correct in reading that the Anti-skid isn't magnetically held? cheers Peter

Hi guys Currently mapping out where are the magnetic switches in the A10. I know about the 4 on the SAS panel, the EAC, and I think the anti-skid, any others lurking around the pit? Ta Peter

Thanks for that, I've upgraded the S/W. that went smoothly, but as I'm a forgetful sort of guy, I'd like to upgrade the bootloader as well, just I'm not restricted on where I use my toggles. Whats the damage for a couple of the chips and postage to Oz? (I'm not in a super hurry, just organising it while the money is in the bank :)) cheers Peter

For those of us with the earlier versions of the card, are we able to update it to a newer version, could it be a S/W download, or can we just purchase new processors off you? There's a couple pf new features I'd like to use. thanks Peter

That looks awesome!

Nice job on the pit cheers Peter

Have cleaned up the LUA and c* code, and now have one operation caution panel installed in the pit. Front panel indicators are now operation. Video of the pieces in action. Pleasantly surprised our simple it ultimately was to integrate the OpenCockpits card into DCS. 21KBELs1GbE

nice work Frank! Cheers Peter

Hi Guys On the magnetic switch front, for at least the ones that are reflected in the caution panel could we do something as simple as turning off power to the coil whenever the matching caution light is displayed? Ta Peter

Some progress this week. First hacked together (with a bit of help from Levinsky) the LUA script, C# and SOICinterface, so now have a working interface between DCS and Opencockpits USB output card. Super-brief video here, was thinking about using timers, but now decided output per frame is a good thing to ensure the flashing on the caution panel is captured.. Wired up all of the current outputs to the OpenCockpits (OC) card, lights off Lights on And a few more ports available, but given I'd like to use the integrated PWM capability of the OC card, I need to use a second one to drive the optocouplers which drive relays, as relays do not appreciated PWM being applied to them (most interesting noise ;))