metalnwood

Looking good, nice to see you back in to it :)

For people outside of the states digikey is good because if you spend over a $$ limit, I think it worked out to be around 120nzd then shipping is free and it only takes3-4 days to get to the other side of the world $120 is a good figure because it keeps it under gst for some countries and if you place a bigger order just split it up because the free shipping and get multiple packages under the GST threshold:)

I thought I would get back to doing my CDU. I wasn't really happy with the keys from my last effort as the laser melts the top edges of the keys a bit when cutting deep. So its on to engraving the keytops and moving machines to mill out the keys. I did it yesterday to much disaster lol :) I didn't put enough glue to laminate the engraving layer to the acrylic used for the main body of the key. When I started to mill out the keys the tops started to pop off. Hopefully that will no happen this time. So, here is a small plate of acrylic, engraved with some registration marks as well so that when I move it from machines I can line it up properly. After I pick up the kids I will finish it off later tonight.

Thx mate.

Nice work. Speaking of sheepskin, that one looks well worn in ;)

reinstalling just a10 didnt work, reinstalled dcs world as well and everything is now working and configured thank you very much! Thanks Peter for always taking the time.

To be clearer in my last post I uninstalled emc and reinstalled it. Then replaced my dcs folder with original scripts. When it starts it tellme me I have a default config dile selected. 1Camera. When I click OK on that window the error window appears. just realised I prob needed to backup my mods directory! I guess thats why its still balking after the EMC reinstall. I have something suspicious in there. Will reinstall the a10 module and I am sure it will be OK from there :)

I feel like shooting myself right now. All steps were previously followed as stated. This time I did it the same but for the file name I put .lua on the end. It worked! Wondering if this was my issue before I created another without the .lua . This did not work and emc died, now when I run it a always get an error Array viariable has incorrect number of subscripts or subscript dimension was exceeded. I have since uninstalled, reinstalled and replaced the backup files I made (all of config and scripts directory. I still get this error when I load EMC.. Will have a break for now.

thanks Peter, you must have seen the original post. I dont know why my edit still asks for ideas! :) Now when I click on new things seem to work but my newly named profile does not appear in the dropdown and when i click save it gives me error writing file. No UAC issues here. Answer is probably in the thread so I will check.

removed, issue fixed itself uon rerunningy ideas?

My issue was resolved by putting the built in frame limiter option on, I usually have it on but the update removed it. Back on a more constant 30 frames but smooth!

OK, you have got to tell me something.. When I got my 7970 I was thinking about the 680 instead, primarily for the image quality and now that they have nvidia surround on a single card it seemed fine. I just remembered the thing that tipped me over to ATI was because I was running 5 screens (helios+triple screen + cdu ) and the 680 only supported four screens. So how have you got five going on the 680?

Gadroc has very wise words that I would agree with 100% but I would do it with a couple of caveats :) I could have been my post (probably was) that kicked off the thread while I was in bed dreaming of daisies. If you are going to get in to a commercial business you have to take in everything that Gadroc has said! I also agree that you can set your prices to whatever you want and let the market dictate how many you sell, in fact I would never have commented if you hadnt put a price breakdown which made me think there are areas that could reduce material costs. When manufacturing your material costs is often a big issues and the lower they are the lower you can sell to be more competitive or the more profit you make, which ever way you can swing it :) Now, I dont make any comment either way on the profit but I saw a potential opportunity to reduce costs. Gadroc makes a point about making it easy for the user and that is fair but at the same time there is a level of complexity that someone has to undertake anyway and most people who are here know what they are going to be in for. This means a joystick is nice for the end user but at the same time you could be throwing $70 at a supplier that could be coming off the price of your product, you dont make that money and the customer doesnt save it. That was my general argument. I do concede though, if thats the best price on the PCB and it is fully populated then it could be a moot point when the alternative is charging for the time doing it yourself, plus you are free for other things. BTW When I said machine time being labour, I fully mean it is getting costed out, I just happen to cost it out at the same rate as labour and unless I send it out to another shop I dont add it as a different item, thats all. Opencockpits will sell many more but remember, they still need to make a profit on every one that they sell. Anyway, I wish you luck Frank, if people buy them then there are more happy simmers and as always thats a good thing for the hobby. Now that I have said something in the discussion I will add a disclaimer that I myself have said in the past that I will build and sell panels, something that I have not put the time in to or may ever get around to doing but I will say it so any bias can be noted. There is none though.

Iff you wanted to get really competitive, I think you can go for the same screen others have which works out about half. I dont know how you are getting charged $120 for the PCB, it should be a fraction of that. Good switches cost some money so I wouldnt skimp there either and that cost should get you ones with 1M cycles. Why is a joystick controller $100, why not just an arduino placed on the custom PCB, it will talk to helios and cost practically nothing. The pcb and controllers should really run for under $50 together. I guess you own the machinery so that just adds in to labor but I see you could knock off $220 by just selecting better parts/design. If you dont own the machinery and are paying someone for it then why not just do the laser and have a better looking CDU? Look at waaxys CDU. $60 parts cut including materials? Dont take my post as too much of a critiqe but as soon as I saw the cost I knew a lot of people who wwere looking forward to it would be dissapointed and I really think there are areas you can shave off big $$

I have noticed issues but I am just in the A10. The FPS are good but it's not smooth. It could be reporting a good 35fps but its got a problem for sure.

Well it looks good and it looks like it works so thats all that matters. I dont need to do much myself, I think my knurling tool has not been used in about six or seven years :) No secrets in NZ anymore, all our secrets have been found out, much to the dismay of sheep all across the world.

yes, they look nice.

Excellent!

Certainly a lot smoother but the acetone vapor has taken away a lot of the definition. Any issues with some of the other buttons?

I also missed this thread, great work. $60 euros to have a company cut all that is excellent value, with your plans I am sure that yours wont be their only job they do.

Yes, I wondered why not the 4gig version on your list. That would solve the memory issue if there is one. If I had a 680 about I would like to try it in dcs. I have kept away from nvidia because ati dominated the triple screen world but some things with ati bug me, like AA. I don't think it's bad with dcs but it is for some other things.

Really? A round of beer costs me $8. I gotta get some guys to join me at the pub, probably more fun too.

I dont have the huey but I am interested to know if 3rd parties are implementing exportable avionics screens that can be used for things like helios. At this point I could suggest two things, neither are ideal because you have to tweak for every session you run the huey and untweak for other planes. One would be to create a softth profile that would take the unseen section of your 'T' arrangement with the displays and put it on the bottom screen. This would probably be best set up with JGSME as a mod so you can get it in and out fairly quickly. The other is to go to screen resolution window in windows and rearrage your T to have the monitor more to the right so it displays the avionics on your screen. Of course you then have to move it back afterwards. Actually.... you may not have to move it back because if you run the a10 with helios all the time then it doesnt really matter where it lives as you wont see the wrong stuff with the a10 as helios is going. The downside is that if in windows you dont have it set up as a T, only in your physical arrangement then you would be setting your rendering resoltion to be far more than it is now. Hope I got through what I mean in a digestable form, should probably read is before I post. not time though.

Helios does not capture the exports and send them across the network. Usually you would have helios running on the same machine and overlaying its interface over DCS. DCS is creating the export, mfcd1 and 2 etc. It is drawing them and helios just presents its display around them. So, if you only run DCS on pc1 and only helios on pc2 you cannon have the exports display on pc2. People have written their own software to do similar things before but I am not sure of a stand alone option to just get the mfcds to another computer.

Knarly man, or should I say knurly :) Nice to see another machinist around.