doveman

Just saw this and thought it might be of interest http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6437/hands-on-look-at-adafruit-s-neopixel-rgb-led-strip/index.html It rather depends on whether the strip can be cut and wired up so that we can position the LEDs in the needed positions though, or if the strip has to be kept intact. Could still be nice for cockpit mood lighting though ;)

You can get the Warthog for £230? I thought it was more like £300.

Price back up to £6.75 now.

Yeah, I heard that combat pilots get easily confused, unlike the far cleverer civilian pilots :music_whistling::smilewink: I guess for the ILS knob, it would probably be cheaper to just have a 2-position switch (whether rotary, slide, toggle) next to a single encoder, as the dual encoder is a bit expensive just to use the outer shaft as a 2-position switch. Obviously wouldn't exactly match the cockpit but I think I could live with that if I'm saving £10 but for those who really want it to look as authentic as possible, the dual encoder is probably a reasonable compromise.

Hmm, that's interesting. I've not come across such a control available as a component, so perhaps we'd have to use a dual encoder to replicate it, with the outer shaft acting as the rotary switch. Not ideal but I'm not sure what else we could do. Which particular instruments have this control?

No, it has two shafts, an outer and inner, which can be turned separately and thus work as two encoders in one. The one's I bought also have a push-switch function by depressing the inner shaft but I think you can get some without. They're quite expensive at £14.99 though, so it doesn't make sense to use them for instruments which have two separate knobs side by side, as you can buy two single encoders for £4-5 each (or much less on e-bay but the quality might be questionable).

Judging by the catalog I linked to showing detent and no detent versions in the same range, it looks like mechanical, not just optical, encoders come in no detent versions. Unless that entire range is optical or a mix of mechanical and optical. It's a bit of both really isn't it? If the encoder only sends a signal every 10 degrees, then the software can only adjust the instrument every time the encoder is turned 10 degrees or more. I still don't really understand the interaction between pulses and detents but looking at that Farnell catalog, it seems that range has exactly half the number of pulses to the number of detents, which makes no sense to me as it suggests that every other detent doesn't send a pulse and thus is redundant. I would think that if for example an encoder sends 36 pulses per revolution, that means it sends a pulse every ten degrees, so the software can only do something every ten degrees. If the real-life knob only has a noticeable affect on the gauge when turned 10 degrees or more, then you should be able to set the software to mimic the real-life behaviour, so turning the encoder 10 degrees adjusts the gauge y degrees (whatever it does in real life) and turning it 360 degrees adjusts the gauge y*10 degrees, again the same amount as it would in real-life, so there wouldn't appear to be any need to make the software adjust the gauge different amounts depending on how fast the encoder is turned. Now if the real-life knob has a noticeable effect on the gauge when turned only five degrees, then you'd need an encoder that sends 72 pulses per revolution to mimic that and I'm not sure such a thing even exists. The range here http://www.electro-nc.com/products/encoders.shtml shows they're mechanical encoders only go up to 24 PPR but the optical 900 series (discontinued) and magnetic 500 series range from 32 to 256. Looking at the datasheet for the latter, it seems to come in these options: Quadrature 32, 64, 128 or 256 PPR Tachometer 64, 128, 256, 512 PPR (w/ direction) Absolute 10 bit PWM (1024 PPR) * Quadrature 32, 64, 128 or 256 PPR w/ Z channel* Assuming they're unaffordable or unsuitable for some other reason and to keep this example simple let's assume the highest PPR encoder you could get was 36 PPR, then using that every 10 degrees it's turned, you'd need to adjust the gauge the amount it would change if the real thing was turned 5 degrees. This obviously means that the encoder has to be turned fully twice, i.e. 720 degrees, to adjust the gauge the same amount as the real knob would when turned only 360 degrees but that's probably not severe enough to require using accelaration based on speed of turning (depending on how many rotations are needed in general of course). Now if the real life gauge responds to only 1 degree movements of the knob and the encoder only sends a signal every 10 degrees, then I can see there'd be a problem as you'd have to turn the encoder fully ten times (i.e. 3600 degrees) to mimic the real life knob being turned fully once, so using accelaration based on speed of turning would be necessary. Assuming I've understood how PPR works, I can't see how a 4 PPR encoder like the digikey one linked to could possibly be suitable. It's more than likely I don't understand how they work though ;)

Which software by OverPro are you referring to Peter? I did a search but didn't find anything that looked to be about encoders, only joysticks. I couldn't seem to find anywhere selling dual encoders other than Leo Bodnar and they're good quality, so I didn't mind paying almost £20 a piece, including knob, as I only needed a couple for now, although I'd soon change my mind if I needed ten of them! Because they're so expensive, I'm just going to use a single pair with a rotary switch to set which panel they control (GPS, COM1/NAV1, COM2/NAV2, ADF, DME) for my Dad's X-Plane. If cheaper ones do work better with any particular software, I'd imagine that it's just a matter of tweaking the software to better match the encoder and that once correctly configured, you should find the more expensive ones work at least as well and hopefully last longer. If it was just for myself, I probably would buy some of the cheap single encoders to try out, although I was a bit put off by some comments on one of the cheap sites (sparkfun I think) where they said 3 out of 5 of them didn't work and they had to take them apart and flip things around as they'd been constructed incorrectly, so I don't mind paying a bit more for something a bit better. However, I kinda need it in a hurry to try and get it ready for my Dad's birthday at the end of July and ordering from China it probably won't have even arrived by then! Hence why I'm looking for a UK supplier for this particular order.

Thanks. I won't buy myself any for now then, as they're not exactly cheap (£14.99 plus £4 for the knob) and it's free shipping on orders over £20 anyway, so if I did want to get one or two in future, I'd could easily get free shipping again :)

Hey, don't diss the sidewinder ;) It's the only choice really if you want FFB. Mind you, it probably would have made the presentation look more slick if they were using a warthog as the sidewinder's no great looker.

Ssh, don't tell anyone or I'll make all yours disappear too ;)

As far as I know, they changed Hotmail.com to Outlook.com now, although existing hotmail.com addresses weren't changed.

Ah, gotcha. I think he meant a Hotmail or Outlook address, anything that would stay on their internal network.

I didn't say they mentioned 'qualified' addresses, so what do you mean?

Thanks guys. I suspected the MS rep might be talking BS but I wanted some confirmation before I called him out on it ;)

I've asked Microsoft what their position is and so far they've said that when purchasing a product, you have to use a Microsoft e-mail (creating one if necessary), which if true would mean that the e-mails stay on their internal network and are never exposed on the unsecured Internet. The only exception to this apparently is products in the Home Use Program (HUP), which are purchased by firms for employees to use at home. Has anyone experienced being sent a personal use product code by Microsoft to a non-MS e-mail account?

Nope, pretty sure they're not what I want ;) I've not flown IRL but people who have tell me that Altimeter, VOR and Horizon knobs on analog gauges generally don't have detents, which makes sense as these things have to be tweaked very accurately and precisely, not in steps. I'm not talking about changing frequency on radios or that sort of thing, for which the detented encoders from Leo Bodnar are fine. I don't think only optical encoders are without detents as I've seen product datasheets showing variations in the same (what appears to be mechanical, as far as I can tell) range with and without, for example http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1676943.pdf

I don't believe you get a new key when you use up all the activations but are granted a spare activation every 30 days. If nothing is lost when a key is stolen, then people could just sell their keys multiple times and keep using them as well, which I hope isn't possible for ED's finances not least.

As far as I can tell, these are detented as well as it says 20 position, so they're not what I'm looking for. Says they have 20 pulses per revolution though, so I presume they'd at least have fairly decent precision and might be suitable for other applications.

Why do you say only look at mechanical, if I can use any kind I want with arduino? The digikey one you linked to (and that Leo Bodnar has) has detents, so wouldn't be suitable for the application I mentioned. It also has only 4 Pulses Per Revolution, which seems too low for accurate adjustment of the instruments, although I don't profess to be an expert on these things.

Hi Mark I'll be using an Arduino Mega board but I don't think that dictates exactly what encoders I can use does it? Re. dual encoders I mean dual shaft with push button on the inner shaft like this http://www.leobodnar.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=75&products_id=196 The Shark Abris just appears to be a single shaft with push button.

I need to get a single shaft encoder to use to adjust the various heading bugs, altimeter settings, etc. Something that looks like this, with a serrated edge, would probably look the part although I'm happy to stick a serrated knob on a normal shaft if necessary. I don't know much about encoders yet but I guess I want one with a large number of pulses per revolution, so that I can set the instruments quite precisely. I know I want one without any detents, which I believe are also known as infinitely variable. I guess I need one with a push-switch, so that I can use that to uncage where necessary (i.e. send the uncage command to DCS, I don't care if the physical control locks or not) In my search, I came across this page from one manufacturer which has more details than my brain can handle! http://www.electro-nc.com/products/encoders.shtml Do I want mechanical, optical or magnetic? Absolute (which has 4 variations) or Incremental (which has 3)? Even if that manufacturer has the right product, I can't order from them directly anyway, so if anyone has found a suitable encoder and can tell me where I can order it from, that'd be great. I had a quick look on e-bay but what I found on there had very limited information. Farnell has this one, which looks the part but is detented and only 15PPR http://uk.farnell.com/alps/ec11e152u402/encoder-push-lock-11mm-30d-15ppr/dp/2065016?Ntt=EC11E152U402

I need to order a couple of dual encoder knobs with push switch function for my Dad's X-Plane panel, to control the civilian COM/NAV radio, GPS, etc. I was about to get myself a couple whilst I was at it for when I build my DCS panels but then I realised I wasn't sure whether any DCS craft even use dual knobs, with or without push switch, so do they? I mainly fly the KA-50 at the moment and can't see any in that. What about the A-10C or UH-1H? I don't suppose they could be used with the FC3 aircraft, even if they do have any, due to the simplified avionics but maybe I'm wrong?

Yeah, that changed. I don't have LockOn and bought DCS FC3 the other day and it works fine :)

That's totally the wrong way to approach security. You don't wait until all your stuff has been nicked before locking the door :doh: Once you've identified a security risk, you fix it before someone nasty notices it and takes advantage of it. The activation key comes up as soon as you buy a module via the website and an e-mail could go out with a link to the website and instructions to login to check activation keys if necessary, so e-mailing the actual product keys is quite unnecesssary and foolish. Considering how complicated DCS aircraft are, I think users will be able to cope with logging in to a website to get their keys ;)