Warhog

Not to worry. Thats exactly what I thought you said. :) :thumbup: Not sure I understand "magic Switch"?? I get it now. :doh: Thanks Tekkx.

You mean one of these? When Ian first started talking with me about how all these Pro minis might connect to the PC, he introduced me to the RS-485 bus. In anticipation of him completing some code to make it all work, I designed this little board to slip over top the Pro mini. It's not been tested yet as Ian's still working on the code which mean rewriting quite a bit of DCS-BIOS. Because he's also going to school this doesn't afford a lot of free time so he is doing what he can with the time he has. When it does become available, l doun't think the RJ-45 will be the way to go. Simple cOmpression type connectors or just solder it together as each wire length will be rather short once all your panels are in place. I'll be posting a more complete design as soon as he has completed the code and we have tested it with a couple of boards.:thumbup:

Yes I saw it. Very nice Clay. I'm really glad you were able to resolve the problem. I know how frustrating it can be to trouble shoot a problem when you are not exactly sure where to start. Looking forward to a whole wack of panels coming from you now.:thumbup: BTW, I love the VFD. I bought one as well. Just haven't found a home for it yet.

Thanks Lars. I'm also a fan your efforts. Excellent contributions to the community. It means so much to those just starting out in this endeavor. I only hope I can do the same one day. John

Sorry I haven't had a chance to chime in there guys but this arthritis knocked the crap out of me for almost a week. But I'm back know. Yes indeed, I think the only way to go for the CMSC is the OSRAM displays. They work so well and it really is an important panel from a visual perspective. Its not like every panel is as expensive as this one tends to be but it does look very nice. These are the only shots I have so far. The display is bright and using the green acrylic dumbs that down a bit. They are definitely worth the money. Please don't look at the dust or the edges as they need some touch up. The panel is a actually rather stunning when its all clean and shiny. @Gus- Thank you. I am assuming you meant my Photobucket site?

I run a projector as well as an HD television. Because projector bulbs are so expensive, I use the television during practice and then when I do multiplayer missions I use the 1080 projector with a 102" screen. The pic below is my first (semi) cockpit with the television running. You can just see the 102" screen in the background. It fills almost the entire wall. When I use the projector the television just swings out of the way using one of those articulated arms. If you go with a projector prepare for some big dollars if you want an excellent image. The screen alone was $3000.00 CDN. But Mr. Burns, the size and quality of the image is like having a monitor the size of the wall. Its that good. And when you talk about immersive, there is not much that can compare. When the image size is that large and the room is completely dark you actually think you are at 5000 feet looking down at the world. However, beware that with projectors you get what you pay for. Cheapy projector and low end screen equals somewhat washed out not so sharp image. Best advice is to find a shop that specializes in projectors. Make sure they have a viewing room. You want to see what it can do before you buy and also to compare one projector to another. Its the only way to know what your going to get for your money. BTW, projectors are virtually identical to monitors when attached to a PC. HDMI or DVI. Both work perfectly and you don't need a super high end graphics card either. If it works on your monitor it will do the same on your projector. No difference. John

What a unique way to solve that problem Anton. This is what I enjoy most about this forum... seeing all of the different techniques employed in reaching the same goal. Looks like thats a winning solution Anton. :thumbup: I'm looking forward to seeing it all lit up with the screen full of text. BTW, really nice deck. Just don't get carried away with doing that kind of stuff to often... you have a cockpit to finish. :smilewink:

Firedawg, I was Just wondering about a couple of things that might be causing this. I have had it happen as well and what I am referring to is "no data streaming" in the window after socat is started. There should be a flood of info streaming down that window. Some things to consider: 1. On occasion I had forgot to close a socat window that was hiding under DCS and started a new one by accident. 2. I assume you confirmed the com port the Arduino board is using in "Devices and Printers" and changed the socat script accordingly? 3. Did you start socat first and then DCS. Try starting DCS and then tab out and start socat. See if that gets it running. 4. You don't have the game paused or using active pause? Sorry its not a game, its a sim.:doh: 5. I understood that the baud rate was to be set at 250000 and not 500000 as there were issues running that fast. The example DCS-BIOS template should be at 250000... Ian??? 6. Is the board actually connected to the PC? Verify. I have forgot to plug it in and then socat does exactly what you are seeing.:doh: It happens:smilewink: Just recounting some of the things I have done in hopes thats it helps you figure out what the issue is. John

Hi Clay I used Arial for the CDU keys and I pocketed them. They came out really nice but that coding for doing pocket operations makes for a huge fukin file. I seldom do that. The buttons were made from white styrene, airbrushed grey then pocketed on the mill. The back of each button was also pocketed so in essence "its hollow". Thats how I get the back lighting into the button. John

There are a number of factors in play Tore. First the idea of running three or more steppers from an Arduino seems to be a problem. I was reading way back to 2013 in Gremlins thread and I copied it ... It was from Gremlins thread http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=86916&page=12 There are several things you can try. Most are over my pay grade. First is to eliminate the use of digitalwrite. Except thats probably located inside the Accel library and way way above my pay grade. But it does make things respond faster. Next talk to the guys at the Accel forum and ask for help. See what they recommend for changes to your code. (I highly recommended this - ie) "possible solution") Lastly, change boards...maybe the Arduino Due as it runs at 84mhz compared to the Mega at 16mhz.:thumbup: After spending time on the Accel forum last month I was kind of anticipating this as being a problem. To that end, I purchased a ChipKit board 3 weeks ago but haven't had an opportunity to try it yet. (to many smaller projects on the go) It runs at 80Mhz and the guys at the Accel forum tested it with either 10 or 20 steppers with no issues. I also noticed that they don't have anything nice to say about Arduino when it comes to running multiple stepper motors. I guess rightly so after what I've been seeing lately. That doesn't mean its a lost cause. Over Pro did it. But he wrote his own code using the 6606 drivers and he also eliminated "digitalwrite" in his code and went straight to the port. I haven't had any luck with the 6606 driver so far. I tried last weekend...all Saturday... I just couldn't drive a stepper motor with it. :cry: Maybe the IC is bad.:huh: At this point I can't offer much help as I'm at the same level as you are with programming, well maybe not even as far as you. Now I know Gadroc is working with the same motors and driver boards as we are so maybe he can solve this problem but its beyond my abilities at present.:(

...and here's why. I assume you haven't used the MS1 or MS2 pins on the Easy Driver...Correct? If thats the case then your running at micro stepping. That means 630 steps are now 8 x 630 = 5040 steps based on 1/8 step rate. Does that give you an idea of why its only moving a little bit? Pinouts on the motor...looking at the back with the flat part of the motor case facing up. top right pin is 1 btm right pin is 2 btm left is 3 top left is 4 1 and 2 (or 2 and 1)is Coil A 3 and 4 (or 4 and 3) is Coil B You can flip the numbers as I demonstrated in brackets and it won't make a difference but whats important is that you assign one side of the motor (a complete coil) to the A set of motor pins and the other side (again a complete coil) to the B set of motor pins. If you get a motor thats just vibrates with no movement, then your wiring is not as I just outlined. You should read everything there is on the Easy Driver web site. That will answer many questions.

Nope. I'm still working on my ADI. But from looking at your code I can see some possible issues. First it appears your mapping is backwards ie) should be (value, 0, 65,5353, 0, 630). 90Now please understand that my coding skills are almost zero but I do recall that in mapping 0 is set to 0 and then the large value from DCS is set to the max stepper value that you want to use ie) 630 or 510 or whatever amount of sweep is necessary. Second is your speed. I would set it to 1500 start there. You want very fast speed. And I see you set acceleration to 10,000. You don't really want acceleration as you not moving anything. The gauges that you mimic already have acceleration built into the sim so they don't look funny jumping from 0 to 500 or whatever. Its strictly to make them "APPEAR" as if they are acting as real gauges. All we want to do is copy that appearance so as long as we have our motor going to the same locations as the sims gauges, all will be good. So No Acceleration...Setting it to 10,000 pretty much eliminates the use of it. And using the fastest speed possible (without loosing steps:smilewink:) allows the motor to move at whatever is required to mimic the sims gauge movement. Why is you initial movement to 630. If wired correctly you need to go to -630 to find the hard stop. Next I think you should use stepper.moveTo instead of runToNewPosition. Keep the RunToNewPosition for the -630 so you get to the hard stop and then set 0 as you did. After that try MoveTo(value) as your command in the DCSBIOS function call. Lastly, you are missing a big hunk of the DCS-BIOS code at the end of the sketch. I would use what I have proposed but copy over the relevant parts to a new DCS-BIOS template sketch to make sure you have everything you need. Try this and see what you get. There may be some minor syntax errors that need fixing but thats the gist of it. #include <AccelStepper.h>// include AccelStepper library #include <DcsBios.h> #include <Servo.h> // DcsBios-related declarations DcsBios::ProtocolParser parser; AccelStepper stepper; // Defaults to AccelStepper::FULL4WIRE (4 pins) on 2, 3, 4, 5 int targetpos = 0; void setup() { stepper.setMaxSpeed(1500.0); stepper.setAcceleration(10000.0); stepper.setSpeed(1000); stepper.runToNewPosition(-630); //backwards sweep to find hard stop stepper.setCurrentPosition(0); //establishes the zero position { Serial.begin(250000); } } void loop() { // handle DcsBios communication while (Serial.available()) { parser.processChar(Serial.read()); stepper.run; } DcsBios::PollingInput::pollInputs(); } void onDcsBiosWrite(unsigned int address, unsigned int value) { if (address == 0x10b4) { targetpos = map(value, 0, 65535, 0, 590); stepper.moveTo(targetpos); } void sendDcsBiosMessage(const char* msg, const char* arg) { Serial.write(msg); Serial.write(' '); Serial.write(arg); Serial.write('\n'); } Failing that, post your code on the Accel forum and ask what you are doing wrong. They will be a better resource than me. BTW, this is what I use to test my motors for speed and so I can fine tune the settings. I have run 3 motors at different speeds and directions using this sketch but I also use an Easy Driver board for each motor to get micro stepping. You should be able to just change the stepper motor definition at the beginning and have it work for you. The sweep and speed I change depending on whether I use full step, half step, quarter stepper or one eighth step (micro step). #include <AccelStepper.h> AccelStepper stepper (1, 10, 11);//driver, step, direction //AccelStepper stepper1 (1, 10, 11);//driver, step, direction //AccelStepper stepper2 (1, 6, 7);//driver, step, direction void setup() { stepper.setMaxSpeed(1250); stepper.setAcceleration(500.0); stepper.runToNewPosition(-13200); stepper.setCurrentPosition(0); stepper.moveTo(13200); /* stepper1.setMaxSpeed(600); stepper1.setAcceleration(2000.0); stepper1.runToNewPosition(-630); stepper1.setCurrentPosition(0); stepper1.moveTo(120); stepper2.setMaxSpeed(600); stepper2.setAcceleration(2000.0); stepper2.runToNewPosition(-630); stepper2.setCurrentPosition(0); stepper2.moveTo(11120);*/ } void loop() { stepper.run(); // stepper1.run(); //stepper.run(); }

Tore, if I'm not mistaken should you not have the run command in the actual loop?

Snowman, I just checked that link you posted and its to a GitHub page for a Caution Panel sketch that Ian revised for me some time ago. My LED matrix is very different from the typical layout so please use the sketch that Clay posted in "Pastebin" earlier in this thread. My sketch will not work for you no matter how much you try and revise it. I should have pointed that out earlier but I just now noticed where that sketch originated from. John

@Tore... I think you are running the same machine as Clay is. You two should get together and talk as you both may have encountered similar issues.

Hi Tore Try asking these questions on this forum https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?hl=en#!forum/accelstepper The fellow who wrote the Accel library resides there and will help you. The people there are very knowledgeable. You might also look into this Easy Driver board. The Chinese knockoffs are less than $1.50 a piece. Also, to reverse direction there is an Accel command called invert pins (might be spelled differently:doh:) and that should reverse the default direction.

This is a complete guess on my part but I think it's the stepper library you are using. It blocks movement of steppers until one reaches it target and then two gets to reach its target and so on. Except nobody beyond the first one get to its target because all are in a continuous state of movement. I think you need to use the Accel library as it's designed to allow non blocking movement if you use the correct function calls. Is this correct?...asking anyone who knows the Accel library...

I have been talking with some rather experienced people who work with steppers a lot at they were telling me that Arduino boards in general do not have the processing power to run more than a couple of steppers at the speed we would need in our cockpits. I was going to suggest that the 84mhz DUE is the Arduino board to use. I purchased a Chipkit UNO32 at 80mhz to see if that would get rid of the problems. But also eliminating the use of digital write will make a big difference. I haven't had time to check this out (the Chipkit that is) as I have been rather involved in retro fitting my ADI with steppers and servo. To deal with blocking movement of motors, the Accel library allows updating multiple steppers simultaneously. I have had three motors running at different speeds and different directions all at the same time so I know it can be done with that specific library. To resolve the missing steps issue at high speed, this might be a solution. This is just concept at the moment. Use an Easy Driver board which has step rates that can be changed on the fly. Write code that selects full steps at high speed and micro stepping at slow speed. At middle speeds you would change from half step to quarter step according to the change in speed. I think this might resemble what acceleration does except for a different purpose...smooth motion without loosing steps regardless of speed. I just don't have enough programming experience to write that properly. I know the VID series of steppers will run fast enough as you can see from my previous video. It just when you add all sorts of other stuff into the code it misses steps. That's just my two cents and my observations. Nothing has been tested or confirmed at this point. Tore... Welcome back. Good to see you back at it. As you can see the whole altimeter thing is still a WIP so stay tuned. You can read Adrian's thread on this as well. He was having issues at high speed. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=145193 Here are some videos showing just basic high speed movement with the VID stepper motors. https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCgWnYKO_dCMUvkMFDg3lOuA

If we have several people working on basically the same vehicle, only a different color would it not be more efficient to collaborate and develop one all encompassing program that's does everything one could possibly want except maybe etch the PCB. There is Ian who developed DCS-BIOS which is pretty much a proven entity, then Gadroc who is taking DCS-BIOS and making it into...not sure yet, ArturDCS with his USB program and then you two gentlemen which looks like your doing the same thing but not, however, it sounds like it's going to result in similar functionality. Not being a programmer, I assume a project of this magnitude is great deal of work. A collaboration such as this would certainly have significant benefits. Dividing up tasks to reduce workload. Drawing upon specialties would allow the final project to grow beyond any one persons knowledge base. Several people working to the same goal would allow for more ideas to be tabled. More ideas equates better solutions. With the varying areas of interest, expertise and knowledge it would also be a great opportunity to share ideas and concepts and learn from each other. Certainly a win-win for everyone. On the other hand it may be that programmers prefer to work alone. In that case what I just proposed is moot. I thought I would throw this out for consideration as it sure would be interesting to see what comes out of a collaboration of DCS enthusiasts who have the skill to make computers do wonderful things for us. Thanks for reading. I hope you will all give this some thought and what it would mean to the entire community as a result of your combined efforts.:thumbup:

Clay, do you mean you just now fixed those issues or you did this some time ago. If it was some time ago you should recheck you backlash. BTW, it looks as though the y axis is also problematic after a close look at the Romans font you cut. The vertical strokes on the letters M, UVand H are shorter on one side than the other. That's a typical indicator of backlash. You should join the CNCZone forum which I believe has a section devoted to your style of machine. I'm sure there would be a wealth of experience to draw upon as it is a huge forum devoted strictly to CNC. I spent many a day on that forum when I first started into CNC some 10 or so years ago. I still frequent it when I need an answer to something new I want to try.

I think its time to put a dial indicator on your x axis and check it both directions. Also on your Z axis. This sure looks like a mechanical issue. Its definitely not your cutters or the font your using and its 95% not a software issue. However, until you get some accurate measurements as to what the machine is really doing, its all speculation. So check that first. Can you fit 3/8" endmills in that collet. It is a real pain to level anything properly with a small diameter endmill. Also, you really don't need a backboard that size. Its huge compared to anything your likely to engrave. It will also take less time to level it.:smilewink:

I think there may be some misunderstanding as to the selection of cutters and what tip and angles are all about. I suggest a visit to this web site. It may shed some light on the proper selection of engraving cutters. http://www.2linc.com/ Clay, I was wondering if you had been cutting any other materials with your engraving bits? Often dull bits will cause poor cutting of material. When cutting engraving plastic there is no need to cut deep or make multiple passes. At high spindle speeds you can cut at least 30in/min. with no problems. The only limit will be the point of missed steps. Then you need to reduce feed rates. Post some pics of the problem. BTW, if you intend to cut acrylic the idea of blowing cold air on the cutter is worthwhile looking at. It will minimize temps that cause melting. More important though is to use 2 flute end mills, a slower spindle speed and a fast feed rate. The less time a cutter is in contact in one place the better the temps will be. @MnW - liked the video. Good idea to show what to expect.:thumbup: John

This really needs to stop. This forum is here to let cockpit builders exchange information and to get help if needed. There is however a cost for this information/help but it's not monetary. The currency is knowledge and experience based on an informal type of barter system. I need help with electronics and programming. Someone or several people help me. In return, someone needs help with AutoCAD or CNC, I do what I can to help. It's a win-win situation. It's the FREE exchange of information, knowledge and experience. And what happens to someone who has nothing to offer. Stick around and get help. One day you might be able to help someone else. Anything related to the SALE of "whatever" should be immediately relocated to the For Sale forum. That needs to include advertising of any products or services. One more thing, it is something I was told as a kid and I guess it kind of stuck with me over the years... If don't have anything nice to say then "shut the f*ck up"

Post some pics of what's happening Clay. Also some more detail as to when , where etc. It sounds as though your z axis is not being consistent. What's changed from the last time it cut good lettering? John @DM, I agree with how MnW (new acronym:music_whistling:) is reading the comments. No issue here. Let's leave it at that and talk more CNC.:thumbup:

Snowman, I would read through the attached PDF. See page 10 for capacitors and pg8 for resistor. There are 3 additional components you will require, a 10uf electrolytic cap and a .1uf ceramic cap. As Ian said, install both caps as close to the chip as possible. There is also a resistor required to go between RSET and VCC (data sheet refers to VCC as V+). I think the minimum is a 10K resistor but read the data sheet to make sure. Thats about it. Let us know how you make out.:)