Devon Custard

SoftTH is your friend....

Shapeoko2 from inventables. I have faith in the USPS..... not to trash my shipment :) Was looking at this for a while and when gadroc went and bought one i kinda took that as an endorsement. And a LS3040 PRO from HPC here in good ol blighty. I have a few friends who do hobby stuff and they've all agreed to chip in for some of the costs.

Uh hmmmm, Oooops? Just ordered laser engraver/cutter in moment of madness........ CNC is on order too..... Hope pit wife doesnt get tooooo mad :) :)

Well as youre the second person to ask today, ofc i will. I'll write it up and post it as another thread. Seriously, the only skills i had coming into this - about 3 weeks ago - was coding, the electronics stuff is actually really easy to pickup, you just need to spend a LOT of time reading. Google is your friend :)

Update: As you can see i expanded my arduino project a bit. First circuit of my own design, im driving 4 BCD to 7 segment 74HCT4511s from 2 x 74HC595 Shift Registers. Only 4 pins on the Arduino used. Depending on the power requirements i can theoretically drive ALL the 7 segments displays in the pit now from one board. Just a case of writing the sketches and ive got that cracked now. Output from my UDP listener already sorted, just need to put this onto a panel i guess. Also i can use this design (minus the BCD decoders) to drive the caution display panel. Its just an 8x8 matrix i believe. Didnt want to pay $125 for the phidgets board and this is much easier. Managed also to get the flaps output working with one of my HS55 motors so all is not lost on that purchase. Stepper motor arrived yesterday but i didnt purchase the H bridge, awaiting that before i take my gauges any further. Im rapidly running out of electronics stuff to do now before i actually need to start assembling panels and a frame, so i think im going to start on the actual cabling layout for the panels. Sketchup here i come. Out of interest where did everyone else start? Did they build the frame first or did they start with panels? Im tinkering with the export and electronics as i kinda think theyre essential.

I found all my stuff (thanks to a welter of posts from various peeps on here) in C:\Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World\Mods\aircrafts\A-10C\Cockpit\Scripts\mainpanel_init.lua. What caught me out was that some of these arguments are ONLY exported when the device is triggered ie. dial/wheel is jogged or switch is toggled. Find the dial/switch/gauge you want and then look for the argument number. As overpro posted above just do a get_argument_value on device 0.

Yup, I managed to work that out last night. Was so focused on getting the frequencies that i missed the point that what i actually wanted to show was the dial position instead. Once i worked that out it was simple enough to link it all up. Planning on running my own export app alongside helios for the 7 segment/alphanumeric displays.

Well been a fun day today what with stomach flu and a regular view of the back of my bathroom door. Started out stressing out this servo motor issue, foolishly bought a bunch of hs55 motors which now won't do the job unless I want to design a gear train which sounds like fun but is going to be a pig to do 12 times over. Seriously hegyck needs his head examining :) So anyway went back and looked at my export app, reverse engineered gadrocs export.lua. Nice scripting there. Ended up started designing my own lightweight protocol to run over serial to arduino. It's not until you've spent a few hours agonising about why your own code won't work that you get a feel for the amount of work that others have done. This site seriously needs a BUY BEER FOR THIS PERSON button :) I believe gadroc has one of those on his site ;) Anyway the fruits of today's labours finally came good when I worked out I didn't want the actually values for my dials/read outs in just need what the sim thought they were. So got my ILS buttons to work fine. When I complete this the list of credits is going to be huge Tomorrow I'm going to hack that CMSP OCR code :)

Very nice. Wondering if i can amend this to get the Radio channel data that isnt exported....... Anyway very cool, thanks for sharing.

I ordered a couple of HS-55 servos to try and build some of the engine gauges in the A10, however seems the motor is restricted to 180 degrees of movement. From looking at the gauge faces im going to need about 300. Anyone done this already and have a servo recommendation? Only other alternative i can think of is to build a gear train, however i really dont want to have to do that 12 times at that scale of precision.

Really nice to see skills being shared. Ill be needing that level of guidance soon Mac so take notes ;)

Nevermind, i actually bothered to read the entire thread and got the answer :D

Thanks Mac, always nice to hear compliments. But seriously first time i touched a breadboard was 2 weeks ago, i learnt how to read resistor markings about a day after that. I spent a day working out how to wire a CC 7 segment led, the following day. Whats holding me is the time waiting for RS to deliver the components as i need them.( oh and having to work as well) I know what you mean tho, most of what i see on this forum looked like voodoo and black magic for the 2 years i spent hovering on the edges. I just need the impetus to get going, that came in the form of a week to myself over xmas so i went looking for a hobby. The learning curve is bit steep but im setting myself small goals along the way, so far ive wired a cdu, ufc and now im playing with exports and servos :) Its all doable. What im really dreading is the panel fabrication because dodgy soldering can be hidden:D Get stuck in, drop me a pm, can always share the pain with you hahah

Now to work out how to get my servos working :)

Finally managed to get my exports working. Wanted to prove i could export some of the display data from ACS to an arduino driven setup. Running Helios but couldnt see a way to export some of the segment displays, so i threw in a 3rd party script (thanks to Joe for the LUA interface tips) export that to a UDP socket which i capture with some C# and then write out over serial to the Arduino. Finally the arduino im using standar CC 7 segment displays with some shift registers. Eventually hoping to drive most of my LED displays from one or two arduinos at most.

Joe youre a legend. Thanks! Will have a crack at that today when i get home.

Anyone out there willing to share some of there C# LUA interface code? Im looking to interface some stepper motors and 7 segment LEDs to values being exported from DCS:World A10C. Im stuck at first principles, i.e. how the hell do i start, and would really appreciate browsing over someones experiences to get me started. Thanks in advance

Only way i see this working at the moment is by hijacking the Set Display Text command and writing my own code to output bytes to the shift registers. If i can get Helios to output all the UHF data in a single string (lua scripting?) then that should work fine.

+1

Will do. The EOS protocol/libraries is kinda daunting at present, mainly because theres so few tutorials on it. Looks like ill be reverse engineering it from examples :) I can feel the old grey matter getting stressed already :) OOOOPS must clarify that last comment, no way a disrespect to Gadroc (think your work is awesome and its giving me loads to play with) or the community (read a similar post which Gadroc flamed to death :) made me smile and then think "oh dear"). Actually if anyone can point in me in the direction of some solid instructions on how one wires up multiple Arduinos on this EOS bus that would be champion.

Im so enjoying this now, i really am like a kid with a new toy. Hooked an arduino uno up to HELIOS via EOS and got a toggle switch working. I know its all simple steps but im trying out all the various options before i get stuck into a serious build. Want to try and build an arduino interface via EOS for some 7 segment led displays. Gonna need to order some shift registers i guess. My education in electronics continues.... Prototype UFC and CDUs built,

Ah no worries, fixed it. CDU electronics working, exported display on screen. wooop. Now just have to wait for my CNC kit to arrive so i can cut some panels

Hey Waxi, love your design, in fact im trying to replicate most of it. I ordered the same TFT display as you did but seem to be having problems getting windows to recognise it i.e. cant get it to drive it at QVGA resolutions. Did you have any issues, find any workarounds?

Well thats 2 hours well spent. Finally managed to get DCS World working with my Steam A10C key. Worked out how to create viewports for my MFDs and CDU. Now if only ParcelForce(farce) would deliver my components i could start building....

If i was being honest (and trying not to sound big headed) i dont think anything is beyond me - given enough time to learn it, however im trying not to get too swamped by all the things im having to learn just to get started. Theres so many new concepts and terminology im learning. Just trying to get up to speed with the cockpit jargon is awe inspiring but learning the electronics is what im focusing on right now. Picking up material construction/machining skills is probably secondary on my list. When i get around to actually wanting some fancy facia's for my panels ill probably change my mind. A few of things im setting out to do first 1. Learn how to integrate the various controls/switches im going to use into DCS and/or Helios. Kinda means testing one of everything. 2. Design/build a working set of gauges. This means learning translating gauge outputs to some servo/stepper motor. Ive seen some good examples here to get me started :) 3. Build the CDU. Actually at first glance i thought this would be hard but its just 67 switches and a VGA displayl. A big enough joystick board or multiple would be enough for that so maybe thats a quick win and something to actually get me started. Building my own cnc will probably happen but thats way down the list for now.