Weegie

Never realized that @sthompson thanks for explaining I've never encountered Jester doing unwanted stuff (yet) personally when set on Rel Hot, however most of the time I'm using TX 6 to communicate with my own profile. It's certainly useful to know as that could easily muddy the waters still further. @Goofeyfoot sthompson's post is about a special case specific to the Tomcat module with the optional ARIO Vaicom add on and doesn't apply to the A-10

Glad it's working for you Michael I believe Hollywood deserves a round of applause, not only does he offer an amazing piece of Software at a very reasonable price IMHO. He has also taken what must have been considerable time and trouble, to document it all in order that users can extract all the features that Vaicom offers. I wish other software available as add-ons for DCS had a similarly detailed manual. It's not so complicated & well explained in the manual pages 12-14; 32-33. That said there is quite a lot of it so it's easy to become confused (ask me how I know) The way I look at the whole setup is like a series of layers. The top layer Voice Attack, the program used to interpret your voice commands The middle layer Vaicom, the plug in which interprets what's passed from Voice Attack and interfaces with DCS The bottom layer any User Profiles like MINE. This is just an analogy in reality it's a lot more complcated, I haven't really a clue how it works and simply consider it as Magic Vaicom has 6 channels available, although any of them if assigned a PTT will start/stop Voice Attack listening (top layer), they have different purposes/functions within Vaicom (middle layer). For Vaicom these channels are 1-3 - Aircraft Radios 4 - Auto - An option for use with Easy Comms 5 - Interphone - For use with the Ground Crew (when the radios aren't powered) 6 - Aux - For using another profile this is what you'd use to communicate with MINE if Rel Hot is disabled If you look at the Radio/PTT Page in the Vaicom Pop Up, then you'll see the large PTT MAP Rotary switch. The position of the switch determines how your PTTs or buttons on the HOTAS access these 6 channels. The channels are always there the Rotary just determines how you access them The simplest way to interface with these options is Multi, what I use, so as all the modules will use fixed PTTs. However depending on what buttons are available on your HOTAS or your personal preference you can choose another option and these are explained in the manual and what the pros/cons are of them Probably not any clearer, but I thought it was worth a try John

Hi @Goofeyfoot Yeah I meant to add my setup and forgot, I've got my PTT Rotary Dial set to Multi on the Radio Page of the Vaicom pop up. With that setup my PTT#6 is used to speak to my MINE profile You can have a Hot Mic or not as you prefer by clicking on the Rel Hot enable in the Vaicom popup Radio Window. When it's enabled the light will glow orange. When Rel Hot is enabled you should be able to pass commands to you're MINE profile just by saying the command, Vaicom will ignore commands until you push a PTT button. However Voice Attack will still pick up any commands that Vaicom has they just won't be enabled. So the Confirm/Affirm problem I told you about will still occur. It doesn't matter if Vaicom is the primary/dominant profile or not pressing a PTT will open close the microphone if Vaicom is running AFAIK and Rel Hot is not enabled. So if you wanted to say something to your MINE profile you would still need to say that with a PTT pressed, the PTTs actually start and stop Voice Attack listening not Vaicom. You can see that as you've noted by pressing a PTT, when it's pressed the Headphone symbol is normal, when it's released the Headphone symbol has a red circle with a bar, showing Voice Attack is no longer listening. With Rel Hot enabled pushing a PTT will set Vaicom listening and the MINE profle too. From what you describe if I understand correctly I'd enable Rel Hot and try that or use a Vaicom PTT when not only addressing Vaicom but also when envoking commands from your MINE profile. From the way I understand it you're thinking the PTTs are only for Vaicom, they are actually for Voice Attack so you need to use them to issue any command not matter if it's Vaicom or MINE, unless you have Rel Hot enabled If any of that makes sense John

I'm unsure if I understand the problem fully, as I don't know what Profile Support is. I think I get the general idea of what you're trying to do I'm just vague on the details. I've got my own profiles working well with Vaicom, first and forgive me if you already are aware, you will have a dominant profile, in other words the profile you select to run. Most people have this as Vaicom. You then can append or "include" a profile to run with that dominant profile in the background. The dominant profile, let's say it's Vaicom runs and the appended/piggyback profile you've added to run is the secondary, in this case MINE. What happens is any commands you issue will first be processed by Vaicom, if it cannot make any sense of it, it will then pass it to MINE where it will try to process the command. If Vaicom has a command with the same name as the word or phrase you have in MINE, Vaicom will process it and it won't be passed through. For instance in my case I wanted to push the ENTER key on the UFC of the HORNET by saying Confirm or Affirm. When I tried to use that Vaicom would "grab" both these commands and nothing would happen. So I then had to use a different word in my "MINE" profile. Is the Voice Attack window showing the command as unrecognized with Vaicom on but working when you use MINE on its own? I'm assuming Vaicom works without any issues. Another experiment you could try is to make MINE the dominant or primary profile and have Vaicom as the appended or seconadary profile to see if that works. I've tried this and it does work but it was only a quick experiment so I don't know if you'll get all the functionality that Vaicom has to offer or not. These are just some ideas, I'm not an expert and perhaps somebody with deeper knowledge will chime in.

Highwayman-Ed You could just always make your own command in VA and add it to the profile if Vaicom won't Open/Close the kneeboard for you. R_Shift "K" is the usual default, that's how I open and close my kneeboard anyway and it works well for me I realize that's sorta missing the point but it is a workaround

It's possible in VA, unless I'm missing something. My (bad) YouTube Video shows that it's possible to get the kneeboard to go to a specific page and get called from a VA command, be that voice, Dx or keybind, with or without shortcuts using a tracking vairiable in Voice Attack and a couple of Loops Of course now with the latest sticky tabs to go straight to a page it's no longer so much of an issue. However even using these, unless your Marvo the memory man, it could be tricky. For instance adding a sticky to go to a specific airbase/arfield's charts when all of them were sitickied, would mean having to remember what every colour represented, that's more than my old brain could handle.

I'd think this is possible, but I've never actually tried it and reckon you'd need to make an OVGME mod for it as some of the pages will be re-inserted at every update. The Default kneboard pages are in the game under Program Files\Eagle Dynamics\DCS World OpenBeta*\Mods\terrains\Map**\Kneeboard. Deleting them would hopefullly remove them from the kneeboard I don't know where the dynamic coloured maps are kept though *if you run the Open Beta if not it will probably be just DCS World **The relevant map Caucasus, Nevada etc: Some 3rd party modules add their own specific kneeboard sheets and I'm unsure where these are though, I don't think there is a fixed location so perhaps somebody with more knowlledge than me could help there Module specific pages can be added via the Saved Games\kneeboard folders. I use the standard kneeboard pages lightly modified and VA to call them up, including the Vaicom interactive kneeboard. This is an old vdeo but might give you flavour of what I have, it has been improved a bit since that video but the principal is the same (I believe Bailey's VA profiles also do this and a lot more). The profile just uses loops and a tracking vairiable in VA to page to the correct kneeboard page, it's pretty simple stuff Skip to around 3:50 https://youtu.be/KCAi_0_gc_E

Makes sense to me @sthompson I just included the same command into each of my profiles rather than generate another profile for that specific purpose, but I'm sure either would work fine. My profiles are inefficient enough without adding and executing unecessary additional code hence the reason I probably wouldn't implement Hollywood's suggestion.

Very useful & informative @Terry Dactil I'm probably in a small minority though who have a profile that tracks the Kneeboard pages to enbale me to request airfield charts, checklists etc for vairious modules and maps, this is also applicable to anybody using Bailey's profiles which I believe have a similar feature incorporated into them With the AutoBrowse checkbox ticked, the kneeboard will jump to the Interactive kneeboard Page if it updates to add relevant information. This results in a loss of synchronization of tracking vairiables used in Voice Attack profiles. In order to prevent autojumping I have the AutoBrowse disabled and simply added my own voice commands to my profile in order that I can have full control of when I want to look at these pages. The commands are detailed in Hollywood's excellent User Manual page 46. This allows vairaibles in a VA profile to still track the kneeboard pages and means that I can still call any other data I want to look at on the kneeboard when I want to.

Am I reading that correctly @shaun57 That would mean that every time you pressed a PTT, I'd probably use Tx6, Vaicom would go look at what module was loaded and change to the appropriate module? Seems a little OTT, but I'm rarely in the wrong module If I get the time I'll drop Hollywod a request later for this as a New Module Command, the guy asking about changing PTT buttons for different modules could probably use it too a method of differentiating which profile to load

Thanks for the info @sthompson, I agree Vaicom must inject commands to the game whereas SRS simply reads data from it. I wondered if it was possible to extract the module data via DCS Export or by interregation of which Export.lua is active, however I'm not familiar enough with either lua coding or the Export scripting to write code to that level It's not such a biggie for me anyway I simply use a voice comand to activate the exposed vairiable, it's not a command I reallly use that much. Granted though it would be nice to automate the process Just seen this perhaps another application for auto selection of modules https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/254389-per-aircraft-ptt-buttons/

Do you mean having Vaicom appended to a user/module profile rather than the other way around? I tried some rudimetary testing of that setup and it did appear to work but I wonder if I'd lose some functionality within Vaicom, by that I mean I don't know if all the Vaicom features would work. I know that you need to be careful with the syntax of the voice commands as the primary profile will always execute first. For example if I'm using "confirm" in both profiles, whichever profile is primary will have the "confirm" command exectued and the secondary won't, ask me how I know this ;0) In the MODS section there is thread on DCS Presence which outputs the aircraft type among other things to SRS, I've asked the question about how it works as it clearly has some way of extracting the module type from the game https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/243833-dcs-presence/?tab=comments#comment-4497177

Very Cool Thanks for this

Ok I missed that @shaun57 so it looks like it's a possibility To answer your question Yes I believe Hollywood is ammenable to making changes to Vaicom based on users requests, especially if he feels it's a positive addition and I reckon this would be. He added the exposed vairiable for the regions specifically at my request which auto changes the maps in my personal profile when I complete a reset as I explained further up It's not a biggie for me as normally I'm in the correct profile before starting DCS and if I change to a different module I just use the Voice command, but it is a nice idea as the more you can automate this sort of thing the better I'd go the Vaicom website and then contact him via e-mail, in the past I've found Vaicom customer support very responsive and normally I'd get a reply within a day or two.

That's a good idea @shaun57 Just tried that and it seems to work that's just some rudimentary testing selecting radio frequencies airfields and comms, but Yeah that's another approach for sure.

I can't see an easy way of doing this off the bat Adding the "module select command" to the Configuration Window would be a possbile work around, so as when the configuration window is triggered the correct module specific Vaicom profile is selected. I just tried that and it works fine but it would involve killing then reselecting the Vaicom window when jumping across profiles. I don't know how you'd get the plug in to trigger VA to execute a command, don't even know if that's possible. With my profiles I've got back ups in to tune to frequencies for the airfields for Caucasus, Nevada, Gulf and Syria as well as Tacan and ILS frequencies, these are all map specific using If statements. When I jump into a module I execute a reset to align the profile vairiables to the module and the map is selected automatically through a Vaicom exposed vairiable. With my own profiles I could expand them to select the module as well but that's not much use to you. One for Hollywood I reckon

Currently got mine under a voice command but I'll try to see if it could be automated and report back

Heh Drac (or Bailey) does the profile still use a reset command? If after trying the B18,B20,B18 manually to ascertain it works perhaps you could just insert that into the reset so as you don't need to do it manually everytime. I know ideally the clean solution would be to correct the instructions, but if it works it works. @Bailey although my profile is not as sophisticated or extensive as yours, rather than use the MFDs' buttons numbered 1-20 I broke mine down into 4 groups, labelled 1-5 then used the prefix T(top), L(left), R(right) and B(bottom) as I found that easier than trying to work out where the higher numbered buttons are on the MFD's. Just a thought

Yup I don't know either, if it is I'd be interested in doing it. My workaround was to copy the exisitng Vaicom Profile in Voice Attack then make the copied Vaicom profile module specific. So I have identical Vaicom profiles, but one Vaicom profile for each aircraft. I then appended/Daisy Chained my own module specific profile to the back of each of the Vaicom specific profiles. For example I have a Vaicom profile named "Vaicom Pro Hornet" and another named "Vaicom Pro Viper" The only difference between the Vaicom profiles is that the "Vaicom Pro Hornet" has my own "DCS Hornet" profile appended to it and the "Vaicom Pro Viper" has my own "DCS Viper" profile appended to it. With that setup I can use the exposed vairiable command to select the correct profile to match the module I'm in on DCS. I've also got a command where I can flip into or out of Vaicom to run either my own profile appended to the Vaicom profile or just my own profile (stand alone) without Vaicom (it's hardly rocket science) The downside is it takes (a little) more space and it means you need to update several profiles rather than just one if there is a keywords update. Works great for me and it wasn't my idea originally I pinched it from someone else on the forum who told me how he had his setup Just an idea as an alternative

Need to do some experimenting too, but with EasyComms on I sometimes have had the frequency changed unexplicably, calling say Texaco then Lukoil answers and the radio frequency changes. I'm not saying it's Vaicom I don't know where the problem comes from at that point I had Instant Select enabled so going to try again with it disabled I am able to select airfields tankers etc: with EasyComms off, Instant Select Off and Select Tunes Radio on. However I still cannot, and never have been, able to select a discrete Frequency using the Select and then calling the numbers. VA recognizes the call (you can see it in the Window) but Vaicom just does nothing with it. Need to try the select channel to see if that works From now on I'm leaving Instant Select disabled

Even on an open Mic I can't recall having trouble with Vaicom triggering although it would only trigger commands in my profile appended to Vaicom, but in short the answer in no does not appear to be a problem On a separate PTT for SRS and Vaicom the two programs are isolated from each other. It's not ideal I suppose but it works well enough for me and @sthompson you are very welcome and thank you for the kind words

Yup same for me totally in agreement with ZBot and sthompson. I use the same button with Vaicom and SRS to select a radio, which is also the PTT for Vaicom but a different PTT for SRS to actually talk. I could never get Vaicom auto select to work reliably and didn't want to sound a complete dork screaming AI commands down an open radio

I agree they are well made and WW may or may not (I don't know) went through the testing. It will cost money and time to get certification I'm certain of that. It's not an argument on how safe or well made the device is, without certification these devices will get impounded when customs catch on, if they have not been through the certification process. No matter what your opinion is on the EU rules,or otherwise, if your in the club these are the laws that will get enforced, just sayin' :music_whistling:

Interesting, I could never get select to work to tune the radio although VA was recognizing it, but I've always had instant select turned on. I''ll test it off later and see if that does the trick. Quite a few have problems with the Select command to tune the radio and I've checked that VA recognizes it but Vaicom doesn't do anything, Hollywood insists it's down to Cadence but I think there is bug lurking in there. Is VA recognizing your calls to Hatay and Haifa you can see this in the VA window I'd also enable the Run in Debug mode under Config in the Vaicom pop up and check what the Vaicom log is saying. I'll try it later to see if I'm having a problem I can't really offer much help but should at least be able to assist by finding out if it's specific to your setup or if more generic

Just loaded the A4 to the latest update & have a question if anbody can help I see in the Control Bindings some Speed Hold Commands (under the category Modes) but I haven't been able to find any reference to an "in flight" AutoThrottle as opposed to the APC. Does such a control exist in the A4 or do these controls not do anything? Any help would be much appreciated