tekadept

Heya @RabidRiderno need to worry about the code mentioned above, its not the issue, the panel works fine with DCSBIOS. its just an installation issue and DCSBIOS not finding the DCS install. I run steam Open beta and dcsbios always "just works" for me on every machine I've tried so I can't really relate on specific ways to solve it. Even though you did the reinstall I am guessing its still possibly a registry issue, did you follow fedaykinwolfs steps below? I always reccomend DCSBIOS V10 as its got the nice gui and easier to get up and running for most, if you are adventurous another thing you could tri is the DCSBIOS from dcsflihtpanels its a bit more a manual process to setup and run but seems to work better for people with different install directories etc.

F16 Landing Panel is now completed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vGkXhnZaM https://tekcreations.space/product/f16-falcon-landing-controller/

2 New panels Finished up. The F16 Left Rear Panel https://tekcreations.space/product/f16-viper-left-rear-panel-usb-controller/ And the F16 Misc Panel, supporting optional AOA and AR/NWS Indicators. https://tekcreations.space/product/f16-viper-misc-panel-usb-controller/

First F14 Tomcat Controller is done, The Display Panel controls https://tekcreations.space/product/f14-tomcat-display-panel-usb-controller/

Well its not natively supported with a simple dcsbios command, but its easy enough to program. below is a class I use you can add to switches.h Its called by say DcsBios::AnalogMultiPos INSSW("INS_KNB", A7, 8, 250)

To reduce the amount of pins for rotary switches look into resistor ladders, then you only need a single analog input to detect what position.

Glad, I have another one incoming soon, will allow to turn off displays when done without unplugging by pushing 2 buttons. apparently thats a wanted thing, my pc turns of power to usb when off though.. 2 New units being worked on F-16 Misc Panel Huey Left Pedestal UHF-Armament

For those with a TekCreations UFC with Option Displays a new firmware is available fixing a few issues and adding Harrier Mode. Details here https://tekcreations.space/f18-hornet-ufc-display-firmware-update-1-8a/

Just finished up the Caution Panel for the F-16, Currently DCSBIOS mode, but going to do up some code for BMS as well. Also I have started taking orders for the left Replica shortened Winwing Panel as well. https://www.tekcreations.space/product/f18-hornet-left-replica-panel-usb-controller/?v=6cc98ba2045f

Next up we have the F18 Hornet Right Warning/Caution Advisory Video of the unit in action, the camera kind of flares the LED"s they do look a better in person.

Video of the F18 Hornet Left Rear Panel (Shortened WinWing version) in action is up Unit is complete I just need to wait for some parts to start production of this one.

I hope everybody has been keeping well in the world. I’ve had one of those regular annoying old fashion colds thats slowed me down, but starting to get back to the Landing Panel. Below we have the 3d printed handle for the park brake Next%20we%20have%20the%20Landing%20Gear%20handle,%20I%20went%20for%20a%203d%20printed%20shaft%20and%20acrylic%20handle.She%20seems%20quite%20sturdy%20after%20many%20repeated%20rough%20actions%20it%20survived. Now for the LED we need cables of course, the option here is as shown below. unfortunately there is no way to avoid these produding like that, but I will use some heatshrink to neaten them up Put them all together and what do you get?? Now lets set the mood The final unit the ECM will be completely optional with no impact on the price to add it in. As far different Toggle handles, I'm not going to do that to start with it will bog me down. it is something I will muck around with 3d printing, but it will be something that can always be added later on for those in VR. Now just a bit of final finicky coding! to make sure thing do what they are told!

Heya Mark thanks for the feedback. My original thought was generic panels from the get go, and based on some input the Multi panel was born. One thing I have found though is it is harder to please more people with a multi design than it is a replica. With a replica layout it is what it is, but with generic design somebody says " I like it but this" another says "thats cool but can you move that" etc. Also people have asked for generic layout, I ask for feedback on what they want and 9 times out of ten I get cricket sounds :) That said with the RH and LH panels, I can do swaps of switches for other types to a degree without changing the position, ie POT to rotary switch or toggle switch etc. 2 way to 3 way and change engraving etc. As far as the landing panel its actually ready to go as it is, the only thing is at the moment it has no handles for gear or park brake. that is the delay whilst I iterate through a few thought processes. I am waiting on a new switch to try fo the gear, it may be a bit more easier to make a handle for. Hoping it arrives next week.

Thought I should come back to the F18 Hornet Landing Panel, its been a minute. I have sorted out the Jettison Select Switch. Works a treat. The Park Brake works good for pull and rotate The Gear switch works good to. It is a 3 position switch, I am thinking Up is well up, middle is down. and I’m thinking possibly down can triggger Emergency? Not sure on that. Will experiement. Overall I’m happy with how its turning out so far. I need to do a bit more code tweaking, I am not going to offer a Gear or Park Brake at this point, they will need to be 3d printed and be quite time consuming to print. It will just be a knob at this stage. I have an idea for landing gear thats not 3d printed, but I’ll have to do some mockups over the next week or 2.

Looking good!

Looking very Smick

I am trying to consolidate a single thread for things I'm working on rather than seperate ones and renaming didn't seem to work for me. The Next USB Controller I have been working on is the F18 Left Panel Controller. I have decided I will be doing 2 versions of this unit, the first one shown here is the “WinWing Version”. There is no point having the Ext Fuel Controls if you have the F18 Hornet WinWing Taurus Throttle as you are doubling up, so this is a shorter version minus that. Video Below showing the Beta WinWing Unit in Action. One thing I will never be able to replicate is the “reset” of the Rud Trim, this is an encoder with 360 rotation when pushed it will obviously stay where it is, not much can be done with that. but you could push and rotate yourself back to centre. Love to hear if anybody had anything smart they have done with that. I have thought of springs and stuff but I think it would be very easy to fail. Now the gain switch is guarded, and I’m not going to go that route, simply because If I did I would have to worry about a “switch” for it, which I’m not about to do at this stage. What I am thinking of doing whenever the switch is toggled it will auto toggle the guard if it is down. ILS Channel needs to be “set” before loading the game but will mimic the in game positioning ok, but if you turn past 20 or 1 it will “lose its spot”. The full left panel is done, just currently working on a way to secure the APU addon panel to the Main Unit. Cheers

Hey mate, I couldn't end up sourcing a "ready to buy" product I can link, I ended up going direct to a Manufactuer to order what I needed. It was 0.36" segment LED's I went for which were the size I wanted.

More UFC's are starting to get out into the wild, once the next batch of LED chips come in I will get cracking a bit quicker. In the interim I have had a couple of requests of Harrier Pilots who the want to utilise their F18 UFC with the Harrier Module . Never shy of a challenge I had a first crack at introducing the new "harrier mode" and as a proof of concept she works! Obviously needs more work :) but I know it is workable I can start finishing it. I don't fly the harrioer so I'll have to gather feedback on what hornet buttons to map to the Harrier UFC. I will be doing a harrier UFC at some point in the future but this will be a nice stopgap for those who fly both hornet and Harrier.

Unfortunately I checked out OSH park they aren't offering any kind of payout so not on the table. I have now opened up orders for the PCB only option. You will need to provide your own arduino and code / mmjoy setup. I can offer some very limited help if required. In the future I will offer the preprogrammed pro micro with a gui for config, but I have had a few other projects take time away from me at this stage. Shipping is a bit high at the moment as due to COVID eceonomy airmail has been cancelled as an option so it has to be standard airmail. Let me know if it seems to high with you country and I can double check.

Next up on the block we have the first Prototype of the F18 Hud to be the companion to the UFC The shape of this panel has a profile on it thats not rectangle. Now I did have a swing at this shape but after much cursing I determined this was just not going to be feasible to do at any kind of speed. So we have the nice stock standard rectangle. Now that meant we had a bit of spare space in the corners, the logical choice was to utilise this to add in our HDG and CRS toggles. The height of the UFC is 50mm, for the HUD Enclosure I have gone 40mm to give it the difference in depth. As always it will be backlit and controlled by the in game controls. I did originally envision being able to daisychain the HUD off the UFC Panels Controller but I unfortunatley ran out of pins and this just wasn’t feasible at the time. So this unit has its own USB Port. With this panel I don’t know how I am going to do the DCSBIOS/HID mode shift as I have controls that are likely to be used in flight. I’ll come back to that. I am currently awaiting a final PCB for this unit to arrive and I will be able to start production. See below a video of the Prototype in Action. As far as the UFC for those who are interested, I am releasing the full units in the wild now, but it is a bit of trickle at the moment, one of the IC’s is in limited supply so it is taking time sourcing it plus these units do take more time to assemble vs the others. I am working my way through the subscribed list notifying as their time comes up. So Subscribe to register your interest for the UFC to get in the queue.

Currently finalised testing on the units. The way I'm going to offer them as below Just the PCB with header pins unsoldered. or unsoldered still but with a Pro micro with Code loaded. (D0rmicum this would be relatively plug and play I'll elaborate in a bit) I'm not interested in offering soldered options at this stage, as my thinking is that for doing all the toggles you are already soldering anyway , and this allows me to keep the price down. As mentioned these are just a breakout board so you can use your own Pro Micro if you wish and write your own code. I just tested with MMJOY as well and works perfectly fine. With the promicro option, I have my basic code done where each button registers as a joystick press or an axis, so it is plug and play in that regard. I am halfway through writing a more complex code for the unit that I will put out (and work on all units) will have a very basic GUI and allow you to set some parameters, ie make a button latching or non latching etc. I've put a link up for the 2 options for pricing https://www.tekcreations.space/product/tekinput-usb-controller/ With just the PCB Unsoldered 35au With the PCB Unsoldered and Pro Micro loaded with basic joystick code 50au. Snakepl88 At the moment shipping to the USA is a bit high as I am only sending via express due to COVID, but my store will calculate the options and should give you an idea. If your interested subscribe to be notified when I open up the orders very soon. just want to finish of a pin map diagram etc before I start selling :)

Now for something completely different, I have wanted to create a USB Joystick Board Controller for a while so I figured it was time to get cracking. This is aimed to be a perfect addition to those builing their own Flight Sim Cockpit who want an easier solution for wiring it all up. The aim of this is a nice compact breakout board , that will interface with an Arduino Pro Micro. The idea of this is it will allow those who are knowledable to write their own code. I plan on offering these as a breakout board only, or with a Pro micro configured to work as a HID Joystick (or possibility DCSBSIOS) Coming in at 65mm x 80mm we have the below little beauty This unit will allow 40Digital Inputs for switches buttons etc. The pins are aligned in rows of 4 so that you have Input-GND-INPUT-GND This way you can have 2 way switches on each 4pin header, or its easy to have a 3way switch with the GND in the middle. Also the 9 Analog Inputs are broken out to a GND-INPUT-VCC. I have also allowed for some Green SMD LEDS on it that can solder jumped to activate, and also there is an LED output header as well. This is controlled by ALOG9 input so we can use PWM to adjust brightness etc. We also have 6 onboard digital pints broken out with a GND and VCC that you can use for Encoders, or Digital LED’s etc Pic with Arduino mounted. I will be writing the software initially for this as a pure HID device with no frills, but as time permits I will make a GUI so you can do some configuration. This can even be used with the great MMJOY firmware if you wanted to install it yourself, I may even provide a guide as well to help with the pin mappings.

I have been Finishing off the F18 Panels, the latest ones added to the list.. Also worked on a IFEI panel, this uses clear acrylic for the middle to repesent the LCD/glass, and can have a paper insert for the instruments for visual appeal. Also cut out some guages frames as well

Ok, after refreshing the DHL Page frantically every day it seems that it is like watching toast and doesn’t speed things up.. But it finally arrived!. Time to Assemble the V3 beta of the F18 UFC USB Controller After a bit of anxious soldering I plugged it in and realised Thankfully I managed to correct the wrong datasheet data and we have working option displays! You can see below the video showcasing the V3 Beta in action. As before when you are on a channel greater than 10 I am turning on the Decimal point. Now with the Option cues I decided to turn on all the decimal points! I think it worked out quite well without the ability to custom design a display to have them in the correct position. Getting to the finish line now, All I need to do is cleanup some code and do some more testing. One thing to look at is the brightness, I am able to turn off the scratchpad but having issues with the Option and Com Displays.