brydling

I will probably make another run. Who want one? This time I am thinking about the possibility of including diodes too. That way you won't have to pay shipping from another company just to buy some diodes for $3.00.

I am thinking about a second run. Head over to the thread in the For Sale-section if you're interested.

That's good news! Let me know how it works! :)

If you experience that the axes flicker even though you don't touch the potentiometer, a capacitor helps filter that noise out. Using shielded cable to the pots also helps, as well as using pots with lower resistance. Lower resistance also draws more power, so don't get too crazy. We have had Windows disconnect our Bodnar board a couple of times due to overcurrent, even though most pots in our setup are 1k and some are 500 ohms. In our particular case it may be due to a faulty board or a bad USB-port however, because they shouldn't consume that much. Our axes flicker anyway however, but then our pit is more noisy than most home-cockpits due to the real equipment in it.

There are only three boards left now. Maybe I will make another run, if I get enough requests that I am sure it will be beneficial.

I was trying to be objective ;)

No problem! I hope you will enjoy the controller! :)

Hello Peter, If you want to buy something cheap to try and make a small panel, I would go with Leo Bodnar's BU0836. That's the cheapest way to wire up a few inputs to test with. It is a bit of a hassle to use all the inputs on the BU0836 however, so it is only good for testing about 6 inputs or maybe a few more. If you want easy wiring you have to use the BU0836X which is more expensive, but if 32 inputs is all you need that may be a good choice. If you want to make a lot of panels or a full cockpit I would recommend the joystick controller that I have developed. Link is in my signature. /Niclas

Thank you! :)

I hope the postman does not take too long ;) No problems! Thank you! :)

That's great! :)

Good news! HID macros recognizes all 248 buttons. The POV-hats are recognized as axes. All 13 potentiometer inputs are recognized. I tried with two boards too and it recognized all inputs on all four joysticks. I don't have a license for xpadder to test with. I didn't know you had to pay for it :)

I can test that some day this week.

The matrix is all the inputs on the board (not the analog ones). Breaking up the matrix means using the board for several panels.

Yes it depends on the scenario how much you reduce the wiring needed by using a matrix, but I'd say you at least always get some reduction in total. I don't have to redo any wiring when adding a switch. I only have to add the new wiring for the new switch. Of course you should split matrix between panels to avoid wasting inputs, but I don't see how that could be a bad thing since you have to split something between panels with both solutions. I also don't quite understand what you mean by planning. I want to make a panel with X switches, I look what is unused on the board and start wiring things up. I don't see any special planning needed :) The serial interface is of course the neatest solution, but it will get very expensive in comparison :) I had that in mind before deciding to make this board.

With non-matrix you use one input for each button and wire the other end to ground. With a matrix you can use the same input for several buttons, by wiring the other end of the buttons to separate commons that take turn to be at ground potential. The controller takes each common to ground potential in turn, and if it senses that an input goes low it knows that a button is pressed between that input and the common-pin currently at ground potential. The drawback of this is that you need diodes, and it is only good for switches and other equipment that short two lines together. It is not good for reading a digital signal, but we seldom do that here :)

That's true. Does xpadder support 128 buttons on a joystick?

Absolutely no offense taken :) I'm just trying to help clarify things. Personally I feel very convinced that a matrix is better than a dedicated input for each button when you do a whole cockpit because you can save a LOT of wires to large panels. Regarding the sharing of ground it's the same for any board, you either have to run the ground between panels or run one ground wire from the board for each panel. I don't see the difference there. Maybe I didn't understand what you meant. If you have a breakout board with diodes on it you also kind of destroy the flexibility of a matrix, since you then have to run one wire from the board for each input (not counting the commons).

FSX only supports 32 buttons on one joystick, so you would only get 64 inputs from the board (+ the two hat switches). I don't know if there is any third party software out there that let you split a joystick into several smaller virtual joysticks or maybe make FSX support more than 32 buttons per joystick. Maybe Helios can read the joystick and you can map it to FSX actions from there. I don't know if their FSX interface is ready yet though, but if it is it should be possible. Supposing they haven't made the same mistake in their joystick handling :) I haven't tried that.

In most cases you won't need more than one wire to one pin. Let's say you have a panel with 10 pushbuttons. Just run 10 wires for inputs and one wire for common to it and then you solder the common jumping from button to button. Using 10 wires for inputs and multiply the common to 10 wires running 20 wires to the panel would just be madness :) I can't think of any scenario where you would do it in any other way, but I'm sure some exists :)

I installed IL-2 1946 for testing (no mods or patches) and just as you said it can only use the first virtual joystick on the board. It also only sees 32 inputs/joystick, so buying this board for IL-2 1946 is a bad idea.

A lot of people seem to make that misunderstanding. You won't need any breakout boards :)

Cool! Thanks for the info and the pictures! That's not something I think I would be able to do on my own ;)

Very nice!! How is the LASTE panel backlighted? I can't see any lamps, diodes or EL.

Yes, I mean the software. But maybe IL-2 1946 is enough since you said that UP3 doesn't make any difference?