brydling

This is actually the "official" thread, but most people find the one under the Home Cockpits-section first. Totally understandable :) I moved here after asking a moderator for permission to advertise my board in the forum, and was told to start the thread in this section :)

There is a firmware-problem that has recently been brought to my attention. The matrix is scanned too fast and the problem only appears with longer cables. A fix was made a few days ago, but I have no Internet-connection at home at the moment. As soon as I am up and running again (either today or on monday), I will post the new firmware along with update instructions. These problems can also occur if you haven't used diodes correctly.

I managed to re-create the problem with my board using a really long cable and the new firmware fixed it, so I am feeling confident it will fix your board too.

New batch available now.

Hi Tom! I am glad you want another board even though you have had some trouble :) Just send me an order e-mail as described in the first post. I think encoders are used only on the UHF radio panel. The VHF panels have rotary switches if done correctly since they have a physical scale attached to them, but I don't know if DCS:WH allows you to bind them as switches or if there are only increase/decrease bindings available. Otherwise it can probably be solved with external scripting. Apart from the radios there may be some knob on the right side that is an encoder in the real thing. I don't really have the A-10C cockpit panels in my head. You should be fine with one BU0836X/BBI-32 for a full pit though. As a side note, I actually started looking at encoder support two days ago. I installed a new development environment which got my inspiration to rise 100%. Don't get your hopes up, but there may be something coming in the nearest weeks.

Sounds great!

I have ordered more parts now and are ready to take more orders.

With great info from another B256A13 user I think I have found an issue with the board that may be the reason you are experiencing problems with the last row before the commons. Are you available for testing a new firmware?

Glad to hear someone found it useful! :) In the future I am planning on adding an Auto-start button to the GUI which you can write your own startup-sequence to. For example "start application 1 and 2 on computer 1, wait 10s, start application 3 and 4 on computer 1 and application 1 and 2 on computer 2," etc..

I've written a small suite of two programs to start and stop processes on several computers from one GUI. If we take the Draken simulator at NovelAir as an example, it is consists of three computers plus the operator station. The main computer is running FSX, System35 (Draken systems simulation) and some other things. The second computer is running radar simulation. The third computer is running SIOC and has most of the cockpit hardware connected to it. The operator station has for example a PlanG moving map and a program called Stril60 which lets you select a target from a list of all available FSX objects and send steering info towards the target to the cockpit instruments in the simulator like the real Stril60 system used on the swedish Drakens back in the days. (I believe it was the world's first airborne tactical data link :)) The startup of the simulator can become quite a mess with several programs that has to be started on different computers in a special order. For example FSX need to be started before a lot of the other programs so that they get a connection to FSX when they start. You then need to Alt+Tab down FSX to start the other programs on this computer. To tackle this problem I wrote these two programs. The first program is called local_supervisor and is a server that is running on all the simulation machines. It is responsible for actually starting and stopping the processes and detect if they are running or not. The second program is called supervisor and is the GUI that is supposed to run on the operator station PC. From that GUI all the processes on all the different computers can be controlled. The same setup is used for controlling the Viggen simulator processes from the same operator station. I don't know if these kind of multi-computer setups exist around here yet but I just want to share the programs anyway in case it would make someone's life a little easier. The programs are available on GitHub: http://github.com/brydling/supervisor http://github.com/brydling/local_supervisor The config files that are included are just an example but I believe they should be enough for you to understand how to add new hosts and processes to the system. The programs leave lots of small things to wish for. You are very welcome to add features or fix bugs. Just send me a pull request when you're done and I'll merge it to the master branch if the new features doesn't ruin our usage scenario :)

Hi Ho to Germany! :) Sounds like a good idea. I will wait and see then. You have got a lot working I see. I get a little bit jealous now! ;) That sounds really strange. Are you sure you are looking at the right controller in DCS? Since there are two of them I mean. Nice pics! /Niclas

Hi Moken! I thought you had already bought a board from me but I must be mistaken :) I don't know how many boards are needed for a full cockpit (excluding encoders since the board does not support them). A guess from my part is two boards, but excluding 48 buttons you can possibly make it with only one board. /Niclas

My feeling is we should get you a whole new set of chips. I'd strongly suggest you really check your wiring to make sure the new chips aren't destroyed as well :-) Do you feel that the description in the manual on how to wire things up is crystal clear or is it something that you are not sure about? /Niclas

I can make you a special price on a new chip. There is no need to buy a whole new board. However I think you misunderstood a little bit. The row is still usable and functional, and it's the fourth row, not the first. The thing is you can only use pushbuttons on these 16 inputs. I guess all panels you are about to wire up have at least a few pushbuttons, so you just need to make sure you wire them to these inputs. You can use opencockpits' USB stepper board. It has some basic problems when used for more advanced instuments, but it should be perfectly fine for a simple flaps gauge. However an USB servo board and an RC-servo would be even better for the task.

It is not an issue that the whole row is interconnected. That is the way it should be. There must be another issue. It sounds like you may have a board with the bootloader bug? Look in the "official" B256A13 post for info. The first post in the thread at the For Sale-section of the forum. Boards with a serial below A0037 (I think it was) suffer from it and there is a simple workaround.

Oh, it seems I haven't checked in here for a while! The boards are still available, but I have to order 15 sets of components and are waiting for enough orders to make it worth it. If you're really interested, place an order like it says in the first post. I believe it takes two boards to wire up all the switches. For rotaries you have to use another board, for example BU0836X. I have no cockpit cockpit at home, so I am not using anything for outputs. /Niclas

But you paid for 256 inputs, not 240 :) We will solve it when you feel the need. This move is not out of free will. We rent an apartment in second hand and thought that we would be allowed to stay a few years at least, not six months. Now we have bought our own and will live there without worries of when we have to leave :) All the best to you too!

That is the right way to do it. I1-I16 should go to C1 and ONLY to C1, I17-I32 to C2, I33-I48 to C3 etc. Sorry for a very late answer. I have been ill and am also about to move (again!). Have you tried disconnecting all the connectors from the board and just tapped with a single wire (no diode needed) between I1 and C1, I17 and C2, I33 and C3 etc? Be careful not to connect two different commons together, for example C1 and C2.

You can connect anything that gives an output signal between 0-5 V :)

I have updated Utils.zip with a new version of the configuration tool now. Please try it out.

That has never happened before. I will look into it. But does the board work as it should now?

Here are the instructions: Unplug all the B256A13's except the one that you are about to flash. Unzip Utils.zip. Unplug the B256A13. Press and hold the pushbutton on the board and plug it back in. Start HIDBootLoader.exe. Click "Open Hex File" and choose the firmware .hex-file included in the attachment. Click "Program/Verify". Click "Reset Device". Close the program. Start B256A1310_config.exe. Use the menu to set the Serial Number back to what is printed on your device (Axxxx). Unplug the board and plug it back in again. Utils.zip

Something must have happened with the board. We can try re-flashing it. I will post instructions tonight. If it still doesn't work I can send you new chips.

If you have any IM client then maybe we could do some debugging around 20:00 (Swedish time)?

I just got this last error too. Clean unmodified version of NATO.lua ver 1.1.1.1.