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DCS-BIOS and multiple com ports


electricaltill

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Can DCS-BIOS communicate with multiple com ports at once? If so, what is needed to make this work properly?

 

I have just finished a button box that uses four Arduinos. I can connect them all to DCS-BIOS together, but the sim takes up to 20 seconds to respond to commands from any of them. This happens if more than one device is connected at once. If only one of the Arduinos are connected DCS responds fine.

 

I understand there is RS-485 support but I can't find anything to say whether this is the only way for multiple Arduinos to communicate with DCS-BIOS together. But what I'm trying is not working.

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Just open the web interface of DCS BIOS (right click the task bar icon) and enable the needed COM ports.

To find your issues you can plug and unplug the ports online.

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Regards, Vinc

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Just open the web interface of DCS BIOS (right click the task bar icon) and enable the needed COM ports.

To find your issues you can plug and unplug the ports online.

As I said, I connected all of the Arduinos to DCS-BIOS at once. That DCS-BIOS web interface certainly implies that devices can be connected through multiple com ports at once.

 

It works but extremely slowly. Unusable.

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Sorry, what I meant was to isolate the failure.

Unplug and plug all arduinos one by one to find the communication issue.

Maybe you can isolate the problem to a dedicated COM port.

Mostly speed or parity have to be adjusted.

Regards, Vinc

real life: Royal Bavarian Airforce

online: VJS-GermanKnights.de

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I have just finished a button box that uses four Arduinos. I can connect them all to DCS-BIOS together, but the sim takes up to 20 seconds to respond to commands from any of them. This happens if more than one device is connected at once. If only one of the Arduinos are connected DCS responds fine.

.

 

Do you have potentiometers in your button boxes? If yes then that may be the issue. I experienced this a long time back;

https://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=3020643&postcount=127

 

I believe Ian already included something to deal with the jittering potentiometers.

 

If you don't have any potentiometer, then nevermind the above :-)

 

Cheers

Hans

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Hi Electratill,

Make sure your soldering is very cleaned up with isopropyl alcohol. I had similar problems and found this can fix things.

 

Mole

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  • 1 month later...

I may be wrong here but I wonder if you are getting something called “reflectance” that is interrupting your RS485 signals. Try connecting a 120 ohm resisistor between the ends of your transmit/receive lines at either end. Unterminated lines tend to get wierd EMI signals that bounce back and forward through the line which fogs the real signals.

 

See here for more detail... https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/design/technical-documents/tutorials/7/763.html

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I may be wrong here but I wonder if you are getting something called “reflectance” that is interrupting your RS485 signals. Try connecting a 120 ohm resisistor between the ends of your transmit/receive lines at either end. Unterminated lines tend to get wierd EMI signals that bounce back and forward through the line which fogs the real signals.

 

See here for more detail... https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/design/technical-documents/tutorials/7/763.html

Thanks for replying, but I'm not using rs485. The Arduinos each have their own COM port.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Anyone have any ideas on this? I just saw a post in the announcements threat theorising about doing away with rs485 because windows supports so many COM ports. Has no-one else had this issue with connecting many devices at once?

 

 

If a single board is connected it works fine. Any combination of 2 or 3 boards work fine. 4 is no, regardless of what the first 3 were. What could be causing this?

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I currently have 5 (and plan to have a few more) using the DCS-BIOS hub (3xnanos and 2x megas) and I will say they all connect and work properly about 90% of the time. Sometimes one or two won’t connect, or the whole app freezes and I just close the app and re-launch it... sometimes having to do that a few times till they all connect. Have you tried that?

TM Warthog, Oculus Rift, Win10...

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I currently have 5 (and plan to have a few more) using the DCS-BIOS hub (3xnanos and 2x megas) and I will say they all connect and work properly about 90% of the time. Sometimes one or two won’t connect, or the whole app freezes and I just close the app and re-launch it... sometimes having to do that a few times till they all connect. Have you tried that?
Yes sometimes I've had it freeze (when it was otherwise working) and it's just been a case of just restarting the app.

 

Do you connect the boards direct to your PC or are they connected to a USB hub?

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Yes sometimes I've had it freeze (when it was otherwise working) and it's just been a case of just restarting the app.

 

Do you connect the boards direct to your PC or are they connected to a USB hub?

 

I have them connected through a USB hub.

TM Warthog, Oculus Rift, Win10...

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Yes, it's powered.

 

 

Have you been able to try adding a second powered usb hub along side of the one you are using? When you stated in an earlier post that once you added the last Arduino, regardless of which one, that things went sideways, it made me think you were running out of power to feed demands.

 

 

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 years later...

Ok seems to be an old post but @electricaltill i'm posting the same question that @Heling posted, Did you find a solution for the Com Ports ?
I'm putting all my stuff together (everything commercial, TekCreations and Cubesim) and even if it seems DCSbios Hub is finding and connecting each com port, after launched the sim something breaks and from the web comms still seem connected but they can't be disconnected and when switching to Dashboard and back to the connection all the com ports are gone.
Thanks

 

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Ok seems to be an old post but @electricaltill i'm posting the same question that @Heling posted, Did you find a solution for the Com Ports ?
I'm putting all my stuff together (everything commercial, TekCreations and Cubesim) and even if it seems DCSbios Hub is finding and connecting each com port, after launched the sim something breaks and from the web comms still seem connected but they can't be disconnected and when switching to Dashboard and back to the connection all the com ports are gone.
Thanks
 
I would switch to FlightPanels fork, it's the only one being updated. There is a command file you edit to assign all your com ports for DCS Bios

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7 hours ago, LASooner said:

I would switch to FlightPanels fork, it's the only one being updated. There is a command file you edit to assign all your com ports for DCS Bios

Sent from my Samsung Chromebook Plus using Tapatalk
 

There's also a new app for the Fork called DCSBIOSBridge which behaves in a similar manner to the Hub connection page

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15 ore fa, LASooner ha scritto:

I would switch to FlightPanels fork, it's the only one being updated. There is a command file you edit to assign all your com ports for DCS Bios

Sent from my Samsung Chromebook Plus using Tapatalk
 

FlightPanels FORK ? shouldn't be DCSBIOS SKUNKWORKS the one to choose ? anyway I will give it a try even if i tried on W11 with no results.
will check again. 

 

8 ore fa, No1sonuk ha scritto:

There's also a new app for the Fork called DCSBIOSBridge which behaves in a similar manner to the Hub connection page

Yes tried it too when was running the new rig on the pre-installed W11 but I also was experiencing disconnection of the commports and strange behaviour on IFEI (for example) or annunciators. Damn with the I7-7700K and GeForce 1080ti everything was running even if i was suffering low performances.
it's really frustrating having upgraded to an I5-14600 with 64Bg and a 4070TI Super on Z790 MSI motherboard and suffering all these issues ! 

 

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