Oakes combined cockpit build thread

[ruprecht]

I don't speak for all pitbuilders, but for me it's not about making you more effective in a dogfight. It's a reward all in itself and in some respects completely separate from the sim. For me it's all about that little evil giggle when you build something unique and it works.

 

It's similar to tabletop wargamers - having a beautifully painted army doesn't make you a better tactician, but that's not the point.

[hannibal]

if i had a CNC..i would build 2x apache pits with pilot and cpg sections... nice tool...

[RaH]

All this stuff is amazing, but sometimes I wonder who will win a battle: A guy with good skill with his own built home cockpit, or a guy with excellent skill with a simple joystick.

 

Please don't feel insulted because pitbuilders do an excellent job and I really admire their work and patience, but I just wondered

I've played flight sims since the days of the TRS-80 and Chuck Yeagers ATF was the most advanced flight sim around short of something at NASA, and of all I've played Black Shark is the only one I've seen with this much control over the cockpit. Given the amount of buttons and systems you have to monitor, I would say a guy with a full pit would have a advantage over a superior pilot using nothing but standard controls. All it takes is that 2 seconds where you glance away to switch something on or off and you are done.

 

No doubt though the simpit building is not about "hey look what I can do", building things in general is fun to do, I can tell that for some people it's more than a hobby and I both admire that and am inspired to build my own, while perhaps not as intricate, will still be very much functional.

 

I'd like to hear some feedback from some of you pit builders on how exactly you are interfacing these boards into a pc, I've read the whole OC cards, but OC's site is still lacking in much detail other than some prefab cards.

 

Has anyone got OH Lamps Panels in the works yet? With the scripting thing out of the way should be fairly straight forward to getting them working.

 

For what it's worth google around there are more than enough sites to give you DIY CNC design ideas, you could probly bring a project like that home minus the motors for the stages for around $100 USD.

[Oakes]

All this stuff is amazing, but sometimes I wonder who will win a battle: A guy with good skill with his own built home cockpit, or a guy with excellent skill with a simple joystick.

 

Please don't feel insulted because pitbuilders do an excellent job and I really admire their work and patience, but I just wondered

 

or.. a guy with excellent skills in building joysticks maybe :smilewink:

 

Seriously though, I've found that the datalink panel makes me a lot quicker when it comes to "datalinking"....so much easier to reach out with my left hand and punch a solid button rather than fumbling with my mouse.

 

 

I don't speak for all pitbuilders, but for me it's not about making you more effective in a dogfight. It's a reward all in itself and in some respects completely separate from the sim. For me it's all about that little evil giggle when you build something unique and it works.

 

It's similar to tabletop wargamers - having a beautifully painted army doesn't make you a better tactician, but that's not the point.

Yes, exactly, couldn't have said it better myself. I find great satisfaction in building stuff and making it work...if I didn't build sim stuff I'd be building something else...

 

/Oakes

[PanelBuilder]

All this stuff is amazing, but sometimes I wonder who will win a battle:

Battle? Battle??? Listen, I flew once last week and that was just because I had my throttle controlers full on when the mission started.

[jerom1992]

^^

 

Thanks for the information guys. Maybe i'll start building a pit too :thumbup: (if my parents would let me)

[Oakes]

Did a little work with Export.lua yesterday.

 

 

 

 

/Oakes

Edited September 6, 2009 by Oakes

[hannibal]

nice.. some point in time, i will work on that kind of stuff..

 

seems like u spend more time building than you do flying...

by the time you finish..

 

A-10C or maybe the AH64A will be out..

 

had i would have had your time and abiltiy and dedicaton, i would have went directly to building the Ah64A with pilot and cpg...

[CAT_101st]

 

had i would have had your time and abiltiy and dedicaton, i would have went directly to building the Ah64A with pilot and cpg...

 

+1

[C6_Hellfrog]

lua processing

 

very nice job with the interaction...

 

will u post the code some time ?

many people are awaiting about that,

and many french / spanish / german people are still waiting for the translated patch to do such stuff

 

having some parts of code to learn before would be a great deal !

 

many thanks and best regards for all your stuff ! reallly amazing !

[londo-cat]

Did a little work with Export.lua yesterday.

 

 

 

 

/Oakes

 

Awesome work there Oakes!

 

You're still using the OpenCockpits boards, right? :book:

Edited September 8, 2009 by londo-cat

[Oakes]

very nice job with the interaction...

 

will u post the code some time ?

many people are awaiting about that,

and many french / spanish / german people are still waiting for the translated patch to do such stuff

 

having some parts of code to learn before would be a great deal !

 

many thanks and best regards for all your stuff ! reallly amazing !

 

Yep, I'll post the code as soon as I get a minute to myself......:music_whistling:

 

Awesome work there Oakes!

 

You're still using the OpenCockpits boards, right? :book:

Yes, good cards, bad documentation

 

 

Made a little servo tester rig as preparation for starting making instruments.

 

 

 

Test results are not so good, the servo and/or the USBServo card are not linear (off by about 5-7 degrees for the middle of the travel envelope), so there will be problems with using servos for instruments.

 

However the servo was repeatable to about 0.5 degrees so servos will work fine for indicators with few discrete steps (like a flap indicator) where you can test and trim each position individually. For a 360 degree indicator like the variometer the non-linearity will be problematic (especially since servos have about 120 to 180 degrees of travel -> meaning you will need gears, which will multiply the non-linearity of the servo). I guess one could map the non-linear response from the servo and compensate in Export.lua but that might be somewhat time consuming.

 

Then again I bought the cheapest micro servo I could find to test with so the problem might be related to a lack of quality. More testing needed.......

 

/Oakes

[-Bazong-]

Hi Oakes!

Out of curiosity: Are you using RC servos? Speaking as an RC-pilot there is a big difference in quality between different servos..

(Rekommenderar mft.se, har handlat där ett par gånger och de är bra att och göra med).

For instruments like an altimeter, perhaps stepper motors would work?

Or could one build an endless servo using a rotary instead of a potmeter perhaps?

[HitchHikingFlatlander]

^^

 

Thanks for the information guys. Maybe i'll start building a pit too :thumbup: (if my parents would let me)

 

This is where you convince Dad to start a father son project! LOL and try to get him to pick up some of the cost. My luck will be that I'll have kids who hate games and sims! You guys could build a two seat apache pit for bonding when finished (and DCS Apache is released)!

 

Oakes great work can't wait to see more you have a lot of talent and patience.

[Swetrekki]

oakes, go with a better servo, get a one of futaba's better servos, they will set you back a bit more but they will work a whole lot better.

 

there are digital servos with extremely high resolution and repeatability and in most cases you get what you pay for (i work extra in a local hobbystore ) and and the dirt cheap ones are not good enough for what you are trying to use them for...

 

BTW, Sailwinch servos have 360 Degree rotation, eliminating the need for gears/point of failure but they are big and expencive, a ok digital servo will set you back from 250-300 to 1500 sek. (the 250-300 kind will do :) )

 

Awsome work by the way, you even got the sound of the buttons right :)

Edited September 9, 2009 by Swetrekki

[PanelBuilder]

very nice job with the interaction...

 

will u post the code some time ?

many people are awaiting about that,

and many french / spanish / german people are still waiting for the translated patch to do such stuff

Here's some code to get you started.

 

 
function LuaExportStart()
dofile("./LuaSocket/Socket.lua")
socket = require("socket")
host = "127.0.0.1"
port = 13000
c = socket.try(socket.connect(host, port)) -- connect to the listener socket
c:setoption("tcp-nodelay",true) -- set immediate transmission mode

socket.try(c:send("/Wt")) --This tells my WSC panel to run its self test display.
--Self test runs between the time the connection is opened and the start of the mission
socket.try(c:send("/Wa")) --This tells my WSC panel to send all its switch positions for startup
socket.try(c:send("/Wr")) --This tells my WSC panel to run normal: only send changes

c:settimeout(.01)
end

For the import:

 
function LuaExportBeforeNextFrame()
 local inpst = socket.try(c:receive())   
 if inpst then

   <decode the rec'd string here>

   GetDevice(device):performClickableAction(action,setval)  --set a switch
 end
end

And for the export:

 
function LuaExportAfterNextFrame() 

local x = GetDevice(0):get_argument_value(400)  --read the state of something

<build a string to export here>

socket.try(c:send(displaystring))

end

 

And for the stop:

 

 
function LuaExportStop() -- Works once just after mission stop.

socket.try(c:send(WSCoff)) --blank the WSC displays

--OK this bit is weird.  It tell my WSC panel to send all switch positions
--so there will be data sent *after* the connection is closed so the
--windows app will notice it's closed.

socket.try(c:send("/Wa")) --send all

c:close()  -- close the socket
end 

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers,

Colin

[ZenCow]

Oakes... besides servos for a panel display dial, you could use a motor with optical or hall-effect encoders. You can probably find something much cheaper, but I use this product on a robot I'm building: http://www.solutions-cubed.com/Solutions%20Cubed/ENC300.htm

 

Combined with the motor that Solutions Cubed sells, that has a 30:1 gear ratio, you can get 100 ticks per degree of motion. The only problem needing to be solved at that point would be with your zero index, but you could do that externally with another marker/sensor on the motor shaft. After that... write a little PID code to move the motor to a fixed location and you're good to go. It's not cheap, but perhaps there are cheaper and less accurate parts that can follow the same kind of process.

 

I think that with hall-effect sensors, you can get an absolute position. The PID loop to drive the motor is essentially the same kind of routine used in servos.

 

Awesome work on the datalink panel and other parts of your work that I've seen on YouTube so far... :)

Edited October 13, 2009 by ZenCow
additional thoughts

[Oakes]

Hi Mate

 

Thank you for the link..expensive stuff....

 

I've implemented a software solution to solve the non-linearity of common RC servos, basically you map certain points on the dial to certain servo input values and then I do a simple linear/proportional interpolation. => the more points you map the better accuracy you get.

 

/Oakes

[Oakes]

I've created a Google Project to keep tabs on the code for the scripts. Future releases will be posted there.

 

http://code.google.com/p/dcsbsexport/

 

If you want access to the code you can

 

1. use http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ for simple export to your computer

 

2. you can download complete releases from http://code.google.com/p/dcsbsexport/downloads/list

 

3. You can download individual files from the repository via the source code browser http://code.google.com/p/dcsbsexport/source/browse/ (click on the file and then right click on the "View raw" link).

 

/Oakes

[Swetrekki]

didn't actually know that there was such a thing (yes im an ignorant bastard) but this might be fun to play around with for you...

https://www1.elfa.se/elfa~se_sv/b2b/catalogstart.do?tab=catalog

[Oakes]

Hmm...the link does not work.....whats the ELFA part no?

 

/Oakes

[Swetrekki]

d'oh...

73-194-29

[memento10]

Hi Oakes, I'm really inspired by the quality of your workmanship.

 

I'm considering building a pit but I wanted to get my head around your project and the current limitations. Specifically:

 

1) Visuals - Ideally I would imagine a th2go with 3 projectors for the environment. But is it possible to have a working HUD extracting data from Black Shark? What are your plans for the visuals, I wouldn't expect that your visuals would show the cockpit at all?

 

2) If a switch is ON in your cockpit, but the mission starts with the switch OFF by default in the software, what happens? Do you have to cycle it or will it always be reversed for that mission?

 

Thanks for your time and many of us are excited to see your progress!

[Gadroc]

1) Visuals - Ideally I would imagine a th2go with 3 projectors for the environment. But is it possible to have a working HUD extracting data from Black Shark? What are your plans for the visuals, I wouldn't expect that your visuals would show the cockpit at all?

 

I have not seen a way to extract hud visuals, not to mention the visuals you can extract (ABRIS and SHKVAL) are slow and the graphics are messed up. See the following thread.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=45862

 

I also don't think there is sufficient data available to export to draw your own hud.

[Swetrekki]

@Gadroc look harder... :P

 

with the imagination and ingenuity availabe in this forum and simforums in general everything seems possible,

impossible just takes awhile longer ;)

 

// trekki

Edited October 20, 2009 by Swetrekki