Questions regarding I/O boards

[0utLAW]

Now that I'm hooked on building some panels, I have a couple of questions regarding a Groovy Game Gear LED-Wiz32 vs a Phidgets 1031_0 for lighting panels.

 

I have some experience with the Groovy Game Gear GP-Wiz40 Max for controlling my switches and assigning through Helios(Which is VERY easy). My question is, is controlling a Phidgets board just as easy using Helios or is there coding involved?

 

What I would like to accomplish is to use several of the Groovy Game Gear GP-Wiz40 MAX boards for controlling switches and either a couple Groovy Game Gear LED-Wiz32's or the Phidgets 1031_0 board to control the lighting. I know there is a lot more control with the Phidgest board but for the large price tag I want to make sure it will be enough to light all the panels in the A-10 cockpit and easy to setup.

 

Does anyone have experience using the LED-Wiz32 for the lighting and if so how many boards did you have to use? Same for the Phidgets board.

 

On a side note;

On the GGG GP-Wiz40 Max I have two questions.

1. I have the inverter switch(on-off-(on)) connected to the R1 and R2 ports on the board. This shows up as the X Rotation in Helios. When the switch is in the OFF position the X Rotation bar is in the middle(numeric value 32768 ) by default. When I flip the switch to TEST(momentary down) the bar goes to 0. When the switch is set to the STBY position the bar is at full(65536). My question is, is it possible to get these ports to function as a toggle type switch? If so, can someone help me with the assignment, whether it's in Helios or in one of the .Lua files?

 

2. I have a sliding pot like the one below. If I connect it to the L1 port on the board I can get the position to go from 65536 to 32768. I would like to use this as the refueling door open/close on the fuel panel. Again is this possible in Helios or one of the .Lua files?

[0utLAW]

Ok now lets see. If I wanted to control two of these would that be possible? One set in a left-side panel box and one in a right-side panel box and both controlled by the console lighting pot? Just thinking out loud and looking for cheap solutions.

http://www.amazon.com/Green-Wide-Angle-Christmas-Lights/dp/B002W7QVUW

 

I saw this video and got inspired;

 

 

Using this

http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?product_id=1014

Edited October 22, 2012 by 0utLAW

[Hansolo]

Hi Outlaw,

 

I know only of the Phidgets 1031 which I am using for the Caution panel. I am rather new to the panel building but it seem faily easy for me to assign the LEDs in Helios;

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lYRij86ME

 

The setup doesn't involve very much although you have to assign each lamp. As I have so far only connected the Caution panel and have planned Master Caution, Emergency flight control LED's then I have not reached max. of the Phidgets yet.

 

All the best

 

Hans

[JG14_Smil]

If more people built cockpits, the Phidgets LED controller would win an award for best hardware. I have two of them and they are plug-an-play, drag-an-drop simple to use.

 

I am not familiar with A-10 or the Groovy hippy card and I am a bit confused as to why you need to use a switch as a potentiometer and a potentiometer as a switch.

 

 

Best of luck with your build. It is a great hobby and it teaches a lot.

Edited October 22, 2012 by JG14_Smil

[0utLAW]

JG, the only reason why I want to use the switch and slider in that fashion is because that's what I have on hand. I don't want to use the switch as a slider but as a switch. It just happens to be that the only ports left on the "Hippy" board :) are R1, R2, L1, L2, U1, U2, D1 and D2 which are joystick axis.

 

I'm just trying to make the most of what I have. Looks like I'll be picking up another hippy board to add some more switches. I'll search the forum for the fuel door lever.

 

I was thinking about it last night and I want to try to build slim panel boxes for the left and right consoles. I would want them to be only as deep as the base for the TM warthog throttle. This is just to save on material and mainly space. I want to be able to easily store the panels for when the girlfriend gets irritated with all of it being out.

[Jimbo]

I have 2 Phidget LED 64 cards that I'm using to drive various LED's via Helios.

 

I also have a couple of stepper / servo controllers that I'm at the 'tinkering' stage with.

 

All in all I think they are great and worth the high price pint. BUT only because helios makes it so easy.

 

I'm not a coder so even though Phidgets have a lot of info on how to integrate them, I wouldnt have the faintest idea where to begin.

 

I have a Gpwiz 40 and the same sliding pot as you. I'll have a test and see if I can get it going.

[0utLAW]

Thanks Jimbo. Do you think there are enough ports on the Phidgets board to accommodate all the lighting for both left and right consoles to be backlit and an annunciator panel? Also, do you have the control over the brightness of the backlighting with the lighting control panel(In real life and in Helios)?

 

As far as the slider pot goes, I have a feeling that it's going to require editing a .Lua file. I could be wrong though. Thanks again!

[agrasyuk]

My UFC is interfaced with gpwiz (light). In order to not waste inputs and To use the "axis" inputs as buttons I wrote auto hot key script that monitors the axis and translates the movements into keystrokes. I

[0utLAW]

agrasyuk, I'm not familiar with writing scripts. Is it hard and what program did you use to write it? do you have an example of the script you wrote?

[agrasyuk]

Software is Autohotkey - http://www.autohotkey.com/ very usefull for our hobby, and in general can make several of your day to day computing tasks easier.

i built this little contraption. it made sence to try use one input board instead of two but I was out of simple inputs on it and had to use the axis. i attached the UFC buttons1 through 8 to the axis inputs of GPWiz and the idea was to translate those "movements" into th default keystroke set in DCS for the UFC keypad: Ctrl+Shift+Number. my script is attached.

 

you will need to modify the code to adapt it to your needs. your board is probably enumerated differently and you will need to find its index (there probably is a way to identify joysticks by name but i never looked further into it).

let me know if you need help.

 

for AHK experts looking at the script and thinking "now that is one stupid way to code":

1. you are probably correct. :) your input is very welcome

2. i'm aware of short keystroke notation but for some reason it wasn't working no matter the delay. explicit keyDown and keyUp were the solution.

 

 

 

and now when i'm thinking about it there must be a way to accomplish the same from within helios. probably by using "lua script" Value source option for each binding. I would really appreciate if any LUA pros can chime in on this, thanks!

UFC Handler.rar

Edited October 23, 2012 by agrasyuk

[0utLAW]

Here is a pic indicating my assignment in Helios and what the default action value is. My "theory" is that it's an issue of assigning a numeric value to the status of the inverter switch in a .Lua file in DCS World(for me 0=TEST, 32768=OFF, 65536=STBY)

[0utLAW]

So I found the .Lua file that contains the code for the inverter switch. It was located in the following path;

C:\Users\"User Name"\Saved Games\DCS\Config\Input\A-10C\Joystick\GP-Wiz40.Lua

 

Attached is the section that contains the code for the inverter.

 

Is it possible to add some code in there that would look at a numerical value which I believe Helios is outputting(not sure I worded that correctly)?

[Vulpes]

Ok I know the thread is quite old.

But referring to the side note 1 in thread #1: Rogue Sqdn posted a solution on Gadrocs Workshop:

 

To use the digital axis inputs in combination with switches you can use the following lua script (example for a 3 way toggle switch On-Off-On) in Helios:

 

if (TriggerValue>65500) then

return 1;

elseif (TriggerValue<100) then

return 3;

else

return 2;

end

 

Happy cockpit building!

 

Vulpes