Donbinator's A-10C pit

[Hansolo]

Very nice :thumbup: looking great.

 

Cheers

Hans

[Deadman]

wow they look great !!! Thanks for posting Betwen the holiday the flu and it being freezing cold in the garage. I have not had a chance to check how they really look on my pit. I all ways worry a bout how you guys will like the things i have made or had made so it is appreciated when i hear good news thanks.

[Jimbo]

WOW! that looks awesome!

 

Makes me wish i'd gotten in on that print run....:doh:

[jander]

Looks great! What did you end up using as side material? Just picked up final wood myself to do rest of my pit and will be looking at what to use.

[MacFevre]

Nice decals! Can't wait for mine. Actually, yes, I can. I need to make the outer shell first! ;)

[donbinator]

Looks great! What did you end up using as side material? Just picked up final wood myself to do rest of my pit and will be looking at what to use.

 

I used Parkland Plastics Plas-Tex Waterproof Wall Panels from Loews (hardware store). It's great stuff, paints easily with latex paints, you can drill and nail it without splitting etc. the only hard part (but I'm sure this is true of any non-stretchy material) is that it buckles over non-uniform curves. In one spot I tried eye-balling cutting a very thin V shape and pulled it together, but you have to have a way to re-attach it to itself, or at the edges which is what I did. Not sure if that made sense...:huh:. Overall I'm happy with the material though. Now I'm trying to find that diamond pattern stuffed burlap or whatever it is for the inside linings.

[jander]

Yeah have been on look out for that too, am a supply sergeant in the army and think I may have found something that will work, if so may be able to get enough to hook u up. Only diff in what I found is that its black Kevlar and not the burlap color. Thanks again for heads up on material

[Deadman]

The quilted material in real life is Anti spall blanket to catch any material that may be flaked off during large caliber projectiles hitting the titanium tub there for protecting the pilot. The design or pattern will be included in the Plans book I am working on.

[Sabre-TLA]

Is it like this stuff?

[donbinator]

Thanks jander if you find some I'd love to go in on it with you, as long as it's legally obtained :smilewink:. The old lady at the local Jo-Anns said something about stuff stitched or something like that where you stuff two layers with padding, then stitch in a diamond pattern. Doesn't sound TOO hard but it would be pretty cool to have the real (or close to the real) stuff! It will make a huge difference in how my cockpit looks right now since you can see a lot of the wood at the moment.

 

Yeah have been on look out for that too, am a supply sergeant in the army and think I may have found something that will work, if so may be able to get enough to hook u up. Only diff in what I found is that its black Kevlar and not the burlap color. Thanks again for heads up on material

[Deadman]

The out side color and texture apears to be the same the diamond stitching pattern is the wrong shape

the size look way small the material panels in my cockpit are just held in place with Velcro they just have yellow insulation in side and a white mesh on the back.

 

 

Is it like this stuff?

[donbinator]

Hey I have a sockets DCS export.lua question. I'm using Helios for my instrumentation panel, but I am writing my own C# program to handle my switches using PoKeys controllers. The export.lua script for Helios does a UDP broadcast to connect to whoever accepts the connection first, but I need Helios to talk to the script as well as my program. Do I have the export.lua script connect to two different ports? Otherwise whoever accepts the connection first gets to use that connection to send back switch data etc. right? that is, I can't have two listeners on the same socket so I have to have two different sockets right? Isn't that going to slow things down a bit? Someone must have a thread on this, if someone could point me to it that would be great.

[bnepethomas]

Hey I have a sockets DCS export.lua question. I'm using Helios for my instrumentation panel, but I am writing my own C# program to handle my switches using PoKeys controllers. The export.lua script for Helios does a UDP broadcast to connect to whoever accepts the connection first, but I need Helios to talk to the script as well as my program. Do I have the export.lua script connect to two different ports? Otherwise whoever accepts the connection first gets to use that connection to send back switch data etc. right? that is, I can't have two listeners on the same socket so I have to have two different sockets right? Isn't that going to slow things down a bit? Someone must have a thread on this, if someone could point me to it that would be great.

Generally, if its UDP last speaker wins, but I have tinkered with Helios too much, just gone straight to c#. You can use the same socket to rx data from multiple receivers

 

I make separate copies of data to send to display devices from export.lua (well actually use scripts call from export.lua just to keep things clean).

 

cheers

 

Peter

[donbinator]

Generally, if its UDP last speaker wins, but I have tinkered with Helios too much, just gone straight to c#. You can use the same socket to rx data from multiple receivers

 

I make separate copies of data to send to display devices from export.lua (well actually use scripts call from export.lua just to keep things clean).

 

cheers

 

Peter

 

Peter, sorry I didn't quite understand. Are you saying I can have two separate listeners waiting for a connection on port 9089 and they will both accept the same connection and receive the same data? So Helios will get the node updates as will my C# program? Then what happens when both programs send updates back through to the initiator (DCS)?

[donbinator]

Peter, sorry I didn't quite understand. Are you saying I can have two separate listeners waiting for a connection on port 9089 and they will both accept the same connection and receive the same data? So Helios will get the node updates as will my C# program? Then what happens when both programs send updates back through to the initiator (DCS)?

 

Answering my own question here:

 

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.sdk/zb3OIUpVntk

 

Problem still remains as to what happens when both listeners send data back. I'm guessing that would cause weirdness and that I should just have two separate socket connections. Really though since I'm not using Helios for any feedback to DCS there shouldn't be any communications there. I'd have to put a debug in the export script to see I guess. If not then I should be good to provide values back to DCS with my program while Helios monitors what it needs to....

[MacFevre]

Huh. Ok. I think I'm pretty good at computers. At least all my relatives do when they call up at some crazy hour to try and troubleshoot their computer. (I even switched to a Mac so I could say, "Well I don't know anymore. It's been years since I worked with Windows. ;) )

 

However, when I read all this about listeners and stuff, am I the only one who just sees clicks and pops? It's like I looking at the words, and I start getting it, then it just goes... "Are you saying I can have two separate click click pop click pop pop click?"

 

This weekend before I get real into the Arduino book, I think I'll at least take a couple courses at Lynda.com or something. I used to (twenty years ago) be able to spin circles around VB and Foxpro (I think a now dead db?) and make databases in Access (1!) using VB for Access, but this C to C++ up to C# stuff just makes my head spin.

 

So the question being, if you were to start making sense of it all, what would you start with? Would C# be the lowest language I would want to start with? LUA? Difference? I know I don't want anything to do with C. I have enough going on. ;) However, I would like to know a little. At least enough to make me dangerous.

 

In my head, I'm like Archer. "Danger Zone!" :D Anyone?

[donbinator]

Huh. Ok. I think I'm pretty good at computers. At least all my relatives do when they call up at some crazy hour to try and troubleshoot their computer. (I even switched to a Mac so I could say, "Well I don't know anymore. It's been years since I worked with Windows. ;) )

 

However, when I read all this about listeners and stuff, am I the only one who just sees clicks and pops? It's like I looking at the words, and I start getting it, then it just goes... "Are you saying I can have two separate click click pop click pop pop click?"

 

This weekend before I get real into the Arduino book, I think I'll at least take a couple courses at Lynda.com or something. I used to (twenty years ago) be able to spin circles around VB and Foxpro (I think a now dead db?) and make databases in Access (1!) using VB for Access, but this C to C++ up to C# stuff just makes my head spin.

 

So the question being, if you were to start making sense of it all, what would you start with? Would C# be the lowest language I would want to start with? LUA? Difference? I know I don't want anything to do with C. I have enough going on. ;) However, I would like to know a little. At least enough to make me dangerous.

 

In my head, I'm like Archer. "Danger Zone!" :D Anyone?

 

Lol, I'm actually an embedded developer with about 18 yrs experience and the product I've been working on for the last 3 years is an industrial Ethernet router. I should really know the answers the my questions above but there's always something new when it comes to the internet and how stuff works (wait, CAN I have two listeners on a UDP socket?? :book:).

In terms of languages if you want the most bang for your buck I'd look at script languages such as Python. If you want to do Windows application dev then C# is a good way to go, but boy as a C/C++ guy I hear you about C# being frustrating. It's like "hey, go learn C++, then go learn how these 9000 API's all work and then relearn it about every 3 years.". I spend 15 minutes per line of code on google, but the upside is that every line of .net code is like the kitchen sink. "giveMeAConnectionToMyProgramSendThisObjectNoMatterWhatItIsAndFigureOutHowToFormatItYourDamnSelf(IPAddress, myObjectOfAnyType); :huh:

 

Scripting languages like Python allow you to do a lot of cool stuff like connect to stuff, send and receive stuff, and it's "typing" is very lax (you very rarely need to know how many bits there are in an "int"). I haven't really done a lot of Python stuff but every time I look at it I say to myself "damn that was easy, I really have to learn more about this!". My C# program for my cockpit is actually my first C# program ever so I'm on a steep learning curve.

 

Lua is a very cool scripting language! I used that a lot when I worked for Microsoft. We used it for testing the Zune device. It's a bit more obscure though and in the industry I think is used more for gaming for some reason. If you don't like C you should probably shy away from Lua since its modules are written in C (although it's what DCS uses!!! You should learn it just for that! :thumbup:). Anyways, in the end it depends on what you want to program. For application on Windows it's normally C# (the hardcore still use C++), for embedded systems it's either C/C++, Python, I think Android is Java as is Arduino (although I've never played with an Arduino). OK I'm going to stop typing now...

[Devon Custard]

My day job has me looking at some many different languages its hard to stay on track. C# is what i know best so i always go back to it, mainly because i have so many years experience with it it just feels comfortable.

 

Supposedly i should be learning ruby and/or coffeescript on top of powershell. Javascript and c# are bread and butter for our developers so i need to stay current with those.

 

However i can honestly say, whatever you choose Mac, stick with it. Eventually experience will make you feel more at home. Also if you choose something someone else knows theres a good chance they can help you, especially if they have a common interest like this cockpit building thingumajiggy we're all hooked on. Interestingly enough my serious development started with Access and AccessVB back when it first shipped as a 1.0 product. Oh my, those were the days :)

 

Cant argue with donbinator views on coding with c#, if you grew up as a microsoft dev, you know where you are with it, if not then you shake your head and say "WHY!!!!!????!!!!" However tinkering with APIs means you can do some funky shit and most of the time someone else has already done it (GOOOOOOGGGGLLLEEEEE!!!!!!).

 

oh and C++ not that hard if you stay away from the OO aspects of it, which is basically what youre doing with the arduino.

[MacFevre]

Great ideas all, thanks. I'm going with Python. We'll see how it goes!

[donbinator]

Yay! I finished phase 1 of my C# program to interface my PoKeys modules to DCS. I did eventually figure out that the UDP connection from export.lua is actually a connection and not just a broadcast (the listener uses that same connection to send data back to DCS). For that reason I can't use multiple listeners on the same socket, so I had to add a connection in my export.lua to talk to my app separately (makes sense). Anyways, if anyone is interested in a half finished app that appears to work great for Digital Inputs from a Pokeys module let me know and I'll post it along with the source. Go easy on me though it's my first C# program so there's a lot of stuff I would rewrite in hindsight. Analog coming as soon as I need it. Elec panel is wired up and working, next up is the....whatever the one with the master arm switch is called, I have to redesign the panel since my first design doesn't fit the hole I made in my front panel :(. After that I think I'm going to tackle the CDU and front CDU input thingy (I really need to brush up on my terminology :)).

[donbinator]

Is there a way to get the air traffic to go to my headphones while the rest of the world sounds go to my speakers?

[Boltz]

Sadly there isn't as I've been looking for this function as well. FSX has it but DCSW doesn't. Something that should be on the wishlist.

[donbinator]

Sadly there isn't as I've been looking for this function as well. FSX has it but DCSW doesn't. Something that should be on the wishlist.

 

I wonder what it would sound like if you routed the center channel to headphones....? Have you tried that? I'll try it when I get a chance and see how it sounds.

[Boltz]

I haven't tried that but I am sure that the speech comes through all channels. I'd be interested to know how you get on though.

[donbinator]

Does anyone have a copy of "The Modern A-10 Guide: The A-10 exposed" or whatever it's called? I just got my copy of the F-18 version but it sure would be nice to have the A-10 version so I can do my own designs...sure wish they would run another print batch....