Teensy USB Development Board

[hegykc]

As I am currently tackling the problem of making USB instruments : engine gauges

 

I am looking at different ways to interface them to the sim, and I don't see anyone mentioning teensy boards.

As far as I can understand, these little boards can handle up to 24 servo motors, or 4 steppers. Or be used as digital/analog I/O boards.

 

At 24$ per board, I don't see why they're not in most of the cockpits. Am I missing something here? Beside the fact that there's no direct way of interfacing servo and stepper motors or LEDs just yet. Would that be so hard to program?

 

Which brings me to my issue. Interfacing servos with opencockpit cards comes at 8$ per pointer/gauge, and 17$ for stepper motors.

With the teensy board it would be 1$ per servo, and 6$ per stepper, a major reduction. And teensy can handle 4 times more steppers, which is perfect for making instrument panels.

 

Is there a programmer that could shed some light on this for me?

[agrasyuk]

no a real programmer, but before i answer i wanted to clarify "no direct way to interface servo or LED". you are aware of the software Helios right? so what do you mean when you say direct?

 

besides teensy there is arduino. cost is comparable if not the same. i implemented Uno controller in my SAS panel and have a working firmware prototype. what i need right now is software component that will listen to DCS export packets and send them to Uno's serial port.

[hegykc]

what i need right now is software component that will listen to DCS export packets and send them to Uno's serial port.

 

I guess that's what I mean by "no direct way". Opencockpit cards have SIOC as a way to talk with the sim. Nothing yet for the teensy boards.

[tjhowse]

I've done a lot with teensies, both input and output. A teensy can be programmed to show up as a USB HID device with axes and buttons, or drive outputs. The Teensy+ 2.0 has 45 I/O. All can act as digital I/O, nine of them can drive servos, and eight others can be used for analogue inputs. They're cheap as chips, too.

[agrasyuk]

oh i see. i guess you correct then, no one wrote a software to specifically feed teenzy with data from DCS export or i might be not aware of it. EDIT : i guess i wans't aware of it after all :)

 

Arduino was attempted , perhaps even working and i'm missing it somewhere. thats what i want to do , but need to seriously dig into programming to build a suitable middleware

 

a member here is working on software to interface with pokeys and he mentioned Arduino compatibility in future. i really have high hopes for that

 

i'm not a pro with this and perhaps gravely mistaken. but from what i can tell challange challange here is to know how the device, arduino or teensy or any other controller configured , all input, all output, half hal and so on.

inroads to that is EOS protocol from

http://www.gadrocsworkshop.com/ home of helios software. EOS devises report to helios their configuration.

 

so yes, bunch of data to go through.

at the moment i'm building hardware, panels, framework etc. if by the time i'm done no one comes up with anything i guess i will need to start learning programming and attack arduino middleware solution

Edited January 10, 2013 by agrasyuk

[agrasyuk]

I've done a lot with teensies, both input and output. A teensy can be programmed to show up as a USB HID device with axes and buttons, or drive outputs. The Teensy+ 2.0 has 45 I/O. All can act as digital I/O, nine of them can drive servos, and eight others can be used for analogue inputs. They're cheap as chips, too.

 

did i miss your progress thread somwhere, i'd love to read about that software and implementation. so far i only see your arduino based AHCP on the tube.

Edited January 10, 2013 by agrasyuk

[tjhowse]

did i miss your progress thread somwhere, i'd love to read about that software and implementation. so far i only see your arduino based AHCP on the tube.

 

http://www.openjoystick.com

 

Gone quiet on this project for the moment, as I have a few others on the boil (including a new human), but openjoystick uses a teensy++ 2.0 to map the axes, buttons and hats through to a standard windows joysticks.

[hegykc]

Isn't teensy an HID/yostick off the shelf? Like the LeoBodnar boards?

 

just connect your buttons/potentiometers/hall sensors and your ready to go?

[tjhowse]

Isn't teensy an HID/yostick off the shelf? Like the LeoBodnar boards?

 

just connect your buttons/potentiometers/hall sensors and your ready to go?

 

Not quite. You must set the type of USB device as which you wish it to appear, and map the physical inputs across to values to be delivered by the buttons and axes.

[agrasyuk]

http://www.openjoystick.com

 

Gone quiet on this project for the moment, as I have a few others on the boil (including a new human), but openjoystick uses a teensy++ 2.0 to map the axes, buttons and hats through to a standard windows joysticks.

ok, but that not exactly what OP looking for.

he talks about middleware that will listen to DCS export for data and send that to his teensy controller to work servos and LEDs. or am i missing something?

[hegykc]

Well thanks for bursting my bubble :)

 

Poor research on my part I guess.

 

As I read on their webpage, you can add up to 24 servos to it. Is that 24 servos that can be controlled individually?

 

Yep, agrasyuk that's right. Middleware that will send DCS export data to the teensy board. Servos and steppers mainly. Next are LEDs if possible.

Because if it can control up to 24 individual servo motors, that's 90% cheaper per servo than opencockpits or other servo controllers.

Edited January 10, 2013 by hegykc

[tjhowse]

Such a thing wouldn't be too hard to do, just a matter of interpreting the exported data and sending it to the teensy in the form of a servo angle.

[agrasyuk]

Of course it is not hard to do , but since I can't do it myself I'm waiting for someone to do it. I'd love to use teenzy .

[Miles Vorkosigan]

Opening this thread up to jump on the bandwagon. I too use Teensy(++2.0) controller boards for simpit building. But so far only as input devices (40ish buttons, 8 axis, digital encoders, hat switches, etc etc). I would like to be able to receive data from DCS in order to light up warning messages, run digital information disiplays, gauges, dials, and so on.

 

Unfortunately I am not a programmer, and that is what this project would require; someone who knows how to write a program that would accept the output from DCS and then translate it to the language that the Teensy would understand.

 

This has been successfully done in X-Planes through the efforts of a few skilled programmers who are also flight sim enthusiasts.

 

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYYS-dVS2vg

[jay43]

3.0 is now the better teensy I have one running for my ps3 its basically programed to run and be seen by the ximedge as a ps ds3 controller to allow me to run kbam for console fps.

I could ask the guy on the xim forum who is a guru of these just give me a detailed list of what you want it to do and I'll ping it across to him.

[whartsell]

Im the one who is working on the pokeys integration. If there is much interest i could "accelerate" my plans on integrating with arduino based hardware. FYI you can breadboard up an Arduino compatible system for about $8 USD. I havent played with servos/steppers yet but do have the hardware laying around. I planed on getting to it when my cockpit is ready to use them. My plans call for common hardware broken up into functionality e.g. one for inputs one for outputs, one for servos,etc. I chose this ideology as it appears to be cheaper in the long run than using one microcontroller per panel.

 

My HogKeys software should be able to transition over to arduino with little changes. All I need to do is add support for multiple devices and add a driver library to take my softwares model and convert it to something the arduino will understand and vice versa. That of course means I would have to spend some time writing firmware for the arduino.

 

Again if there is much interest and if you know what your requirements are PM me.

[hegykc]

I think arduino is THE way to go. We can steal the user base. There's hundreds of thousands of these units produced, even Chinese knockouts, 17$ a pop, you just can't beat that.

 

It has 54 digital I/O, and now I see you can use shift registers to expend that to I don't even know what!

 

And it can do anything, joysticks, LED's, displays, servo motors, stepper motors... you name it.

Edited March 23, 2013 by hegykc

[Whiplash]

I figured I should wake up this old thread instead of starting a new one.

 

I just purchased a Teensy 2.0 ++ board and I'm just getting into building my own controller for the P-51.

 

I would really like to see some interface that would allow DCS to talk to the teensy using Arduino much like it does with Xplane. But for now I am just starting simple with a basic joystick type controller that uses toggle switches and axes. My goal is to make switch panel that will fit around my keyboard with trim axes, flaps, toggle switches, etc. Once I get a little further along I'll post a separate thread that covers my build. I'm mostly looking for other people that have used these boards that might be able to coach me through some of the programming or can provide some good source material. I am in the process of modifying the arduino joystick example code so it will work with toggle switches. I am trying to figure out the best way to implement a pulse function because once I throw a toggle switch it is always on but I just want it to transmit a pulse much like a momentary push button on a joystick. Sounds simple enough and I have had some success writing the code but it gets a little more complicated when you want it to work with a three position on-off-on toggle switch or even a 5 position rotary switch.

 

here are some WIP pictures of what I'm working on. I have access to a laser cuter at work so eventually I'll make my panel out of stainless steel sheet metal but for now I'm just using poster board until I get everything the way I want it.

 

 

[whartsell]

If you program the teensie with the arduino IDE you could use/modify the EOS libs and have it talk directly with Helios.

[cefs]

I did start working on a generic usb interface to DCS a while ago and should still have the code somewhere. It was implemented as a dll which was loaded from a dofile() call from a script with a set of functions that wrote data to a buffer and then sent the buffer to your hid device. Maximum buffer size was 64 bytes, thats the max for a vendor defined hid device. I'll dig out the code, if anyones interested, and try and get a basic implementation up and running. At the time I did not have a dev board to test the code so the project died, but I have a pic based board I can test with now.

[tjhowse]

 

Have a look at my video here. I created a trim wheel box for the mustang using a teensy. I provided the code at the end.

[Whiplash]

 

Have a look at my video here. I created a trim wheel box for the mustang using a teensy. I provided the code at the end.

 

Hey sorry I kind of put this thread on my back burner. I'm glad you chimed in. I actually saw your video on youtube a while back. It’s pretty much the reason I went with the Teensy ++ 2.0 board. I got the axis I want to work great, thanks to your video. I’m continuing to mount and wire up my switches. I think I have the code figured out for the toggle switches but it’s still WIP.

 

Quick question for you, will your 3D printer work with SolidWorks? I have been considering making one from a kit but it just hasn't been a big enough priority for me yet.

[tjhowse]

Most 3D printer software takes STL files. It's a pretty standard format that most 3D modelling packages can export. I use Slic3r to convert the STL into the gcode used to control the printer.

[Whiplash]

I see, from your video I was thinking you made the whole thing using gcode. SolidWorks can export STL no problem.