Hello from Greece,is there anyone who knows if it is possible to make commercial products, like PSS Airbus, to be flying with external h/w devices?(And if possible without EPIC cards)I want to start building a small home cockpit, starting with MCP Panel. As PSS Airbus (and also other commercial products) they have externel programming code or advanced panel functions, how is possible to give the right commands to FS2002 for simulate push or pull Alt knob?ThanksOAL331Athens-Greece

Hello,You might want to take a look at the Hagstrom Electronics keyboard emulators. Another possibility is to hack a keyboard, wiring your switches in place of the keyboard key switches. For multiple key stroke commands a bit of external electronics is required. See Robert Prather's article in the "how to" section at FlightSim.com on keyboard emulation.My own website has an overview of interfacing techniques which might provide you with some useful background information.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com

Hi,Yep, its possible - I'm doing it right now. I used a couple of PIC micro controllers interfaced over the serial link, and I have a VB prog (actually a service) that runs and forwards key presses or sequences to MSFS as a PostMessage API call. It works beautifully.I'm also using WideFS for window views, and Pete Cos' panels. The main PC has 3 graphics cards in it; main view, PFD/ND and the EICAS and engine screens. 2 additional PC's for side views.Works great!Dave

Thanks to all for your replies.Dave that exactly we had made (with a good friend)!!We have a program witch comunicates with MSFS (not with keyboard commnads) and has as input a serial port with a H/W box with LCD display and knobs.In std MSFS aircrafts all the functions are working fine and we can control all the A/P commands and also NAV radios from this box. We have the same values, also to aircraft panel and also in our box LCD display.The problem with PSS (and almost all the commercial advanced aircrafts), is that has its own commands (another a/p)and the only way to wotk is to simulate keyboard commands.We are now checking the solution to sending keyboard commands, but as i can see in Panel Configuration Utility/Keyboard Assigmenets the PSS does not have a command to sending the exact value as a string to PSS Airbus Panel. e.g If you want to increase speed from 200kias to 250 you must send keyboard commands simulating the clicks from mouse to increase value. So as i turn the knob to the right i can read from PSS MCP panel the value Speed changing and when reaching 250 i'm stoping to turn the knob.But as i have my own LCD display for Speed, i'm afraid that it will not be sychronized, my LCD display value with speed value in PSS Panel. We are trying this solution and we don't have a final result, but if you have something about it, please send a reply.ThanksOAL331Athens-Greece

Yep,The way I did it I didnt have this problem. For modifying, say, speed, I have a rotary encoder. This just sends a key press for each "click" of the rotation, so by sending a key press for each click, it works. I have a separate routine that grabs the value in MSFS now (using FSUIPC) and updates the display LCD's. There is a bit of a lag, depending on how FSUIPC is configured, but in general, it works fine.Dave

Hi Dave, thanks for all the help.I am the "friend" mentioned above :-)I have made excactly the same hardware as you, but I have a couple of probs:The FS autopilot does not get the AP info from the PSS panel and we cannot read it from the FSUIPC interface. It seems that PSS has a complete AP built in.I used the sendkeys for simplicity but it seems not working with the above panel.Could you post the line with the Postmessage API call ? that would save me all the digging arround :-)Thanks againGeorge...

Hi again...I was kept away form the forums for some days.Comming back I see no news :-(I have made all the code to increase/decrease the AP values of the panel.The remaining problem is reading these values back using FSUIPC.Dave (or anyone else for that matter), you say you have done it. Please, please can you tell me the addresses that you use with fsuipc to read them values back ??I have failed locating them using fsinterrogate, and they don't seem to be the standard MS AP addresses.Thanks again guys,all the bestGeorge

Unfortunately the PSS panel must be using their own autopilot and does not communicate (read or write) with the FS autopilot.Even an adventure cannot read/write to the PSS, PIC and DF panels...The variables used by FSUIPC are those of the default autopilot and not those of the advanced panels.It would be very easy for the authors of the mentioned panels to just set the default autopilot as well even if it's not engaged. Also with a small check every 0.2 secs or something, they could check if any change has been made to the default autopilot values and adapt the change in their custom autopilot.But, that's day dreaming... :-(Good luck!George DorkofikisAthens, Hellas

Hi George !That's my very own thoughts as well... maybe if we poke them a bit they 'll do it.Regarding reading the values, since Dave said he managed to do it, I was hoping that I missed something here. I hope he sees the messg and replies to us.All the best.George