Well, I think I am going to take the keyboard emulation route with toggle switches, relays, and capicitors and make a little setup.The ones I want to emulate for sure are:Lighting (Nav beacon etc)Engine Starts 1-4Pitot HeatAvionics on/offMy question then is.... where do I go about assigning say the Nav lights to the switch?? I have looked in the MS commands but I don't see a command for nav lights, or taxi light, only the switch on the panel... am I missing something??Thanks!Chris

You may want to try, 'D' Type Flip Flop (7474) or a 'J' & 'K' Flip Flop (7476 or 74LS76). This would have avoid any 'spaghetti-alike-sacked-up' wires/components all over on your deck. A simple task for you is to have two wires soldered on the same "ON" terminal, one would go directly to IC's and another one would go to Keyboard emulation card. The wire that goes to IC, have it connected to 'Preset' or 'Clear' Pin, (Not sure the pin number, but you can look up on diagram). Then, have any kind of LEDs as you wish at the 'Q' Output,--This would do nicely...I have done that experiment before. You may also want to download Peter Dowson, it has all commands that would get all of those system working.

Thanks for the reply, but knowing nothing about electronics, I'm totally lost with eveything you said :) I was looking at the toggleswitch interface at

http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/howto/toggle.htm

I take it I then use FSUIPC SDK and program the switches manually??? Or is there more to this then I think, especially with the actual setup of the interface??Thanks!Chris

Hi again :)I think I found part of what I was looking for... alot of the keys were under toggle nav lights in FSUIPC keys tab.. I was overlooking this and was looking for a Nav Light toggle.Now the question is... I design my circuits as the how to on flightsim.com says, I plug in my keyboard emulator via USB, so now when I goto FSUPIC and select my keys do I simply just flip my toggle switch and it will recognize whatever I want?? So if I have my Nav Lights wired up to "N" on the keyboard, it will recognize when I flip the switch an "N" has been sent and thats it??Thanks!!Chris

Hello again,I haven't went through the part on selecting the keysas of yet.. But, due to my basic knowledge is that you would have to be sure you connect to the correct port, whenever you toggle it, it should shows a letter N. I did not keep up with evaluating the Keyboard Emulation since I got myself a EPIC card.. I can only tell you about my knowledge on wiring and give you the best results. I haven't gone deep into that programming or anything with keyboard emulation interface. I would recommend you to ask Robert Prather about keyboard emulation. I believe he has all of the knowledge. You can contact him through his email: [email protected] and his website address is: http://webpdp.gator.com/v3/webpdp_v3_plugi...p?yic=HIC_CJBDT on front page, you will see a block says keyboard emulation, click on it, and you will be entering his world of keyboard emulation information....He sure wrote a good article about it.Good luck

Chris,Its not that simple. If you use a toggle switxh wired to an emulator, when you switch it on, it will send key repeats, so you'll get lots of "keystrokes" (for some of the more advanced ones this is not true, but for hacked keyboards, it is true). What you need is whats called a monostable multivibrator, or a one-shot. If you want a toggle, you need a bistable multivibrator (do a google seach for more details). The circuits are not difficult to build, there are lots of IC's available that have most of the guts you need, but you'll need lots of them. I have found that for non-momentary contacts, you are better off using PIC's. You can buy ready-built circuits that handle toggle and flip switches for about $50.00 USD. These are a good approach as they are nice and modular, and easy to use. You'll still need to write some code though (if you know a simple language like VB, you'll be in good shape)Do a search on google for you more detailed questions. If you need clarification or details, feel free to ask here. Between us I'm pretty certain someone will have the answers you need.Enjoy!!Dave

Chris, Concerning the toggle switch to momentary switch action circuit, there are many variations possible. Flip-Flops, One-shots, or the capacitor-relay circuit as described in the How-to. The capacitor-relay circuit may not be the cheapest, but is it simple to build, also with limited electronic knowledge. I would suggest that you build it and connect to a keyboard switch, then use Wordpad or something to check the function. From there you can start with the keyboard emulator, and FSUIPC. The circuit will not give a keyboard repeat, as it switches the relay on for short time only everytime you flip the toggle switch. The circuit is also described in the DIY cockpit controls doc in the same How To section at flightsim.com. Look in the basic electrical info section of the doc. You can also download the entire doc in word format at the AVsim library http://ftp.avsim.com/library/sendfile.php?DownloadID=13666RgdsRoland

Thanks for that link, Roland.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums Moderator

Well, I think I am going to take the keyboard emulation route with toggle switches, relays, and capicitors and make a little setup.The ones I want to emulate for sure are:Lighting (Nav beacon etc)Engine Starts 1-4Pitot HeatAvionics on/offMy question then is.... where do I go about assigning say the Nav lights to the switch?? I have looked in the MS commands but I don't see a command for nav lights, or taxi light, only the switch on the panel... am I missing something??Thanks!Chris

Did you find the way how to connect toggle switch to fsx example using 3 posistions switch?