FSBUS

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I see noone has ever posted about FSBUS.So i will do :)I have now 3 units running:a display unita LED unita D/O unitI have to say it's a real pleasure tu use it!Costs are cut down to pieces (a LED unit capable of driving 32 leds (!!!) is about 15

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Hello Ciao,The FSBUS site has a lot of interesting stuff. But there is a lack of how to's. Do you know if the documents will be translated to English soon?:-hmmm Bill

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Hi,I must say that FSBUS ist the most amazing thing I have seen for cockpit builder. With one main circuit and some small peripherical circuits you can drive everything, from key input to servos and stepper motors, Joystick, 7 segment led displays, rotaries, and more.It's EPIC to do by yourself, and it is FREE, what's becomming more and more rare in our community.Dirk has made an huge work, with very detailled description and all the circuitry schematics. It includes of course all drivers. You even get the files for engraving printed circuit. Yes, there is unfortunately a bad side.There is no translation in english at that time. Kind regardsRoger

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>The FSBUS site has a lot of interesting stuff. But there is >a lack of how to's. Do you know if the documents will be >translated to English soon?:-hmmm I know Dirk is translating the docs, but i don't know how much time will still be before they are ready.Basicly the only how-to is:find a way to *make* the circuits' boards (eighter by photo incision, or wire-wrapping), mount them, and enjoy :)Yes there is also the program usage issue, but i find it very intuitive, maybe because i myself am i little into programming.I proposed to Dirk to write a small statup guide, but i preferred to wait for the complete docs to be translated.

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Claudio,Where can I find more info on this?Joe

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>Dirk has made an huge work, with very detailled description >and all the circuitry schematics. It includes of course all >drivers. You even get the files for engraving printed >circuit. >>Yes, there is unfortunately a bad side.There is no >translation in english at that time. Dirk is doing it, the website is already translated, and what's most important the program itself is in english now.It's a bit of work to learn it but I totally love it too. I have just a "key" card so far, which I am using to drive switches (it can do toggles just fine so you dont need those relay-things - an elegant solution of one circuit instead of a relay-hack for each switch. Pays back a lot when you wire a hundred switches...)I am just about finishing my radio panel that pretty much does what those expensive avionics stacks can do, just without the digits display, since building the 7-segment thing will be more expensive because you need one PIC for a few digits. It will add to the cost when you sum it all together to make a full avionics stack. A friend of mine is making a small program that drives one of those parallel-port-interfaced LCD character displays though so you can have that display all your avionics stuff on one small LCD (it has 16 chars in 4 rows, so it's just enough to cram in the necessary stuff for the default Cessna radio stack) - we have a few finnish guys doing this, so you can check out www.fsnordic.net -> Discussion -> Home Cockpits there - it's for our own small circle of friends and thus in finnish, but dont hesitate to ask questions in english, we'll be happy to explain and translate for you should a need for that arise.I guess I dont need to explain how it feels to tune the frequencies with rotating knobs.. I think we dont have wide enough smileys available.. Anyway, here's a small image of my current prototype, something to put under the keyboard, fastened to the table with clamps :-)Best wishes and hello to everyone, this is my first posting on avsim..Tuomas

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www.fsbus.de

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Tuomas,Thank You!Joe

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>>Dirk has made an huge work, with very detailled description >>and all the circuitry schematics. It includes of course all >>drivers. You even get the files for engraving printed >>circuit. >>>>Yes, there is unfortunately a bad side.There is no >>translation in english at that time. >>Dirk is doing it, the website is already translated, and >what's most important the program itself is in english now. Yes apart the installation, but then you just click the "next" button ;)>It's a bit of work to learn it but I totally love it too.It's kind of powerfull, that's because it is difficult to understand :)>I am just about finishing my radio panel that pretty much >does what those expensive avionics stacks can do, just >without the digits display, since building the 7-segment >thing will be more expensive because you need one PIC for a >few digits. It will add to the cost when you sum it all >together to make a full avionics stack.That anyway is less than commercial products, which sells for around 100$ per unit.I can say you are able to build a nav unit for 40$ using FSBUS.>A friend of mine is >making a small program that drives one of those >parallel-port-interfaced LCD character displays though so >you can have that display all your avionics stuff on one >small LCD (it has 16 chars in 4 rows, so it's just enough to >cram in the necessary stuff for the default Cessna radio >stack)Interesting!But i still prefer the "real" thing ;)>I guess I dont need to explain how it feels to tune the >frequencies with rotating knobs.. I think we dont have wide >enough smileys available.. I haven't arrived at that point yet (only some levers, flaps, leds and so), what do you used for the knob?And how did you setup it in the Router?Claudio

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>That anyway is less than commercial products, which sells >for around 100$ per unit. >I can say you are able to build a nav unit for 40$ using >FSBUS. Lets see. You will need:Com1: 2x5 digits (needs 2 PICs)Nav1: 2x5 digits (needs 2 PICs)Com2: 2x5 digits (needs 2 PICs)Nav2: 2x5 digits (needs 2 PICs)ADF: 4 digits (needs 1 PIC)XPDR: 4 digits (needs 1 PIC)That's 48 7-segments plus 10 PICs, plus if you want the autopilot and DME it's a bunch more. One of those PICs is about 6 Euros here (roughly the same in USD) plus the 7-segment displays themselves.. It makes about 85 euros for those if you can get the 7-segments for 50 cents each (no idea what their real cost is, havent checked so this is a rough price calculated with the Harrison/Stetson method)Plus you need the resistors and stuff too plus the board to build on.I agree, it is tempting but quite expensive. I get a lot of switches with 85 euros :-)>>I guess I dont need to explain how it feels to tune the >>frequencies with rotating knobs.. I think we dont have wide >>enough smileys available.. >>I haven't arrived at that point yet (only some levers, >flaps, leds and so), what do you used for the knob? >And how did you setup it in the Router? I used the 12-step rotary switch that can rotate freely. Wired the contacts in sequence with 4 wires plus ground, so that rotating the switch gives you a signal pulse of 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 or 4,3,2,1,4,3,2,1 depending on the rotation. FSBUS keymodule supports these as rotaries. Knitter encoders would be ideal but seem hard to find anywhere :(This is a reasonable fallback to knitters.Oh yes, while we are at it, our projects are found at http://www.mikkila.org/fsbus/Tuomas

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>I agree, it is tempting but quite expensive. I get a lot of >switches with 85 euros :-) I agree it is quite expansive, but when compared to commercial products (say 89$ for each unit, so you need 4 units, that's 356$) it's cheap.>I used the 12-step rotary switch that can rotate freely. >Wired the contacts in sequence with 4 wires plus ground, so >that rotating the switch gives you a signal pulse of >1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 or 4,3,2,1,4,3,2,1 depending on the >rotation. FSBUS keymodule supports these as rotaries.Whoa nice!Since you seems quite into it, i'm asking some questions about nav setupe.I started today to have some testing with nav1.I found that the problem is if you want 25khz increment, because FS does not store the last digit (which is 0 or 5), and so some times the Router simply lost count upon syncronization with FS.I try to explain better:i setup 2 switches, one to add 25 and one to substract 25 from the nav1.I have a FSRead object which reads FS value every 5 seconds (just to avoid any problems in the long term), and a FSWrite objects which writes new values to FS.Now the FSRead, simply reads the values, multiply by 10, and sends them to a display and the FSWrite object.The Display and FSWrite than divide by 10 to obtain FS compatible data.Now the problem is, as i said above, when FSRead syncronize with FS, the new reading lucks the last digit!So if i have a frequency of 114.775, it is read as 1477, without the last 5!And adding 25 to this, simply send frequencies to hell!How do you correct this?I haven't found a solution yet, just to use 50khz increments...Another question is:how do you make a single knob to turn Transpoder digits one by one?Thank you for any help!Claudio

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>I agree it is quite expansive, but when compared to >commercial products (say 89$ for each unit, so you need 4 >units, that's 356$) it's cheap. Well yeah, many of those commercial things are total ripoffs. Of course the companies need to cover the manufacturing and design expenses as well. Those are handy if you want something that works out of the box, but it is way outside my budget. Plus hacking with these myself is part of the fun.. nice balance for work.>Whoa nice! >Since you seems quite into it, i'm asking some questions >about nav setupe. >I started today to have some testing with nav1. >I found that the problem is if you want 25khz increment, >because FS does not store the last digit (which is 0 or 5), >and so some times the Router simply lost count upon >syncronization with FS. >I try to explain better: >i setup 2 switches, one to add 25 and one to substract 25 >from the nav1. >I have a FSRead object which reads FS value every 5 seconds >(just to avoid any problems in the long term), and a FSWrite >objects which writes new values to FS. >Now the FSRead, simply reads the values, multiply by 10, and >sends them to a display and the FSWrite object. >The Display and FSWrite than divide by 10 to obtain FS >compatible data. >Now the problem is, as i said above, when FSRead syncronize >with FS, the new reading lucks the last digit! >So if i have a frequency of 114.775, it is read as 1477, >without the last 5! >And adding 25 to this, simply send frequencies to hell! >How do you correct this? >I haven't found a solution yet, just to use 50khz >increments... >>Another question is: >how do you make a single knob to turn Transpoder digits one >by one? Both of these use the same solution. I am currently doing this stuff with the keystroke generator of FSBus. Simply making rotaries do keystrokes, and I map them with FSUIPC myself. As FSUIPC config dialog inside FS2002 gives a lot more things to configure than the programming API - there are things like COM1_FRAC_INC and COM1_FRAC_DEC and XPDR_1000_INC, XPDR_100_INC, XPDR_10_INC and XPDR_1_INC (spelling could be wrong, but on the recent FSUIPC you have those all neatly in a pulldown widget to choose from.)While it is a bit sub-optimal (think "Alt-F4" etc) since those key shortcuts then work with *any* application, so you need to be careful - but it works really well.So my transponder is not wired yet (needing more knobs) but the ADF works this way as well.Dirk said he had some thoughts about how to solve these (the radio thingy has a problem where it rounds the calculations and this messes up the fsuipc thingy since it is just a bit off and thus gives the higher frequency "notch" instead of the .25 or something. I had trouble with that too, but I got it working with keyboard events.Tuomas

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In fact i learned quite a bit by experimenting in the past minutes.I've discovered that using Rotary facilities instead of Switch is a lot better for nav inc/dec.I had already found the round-up-thingie some time ago, but that time it was not a problem.Now i have all the 7-ending decimals cut to 8...Not good at all :(Hope Dirk will fix it, just an option to choose if round-up or not would be the solution.Hope to have a webcam for Christmas, so i would shot a couple of pics ;)