Just finished building my panel

[Guest steku]

I just finished building my simple FS panel.On photos you can see:1. My entire setup.2. My new panel based on Leo Lacava

[Guest Erups]

Really nice!Doesn't Beta Innovations provide output together with input?

[Guest fullington99]

Steku - very nice job, congratulations! I too am building a panel based on gammaray and cyclotron - nearly complete - photos soon. How are you using more than 16 rotary encoders? Do you have more than one cyclotron or do you have some switching going on somehow? Are you using dual concentric knobs for the nav and com? Also curious about how you've done your electrical connections. Sorry for so many questions - just trying to learn from the success of others!Best regards.

[Guest fullington99]

Output was to be handled by the Electonflux board that was under development. The gammaray and cyclotron are input only boards. Excellent boards (I own 4, 2 gamma64, a cyclotron and a plasmav2) - hopefully we'll see a return to full availability in the future. The PlasmaV2 continues to be available.

[rickalty 0]

Nice panels, and I agree that Leo does good work.I use his earlier 0x64b module to get the input from my panel. Here's a picture of my system as it stands...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/95581.jpgThe radio stack can't really be seen in this picture so here's an older one of just the radio. I've updated the labels since then. Still haven't found the right knobs though :-( The small panel with a number pad on it is the "microphone" for using ATC.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/95582.jpgThe output to the radio stack is handled by FSLCD running two 2x24 LCD screens.The gauges running on the laptop are my own FSPanel software via WideFS.Richard

[Guest fullington99]

Rick - nice work - are these serial LCD's? I agree - knobs are difficult - I'm especially looking for dual concentric ones right now.

[Guest fullington99]

Sorry - think i just answered my own question - should have done some research first on FSLCD - found Mikkila's site and info on parallel port design.

[tigert 0]

>Sorry - think i just answered my own question - should have>done some research first on FSLCD - found Mikkila's site and>info on parallel port design.Have you realized by the way, that the "MJoy" described here yesterday, combined with FSLCD, is a very interesting combination?Character display, it works great in practice, and those are not very expensive. One 20x4 fits all your radio data if needed.24 buttons, 8 potentiometers. Talk about twin-piston quadrant and cowl flaps for example. Basically you can do lots with those things. And just add another if you need more. And the buttons for knobs and switches. FSUIPC.dll can support phase-shifted rotary encoders directly on joystick buttons btw - check out the advanced docs.Very interesting idea for a serious setup even.//Tuomas

[Guest steku]

fullington99 wrote:>How are you using more than 16 rotary encoders? >Do you have more than one cyclotron or do you have some>switching going on somehow? With Cyclotron I'm using only 16 encoders. Other rotaries (for XPNDR setting) are based on Alps switches (go to this page http://www.elfa.se/en/ and search for 35-884-64). They are similar to Knitter switches - when you turn such rotary in clockwise direction you get a pulse on one pair of contacts when you turn counterclockwise - you get a pulse on another pair of contacts. These contacts are connected directly to GammaRay64 board. Unfortunately such pulses are very short and sometimes (rather often) PC misses some pulses (especially when knobs are turned fast). I would not recommend such rotary for OBS or HDG (or other fast turning knob) but when setting XPNDR you have only 7 settings so if you miss one or two is not a big issue.>Are you using dual concentric knobs for the nav and com? I

[tigert 0]

>I

[Guest steku]

RichardA lot of thanks for opening my eyes! I thought that I FINISHED my panel but now I can't resist and HAVE TO add FSLCD display for frequencies, XPNDR setting and DME data to it.P.S.I wanted to build my panel to make my flying more interesting. But now I can see that BUILDING is more interesting than flying :)

[Guest steku]

RichardAre you able to switch FSLCD display between DME1 (distance, GS) and DME2 (you know DME1 is at the same freq as NAV1 and DME2 as NAV2 I think). For example on default Cessna (I'm actually flying Dreamfleet 177 Cardinal but it's similiar) you can switch DME this way to show data from "1" or "2" on only one DEM display. I was searching in FSUIPC programmers docs for this and I can only see separate offsets for DME1 and DME2.

[rickalty 0]

Piotr:"I wanted to build my panel to make my flying more interesting. But now I can see that BUILDING is more interesting than flying"Uh-Oh..... Another one lost to the Dark Side...... :-saeAs for switching between DME1 and DME2 I haven't tried that, but I'll check it out and get back to you on that.Richard

[Guest steku]

Playing with FSLCD 5.1 (and after reading EXCELLENT Nico Kaan's page at http://home.planet.nl/~nwkaan/overhead.htm#FSLCD) I just discovered that using offsets x6620,6621 I can change content of LCS display.This way I can define one display layout with DME1 data on it and another with DME2 data. Then using switch on my panel I can switch between DME1 and DME2 (the same switch is switching DME's on my FS panel).P.S.On Mikkila's page at http://mikkila.wabbits.org/fsbus/lcd/ there is an information about stability issues with FSLCD 5.1. Did any of you encountered such issues?Only strange thing I encountered was error on exiting FSLCD 5.1. Error started to appear after I added a couple of definitions in fsinterface.ini file (I added these definitions via FSLCD interface). I finally discovered that after removing last three definitions problem no longer exist. But I needed those definitions! I cut them from the end of the file and pasted at the beginning, changed numbers in [FSparam??] statements to achieve order (?? starting from 0 then 1,2,3 etc.) and

[Guest steku]

Just upgraded my panel with FSLCD display.On photos you can see my LCD displaying: COM1 COM1_standby XPNDR ADF (minus between COMs means COM1 is selected to transmit - little trick with formatting in FSLCD was nedded here) COM2 COM2_standby DME_distance DME_ground_speed NAV1 NAV1_standby altimeter_setting_hPa (star means gear down, plus sign between NAVs means DME is tuned to NAV1 freq, I'm using x6620 FSUIPC offset in FSLCD 5.1 to toggle between two different LCD layouts - one with DME1 and second with DME2) NAV2 NAV2_standby altimeter_setting_inHg (in free places stars can be displayed to show autopilot mode AP_Master, HDG, NAV, APR, B/C)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/96891.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/96892.jpg