So I am putting together a parts list to make an AP box and a Radio box. Im not sure whether it is better to go with an arduino route, or the bodnar route for the inputs. I do know I will need some sort of output board to send the radio frequencies, crs/hdg etc back out to the box, of which I am also unsure of what is the best board for this type of setup.

The more specific question is what are the real differences between the bodnar 836 and the bbi32? From what I have read on his website, they both do encoders and buttons?

This will be a strictly p3dv5 build with possibly also using in DCS.

Any input or suggestions would be welcome. 

The BU0836 boards do 8 analog axes, an 8-way POV hat, and up to 32 buttons or single-pole switches.  The BBI boards only do the buttons/switches.  Both can also do rotary encoders--each one uses two of the switch channels.

 

8 hours ago, CaptainNick said:

The more specific question is what are the real differences between the bodnar 836 and the bbi32? From what I have read on his website, they both do encoders and buttons?

You can watch my hands-on experiments with each of these boards in the following video.

 

I would strongly recommend a MobiFlight solution (mobiflight.com), especially if you want to have LED indicators (including the AP 7-segment indicators) in addition to the buttons/ encoders. The software is free-of-charge, it's based on Arduino Mega or Chinese smaller-size clones that are much more covenient to assemble and is very easy to program. The guys are also providing a first-class support. Here is my rig https://yadi.sk/i/JeeLvjUetQHlvg (P3Dv4.5, also P3Dv5 is supported) with four modules (AP, EGIS, Radio and switches, 5 Arduino Mega's) based on MobiFlight. At the same time I seriously doubt that they support DCS, as it requires a totally different interface.

Radio module in action: https://yadi.sk/i/VDg1eN_oSjmiIQ.

23 minutes ago, SergeyPe said:

I would strongly recommend a MobiFlight solution (mobiflight.com), especially if you want to have LED indicators (including the AP 7-segment indicators) in addition to the buttons/ encoders. 

I looked at MobiFlight briefly when I wanted to add LEDs but I went for Air Manager in the end. MobiFlight looked great for hooking up standard FSX or P3D functions but the way of accessing values from Lvars seemed awfully clunky, and my Twin Otter cockpit needs a lot of that. Air Manager, in contrast, can natively access Lvars and can also be scripted with Lua, allowing complex behaviours to be created. I only have one panel with outputs at the moment, but I have a hybrid approach with all the inputs managed by Bodnar boards while the outputs are managed by Air Manager driving an Arduino Mega. Air Manager could handle the input too, which would be a cleaner solution if starting from scratch.

1 hour ago, MarkDH said:

MobiFlight looked great for hooking up standard FSX or P3D functions but the way of accessing values from Lvars seemed awfully clunky

Yes, I think in your case Air Manager is the best solution. My situation was different as I built the modules around PMDG's 737 and the current version of MobiFlight has all the specific PMDG offsets built-in, also making the complex logic possible without Lua scripting. And it's true that it's much less suitable for X-Plane, but for P3D it's quite good.

 Air Manager is quite a powerful platform but in my opinion it's also a bit more difficult for the beginner. Anyway, Air Manager or MobiFlight- in terms of hardware they both point to Arduino Mega.

Thank you for the responses. Time to look at all the options.