BU836X Bodnar Card Problem

[Michael Carter]

I fired up the sim this morning for a flight and found that at least two thirds of the programmed functions in the overhead are no longer working.

FSUIPC does not recognize most of the switches that are hooked up to the card including pnuematic starters, beacon, taxi and runway lights, heading bug, OBS, pitot heat, and strobe lights among others.

What is working are the yaw dampers, nav lights, no smoking and fasten seat belt switches. That's it.

In addition, as soon as the aircraft loads, all three pnuematic starters start by themselves and there is no way to stop it either with a keyboard command or a physical command.

When loading the default Cessna at Seattle, the engine is attempting to start with the mixture pulled all the way back and the mags in the 'on' position.

The magneto switch cannot be turned to any position using the mouse or keyboard commands. I find this very strange.

Why would most of the inputs on this card just stop working for no reason and then exhibit the strange behavior with the default Cessna upon FS startup?

Not one thing has changed since the last shutdown.

Assignments remain the same throughout the FS assignments page, all devices are on and recognized, but the card seems to be bad.

Does anyone have a clue about what could be happening or have happened?

My 727 is grounded.

[Buddym]

Hi,

I know dumb questions are a apin, but here goes.... did you try plug/unplug the usb module, and if so do the funtions all seem ok if you go to the joystick config and test them?

I read an article in the bodnar forum about a similar issue and plug/unplug seemed as tho it corrected it. I am interested since I just started playing with my card from leo on saturday.. very promising.

BuddyM

[Geremy Britton]

Funny you mention it michael, i don't yet own the leo badnar card .. but on a couple of occations i did have the FS default cessna coming through as the engines for my 737. Bizarre realy. but them after starting it up the next day it dissappeared.

hehe. Can't help you any further than just to chip that in. Ian might be able to help you on this one.

Kind Regards

[Michael Carter]

I'm still waiting to hear back from Leo.

This is very strange. It's as though two of the chips on the card stopped working.

Unplugging and re-plugging in the card has no effect. I don't know why it would as the card still has very limited function.

This card is programmed through FSUIPC. There are no assignments through FS.

[Leo Bodnar]

I'm still waiting to hear back from Leo.

Hi Michael,
I have sent you an email with some update two hours ago. Please let me know if you haven't received it yet.
Cheers
Leo

[Michael Carter]

Hi Leo, thanks I did just check my mail and it's there. It might be awhile now until I can get to it. I'm in the middle of something else.

I'm Michael BTW.

I'll let you know if this works.

Thanks again.

[Michael Carter]

The version I had was 1.21 and a serial number of BO5744

After extracting the the .exe, the version was 1.3. This didn't work. I closed FS and extracted and loaded the .exe again. This time it was version 1.23.

What happened to version 1.3???

Once again after the upload I tried to install it and I received an error: "Runtime error 9 Subscript out of range."

I tried again. This time FSUIPC recognized the taxi, beacon, heading bug and OBS rotary encoders. I'm still missing the rest of the functions from my first post.

However, the rotary encoders are not working. Rotating the knob rotates both indicators sometimes, while other times neither will rotate but bounce back and forth on one heading.

Everything else in the aircraft NOT wired to this card works. The engines are still trying to spool up with no power, gas, or air applied. In addition, the aircraft is now trying to push out of the stand on its own.

What's wrong with this card or the firmware?

[Leo Bodnar]

Hi Michael,
Version 1.23 is the right one. 1.3 was the version of bootloader.
Since the firmware has been updated and reset you need to go back and turn encoders on again by downloading the encoder configuration software from BU0836X webpage.
What happens if you just open the Windows gaming devices control panel application? Can you see buttons/encoders working?
Cheers
Leo

[Michael Carter]

Hi Michael,
Version 1.23 is the right one. 1.3 was the version of bootloader.
Since the firmware has been updated and reset you need to go back and turn encoders on again by downloading the encoder configuration software from BU0836X webpage.
What happens if you just open the Windows gaming devices control panel application? Can you see buttons/encoders working?
Cheers
Leo


When I open the Win Game manager the same functions are working that I stated in my previous post. Inputs 1-8 are lit up in red, 1-3 are the engine pnuematic starters which is why they won't shut off. I can't remember what are on the other 4-8 inputs, but I'm sure they are functions that are not working.

Only half of this card is working. The heading bug pot is still erratic and lighting up two inputs at a time, and the OBS pot is lighting up four inputs at a time as it is turned.

And another surprise; I can lower the gear with the lever but I can't raise it without using the keyboard. Both use the same command with different inputs.

Note: The aircraft is trying to push out of the stand because the Shift P key is mapped to the Ground Crew call button. That's not working either apparently.

[ak49er]

Mike, you have been experimenting with Wide View lately, is there something you've changed recently?

Maybe some sort of feedback loop created by your third party aircraft's systems?

[Michael Carter]

The problem is either in the card or I have a bad encoder.

After dropping the overhead and inspecting the wiring, I found nothing unusual nor anything making contact with the card other than the original wiring.

I started up the sim and almost everything was back to normal. The engines are not trying to start themselves, the aircraft is not attempting to push itself out of the stand, the lights are working again, etc, etc.

The OBS is working fine once again too, however, the heading bug encoder is activating two inputs in both the clockwise and counterclockwise directions.

It is also outputting to an input to which one side of the encoder is NOT wired up to. In other words, I was using pairs 21 & 22 for the heading bug encoder. It was outputting to 20 & 21, which also screws up the OBS as that is the ajacent input pair.

Thinking it might just be those inputs, I moved the heading bug encoder down to the end of the card using inputs 29 & 30. The encoder is outputting to inputs 28 & 29.

In addition, the encoder is bouncing between both of these inputs no matter which way it is turned, so the bug goes nowhere when rotated. I also removed one leg of the encoder from one of the input pairs and it does the same thing.

It seems to me either all of the input pairs have been shifted up (or down) by one position, or I have a really strange encoder problem.

The landing gear is acting the same way, though through FSUIPC I was able to fix this by assigning the single switch to perform the up/down function using a press and release command rather than two separate commands, one for each switch on the gear handle.

[Michael Carter]

Mike, you have been experimenting with Wide View lately, is there something you've changed recently?

Maybe some sort of feedback loop created by your third party aircraft's systems?

Absolutely nothing has changed since the last flight after shutdown last week.

Wideview has been running fine, as has the aircraft systems until yesterday.

[airbus319]

This is gonna sound crazy mike but bear with me, is the card sat on a metallic surface? I sat mine down on the granite worktop in my kitchen whilst soldering and there was a loose piece of wire underneath and it threw the card into disarray, it may be worthwhile checking that the card is shielded.

cheers

David.