totally baffled

[tiburon]

Hi,

I recently finished a little throttle console with some switches to use with the PMDG 737, I assigned the switches to the offsets for engine start and parking brake through FSUIPC, everything worked flawlessly.
Today, however, I tried to start a flight and was unable to set the parking brakes ! Not with the assigned switch, not by mouse-clicking on the parking brake, not by using the key combination ctrl ., nothing moved the parking brake.
What I noticed however was on another networked computer where active sky and some other applications run through WideFS my parking brake switch, only connected to the FS computer, was changing the tabs in Firefox !!
I tried disconnecting everything and although the strange behaviour in Firefox stopped, I still could not move the parking brake.
I hope somebody can give me some explanation as to what could cause this strange behaviour.

Sorry for the longish post, I wanted to be as clear as possible

[Michael Carter]

I wish I could help. Early this past week I experience similar problems with my overhead. Found to be two faulty inputs on my interface card.

I wasn't able to use the mouse or keyboard command to turn the mag switch in the default Cessna to any position. It was stuck in the ignition ON position. The jet starters in the 727 were starting up by themselves, the aircraft was pushing itself out of the stand, etc, etc.

After troubleshooting the card and correcting the input routing, all was back to normal in the 727.

[tiburon]

Forgot to mention : I am using the OC USB-keys card for interfacing...



cheers

Martin

[Bob Reed]

The other thing you may want to check is if FS assigned actions to your switches. Sometimes when FS starts up and thinks it sees a new input device it assign's the inputs to them it thinks they should be. Just a thought.

[tiburon]

Thanks for the answer, Bob.
The thing is, when I disconnect everything, I still can't move the parking brake, besides, FS doesn't recognize the keypresses through the USB-keys card, only FSUIPC does.

regards

Martin

[barkay]

Hi,

If you are using OC cards I am assuming you are using SIOC as well. Check your SIOC.ini file for the keyboard commands. The button you have assigned for park brake might be sending a tab sign to the computer thus making it confused.

If this does not help and if you are using widefs make sure no key assignments conflicts the commands to be sent to fsuipc.

I will think of other things but need more info on your setup

Regards,

barkay

[tiburon]

No, I'm not using SIOC. it's just a few switches connected to a USB-keys card. I use the few offsets that are known for the PMDG parking brake and Fuel cutoff switches. For the parking brake I'm sending SHIFT-CTRL-1 for ON and SHIFT-CTRL-2 for OFF to FSUIPC. (For some reason I'm unable to do this via widefs on a networked computer?)
The moment I connect to FS with the encoder_keys.exe the parking brake freezes. Disconnecting the software or hardware does not help.
When I first installed it though it worked flawlessly.
I'm at work now so I can't send a copy of te encoder_keys.ini that I use, but I will post it tonight.
Thanks for your help.

regards

Martin

[tiburon]

some more information: on the FS pc and the networked pc where Firefox is running I have Input Director installed to be able to control both computers with one kayboard and mouse. the Firefox tabs change when I use the parking brake switch connected to the FS pc. The focus in Input Director is on the FS pc, there's no WideFS software running on the client or any other connection between the two except for Input Director and still the tabs change....

[barkay]

Lets see the .ini file. I am assuming there is a conflict between that and your assignments. Otherwise I really ca not think of anything snce the card does send the commands which is eişther stated in SIOC.ini file or encoder.ini file.

Regards,

barkay

[tiburon]

OK, so here's the .ini file. really nothing much to it :

As you can see, I only assigned the first 8 keys :

[ fichero de configuracion para USBKeys ]
[ Configuration file for USBKeys ]

[ Múltiples USBs ]
[ Non unique USB ]
MUSB=No

[ Número de periférico para el USB ]
[ USB Device number ]
deviceUSB=2276

[ Nombre exacto de la ventana donde se enviarán las teclas ]
[ Name of window for key send ]
[window = "FS2004" ]

window = "FS2004"


[ Asignación de teclas ]
[ assign your keys ]

#1=\31\4
#2=\32\4
#3=\33\4
#4=\34\4
#5=\35\4
#6=\36\4
#7=\3\11\2\4
#8=\3\12\2\4
#9=I
#10=J
#11=K
#12=L
#13=M
#14=N
#15=O
#16=P
#17=Q
#18=R
#19=S
#20=T
#21=U
#22=V
#23=W
#24=X
#25=Y
#26=Z
#27=1
#28=2
#29=3
#30=4
#31=5
#32=6
#33=7
#34=8
#35=9
#36=0
#37=<
#38=,
#39=.
#40=-
#41=*
#42=+
#43=//
#44=
#45=
#46=
#47=
#48=
#49=
#50=
#51=
#52=
#53=
#54=
#55=
#56=
#57=
#58=
#59=
#60=
#61=
#62=
#63=
#64=
#65=
#66=
#67=
#68=
#69=
#70=
#71=
#72=
#73=
#74=
#75=
#76=
#77=
#78=
#79=
#80=
#81=
#82=
#83=
#84=
#85=
#86=
#87=
#88=\E

[ End of File ]

[barkay]

Actually you have 43 keys assigned already. The problem is to find which key number is pressed when you try to press the parking brake switch and/or button.

You can find this out from fsuipc by pressing those buttons and making sure that it is not assigned to something else. Besides you have to know that when the usbkeys window is running it is acting as an emulator for keyboard. So without knowing by pressing to more than one button you might have entered a weird combination which ended up in your operating system files as a different setting.

If nothing helps than delete fsuipc.ini file in the modules directory of FS and redo eveything.

However,

My personal opinion is that usb keys card is sending key combinations to different programs. Either because you forget to close it after flight or because it sends these key commands to computer and runnign programs get triggered by it since they do have those combinations for performing specific tasks.

regards,

barkay

[tiburon]

Thanks, yes I could have deleted the 43 assignments but then, key 9 - 88 are not connected to anything, how could they be sending anything?
I did already solve the issue by deleting the FSUIPC.ini and reassigning everything. Did a flight, everything worked fine.
Only thing is, I am still unable to do the same on a wideclient computer through WIdeFS, no key presses are seen by FSUIPC at all.
Still, it works now, so thanks very much for your suggestions and help.

regards

Martin