Progress at last - just not a lot of it!

[NigelD]

Well guys, I've been looking forward to posting in this part of the forum for ages! It seems like a long time since I joined the forum and even longer since I started bleating on about building a cockpit. Well this weekend I hit the MDF and produced. . . something! It's supposed to be my FCU panel and both sides of the EFIS for my Airbus. I have not painted them yet. The other thing is the 7 segment display - I'm still wondering about that. It will probably be Opencockpits kit when I get around to buying it. And figuring out how it works. Here's how it looks:

FCU Front
http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/5390/fcu003.jpg (http://img26.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fcu003.jpg)

FCU Rear
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/4851/fcu007.jpg (http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fcu007.jpg)

FCU End View
http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/3889/fcu009.jpg (http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fcu009.jpg)

Captain's EFIS
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/8139/fcu012.jpg (http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fcu012.jpg)

As with all things in this hobby, I've had to compromise. Sourcing push/pull rotaries has been more or less impossible (£80 is too much for ONE!) so I've added little toggle switches to simulate the 'pull' option. These rotaries have a push switch on them already (nod of thanks to Ian Sisson). There are a couple of other switches to add for the speed/mach etc.

I'm pleased - hope they look better when painted! And it's a start! Hope there's more progress soon... ;)

Nigel.

[Michael Carter]

Very good job. Clean and functional. Scratch building is not dead yet. ;)

[Matt Olieman]

Very good job. Clean and functional. Scratch building is not dead yet. ;)

I agree with Mike :) Nice job!!!

Thanks for the pics.

Matt Olieman

[Buddym]

Nice job Nigel! I feel your pain as far as slow progress..

I see you have what look to be the encoders and knobs from the guy on ebay... I bought that same lot. I tested these last night with Leo's new card, and running the little program that let's you hook up the encoders. It worked great, very smooth tuning on the radios with them. If these are the same ones I have they didn't work with the OC mastercard. They work smoothly with the Bodnar card though, so did the dual encoder I purchased from cockpitsonicusa.


Cheers!

BuddyM

[pdpo]

Hi Nigel,

a good start....
but you mention that you will add the 7-segments still to it. In another post you also mentioned that you are using wilco airbus.
We tried to explain that it will not be possible (as far as I know) to drive those 7segments
from wilco airbus since this addon does not keep his values for the fcu in memory where peter dowson (FSUIPC) can read. So these values are not available for reading by opencockpits software, hence not on the hardware.
In order to fill your fcu digits, opencockpits can only base itself on values present in fsuipc offsets or on values derived from values in fsuipc offsets. The standard FS autopilot has his values in fsuipc. Therefor you need an addon which writes his internal values in fsuipc offsets, like project magenta, AST for airbus. PSS does not so that, wilco most probably also not.
The exception here is the 767 by level-d. This one allows software to read his internal values and then Niko Kaan wrote the software to read them and put it in fsuipc offsets. This however is not supported anymore by Niko (I think) since his more recent software will not write the data to fsuipc but directly to the opencockpits hardware with an intermediate step via SIOC.
Hopes this clarifies somehow ... and sorry to tell you this ...

The only way an addon like PSS and wilco is usefull is for inputs via keystrokes and the mouse trapping. Output from the addons can only via the screens which can be undocked and moved around.

Greetz Peter