Help with I/O card choice

[boris4356]

I am presently using hacked joysticks to run my switches, and a USB cable to power LED's. I want to take it to the next level, but I am a bit confused as to what type of card I should get.

I only have a basic cockpit, and need to run around 30 to 40 switches and about a dozen or so LED's. I have the registered version of FSUIPC 4.

Where I am confused is what software, and or type of I/O card do you need to be able to have a few annunciators like Ice Warning, Door Open, transitional landing gear, OMI Lights etc...Is FSUIPC capable of doing this with a Leo Bodnar card, or do you need something more sophisticated, such as an Open Cockpits card?
I have read the FSUIPC manuals and the Open Cockpits manuals, but I am still confused as to what I need.

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Bill

[Buddym]

The Bodnar card is great, I love mine, but it only has inputs, so no LEDs can be driven with it. I use the OpenCockpits cards for driving LEDs and seven-segment LED displays as well as reading switches and encoders, they work great. The Mastercard has a TON of I/O, like 72 inputs and 64 outputs if I remember correctly....I only use mine every day!!! You use one input for a simple switch, one per contact on a true rotary switch, and you use 2 pins to connect a "grey code" rotary encoder. A Displays card can be connected to drive seven-segment displays, each Displays card can drive 16 digits, say 4 for altitude, 3 for IAS, 3 for VS, 3 for heading, and 3 for course.

The OC cards use either the basic IOCards software, or the more advanced SIOC software to interface with the FSUIPC offsets in order to light LEDs or read inputs from switches, etc. Both are free downloads from OC website. The IOCards software is simple to configure, and you can do quite a lot with it. For more advanced functions SIOC can be used, it is very powerful. There are quite a few builders here that can help you along with the OC stuff, as well as the OC website forums.

At the least you need a Mastercard and the software. It connects via the parallel printer port on a PC. I use the USB expansion card to connect the Mastercard, which is great for newer PCs with no parallel port and offers better compatibility than the directly connected parallel port interface.

These are the only 2 commercially available systems I use so I can't offer opinions on others, hope this helps.

BuddyM

[boris4356]

Thanks for your reply!

Bill