Just Bought, can i interface these?

[Jordan Farmer]

Hi there guys, i just bought a couple of old aircraft parts, one of them is a digital tachometer from a GA aircraft. It was sold because of being falty, but i thought it would probably be possible to interface it into FS9? and the price was stupidly low so i dont mind really even if i cant, it will look good lit up i guess :p Also an old cessna Xpdr, it looks a little difficult to work with but would add some real authenticity to my pit if i could get it working!

Heres the ebay links:

RPM Meter: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220638646960&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_6899wt_930

XPDR: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220636562844&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT#ht_8123wt_1060

[Boeing 747 Flyer]

You will certainly be able to interface the IDENT Light, Rotary Knob on the left and some of the switches. The actual physical Digit display will have to work as an input device that just "matches up" with the FSX display. This means that the numbers on the display aren't necessarily the same because their data is the same, they are identical because you have "lined up" beforehand.

[No Longer Active]

I did consider buying these 2 items myself, and drew up a plan on how to interface them.

Firstly, the tacho, I come to the conclusion that the only worth while part is the bezel/fascia. Place a cheap digital clock display behind it, and you will have a clock. or use real 7 segment displays, hook it up to a master card and then you will have a digital tacho.

As for the xpdr, again the only worth while part is the bezel/fascia. The rotaries and LED's can be hooked up to an LED card and Input card, but you will need to rip up the frequency selectors and replace with 4 rotaries to do the job. The later of this model is what you would need where the rotaries come as standard.

If you need some old vintage ARC panels. I can get them for around £20 each as reproductions, but they are applied decals on 3mm acrylic, but at least you can have the stack you want.

Good luck,

Alex

[tomenglish2000]

Dont know about the Tacho but you should be able to fully interface the transponder. The little levers to the right of each digit have a unique position for each number 0 .. 7 and so have 8 positions. So you know from which position the lever is in which number is showing. Even the rotary versions of XPDRs can be easily interfaced because the rotaries are not unlimited turns, but only have 8 positions. My Gables 767 XPDR for example has 2 concentric (so 4 total) rotaries, each with only 8 positions.

Tom.-

[Jordan Farmer]

thanks for the help guys, its all very useful for me! So, if i get an 8 position rotary switch for each of the numbers, would that work? and how would i connect that up to an interface? or would a rotary encoder be easier? im not too hot on electronics(yet!). And the tacho i dont know what im going to do with that yet, maybe use it as a clock, maybe a rpm meter or i dunno, its got a little mode switch aswell so it could be used for a few different things, would it be possible and what would i prgram it like? i guess it would all be done by SIOC or summit? Cheers again chaps, much appreciated!

Jordan

[LH784]

Hi,
to see what I did with my Gables Transponder, check out this thread (I don'tr know how to add a link):

Gables Transponder working with OpenCockpits and SIOC

and check out my album for pictures.

Without knowing you Tx, principally you should be able to get your Tx working.

Regards,
Florian

[Jordan Farmer]

Hi again guys, i need some more in depth knowledge now, ive just recieved these in the post, and ripped the Xponder apart :p The switches look fairly confusing, so if i could get a little help with the pinouts for them, and i have a truth table, but i dont understand it, my switch may be a little outdated! But on each switch (from 0-7) i have 4 output connections, a common, all the switches are joined onto the same wire, and then i have output 1, 2 & 4? Would this be fairly easy to interface? By the way, heres the PDF from the manufacturers website:
http://www.digitran-switches.com/specsheets/leverswitch.pdf

Is anybody here able to help me, im not to hot on electronics but im sure there are people here who are :p

Cheers,

Jordan


P.S. This is the 28000 series switch (nearer the bottom of the doc)

[tomenglish2000]

Hello.

Looking at the document together with your description I would say that the switch outputs in binary.

So here is a table of what position connects which pins. O = not live X = Live.

Selection | Output 1 | Output 2 | Output 4
0 O O O
1 X O O
2 O X O
3 X X O
4 O O X
5 X O X
6 O X X
7 X X X

So you need 3 output pins per switch, and you have 4 switches which gives 12 inputs to your interface card. If you are using the Open Cockpits card the most you can have on a single ground (common) connection is 9 so you will have to seperate out at least one of the switches from the common ground. When you have wired up your pins to inputs you will need a SIOC script that reads the state of the three inputs on the switch and converts that to a number that is sent to flight simulator.

Tom.

[Jordan Farmer]

Right, ok well, im not to goodwith SIOC, would this be 'learnable'? Also, i dont think there is a FSUIPC offset that corresponds to each number for each line of the XPDR, e.g there is no selection for 0-7 for 1's, 10's, 100's & 1000's. How else woud i select this, will it be direct through SIOC? or will i have to write some code to interface with the XPDR directly? Hmm, his seems like its going to be a big task! Oh well, i look forward to it! Also, what card would you reccomend? I m probably going to use the OC IO Matser card as i can do the outpus for the reply light, test light and IDENT light etc! Or a bodnar card? or maybe a different? Hmm, there is too much choice!

Thanks tom,

Jordan