IO interfaces

[netserv]

First of all, congratulations to you excellent work, I know your project since two days, recommendend from Christoph Paulus. Really great. So my question is about IO interfaces. You offer two products (OC and FDS) as IO hardware to connect. No I developped my very very lowcost an very high efficient IO System. Can you recommend a way to interface the IOs from other hardware. Is there any API or other access possible? Thanks for your answer!

Guenther
http://www.tomschik.at

[jeehell]

Hello Guenther,

Yes there is a possibilty on your side to develop a third party API which my software can call. Send me an email or a PM to discuss it further :D

Regards,
JL

[netserv]

thanks for your quick reply! I knew you will have a solution :-) I decided to answer here in the forum to provide the discussion to others.

Now my software at the present state runs on a separate IO pc and handles all to the FSX master pc via lan, to my comserver-app, FSUIPC and finally to FSX. I can provide data wherever you want. Can be a COM object or something else depending on your side. IOs are configured in a csv file. Does it make sense, or is it mandatory to run IOs through your program or will it also work just to communicate with FSX? Otherwise i am sure, you have all data available to read and write anywhere in memory...

Gü.

[jeehell]

It's not I mind discussing it here, but most of what will come out of it is either not interesting or too technical for most people using the software. Also, for the few who can understand and use it, the documentation will be obsolete in not that much time as it's still a very fast developing area of my software...

Now some more details: there is one application inside the suite called HardwareConnect. This one can load DLL modules that are linked (directly or not, depends on the developer and the hardware used) to the hardware. There are various function exports needed for a DLL to be loaded successfully, such as start/stop,output functions and a callback functions for switches.
It is up to the module to determine which input/output represents which cockpit button/light, and there is a simple unique integer for each function to pass in the various led/switches calls.

I have a full documentation in pdf that I can mail you if you give me your email (via PM if you do not wish more spam than what you probably already get...). Again, I don't want to put it here as it will become obsolete someday not that far...


Also, communicating to FS is not needed/not a good idea, as long as it's a control that can be used in my software (i.e. spoilers, engine master switches etc....). You'll see there is waaaaaayyyyy moooorrrrre switches/LEDs than you'd wish to interface with my software directly and without wanting to use FS/FSUIPC :wink:

Regards,

JL

[netserv]

Allright, thanks a lot!

Yes please, send me this doc you mentioned.

I am living in Austria, I was a HW/SW developper in the past. Also private pilot, and I love building stuff I need to play to be happy ;-)

I also agree with you. I would appreciate to receive the doc to see how things are working. For now I am working with a straightforward csv file that describes switch os button positions an how to handle those. Also logging and voice output is programmed. So I am dealing with the offsets, sure... And the major part of all functions are realized in software, hardware is kept on a minimum.

In which environment/language did you develop?

Again I have to mention, that I am really glad to have your programs. Other available and compareable application did not satisfy me enough :-)

have a nice day, Guenther