Beltfed
05-06-2013, 06:57 AM
Hello everyone, I have bought a BU0836A card from Leo Bodnar for the A320 FCU I plan to build. I’ve been reading all the tutorials generously put by Ian Sisson for everyone to read on his site (I PM him with no luck), and particularly the one about DIY encoders: http://www.737ng.co.uk/simple%20encoder.pdf (http://www.737ng.co.uk/simple%20encoder.pdf) What I would like to do is use the encoder to change Heading and Altitude displayed on on the FCU. Since encoders are hard to find where I live, after carefully reading his tutorial, I came up with the following scheme for converting a one pole/12 positions rotary switch into a free 360 degrees encoder:
7833
After connecting it to the BU card Pins(columns) 11-12 with their ground (Row 2), and before configuring it with Leo’s utility, I got a correct sequencing:
A off-B off, A off-B on, Both On, A on-B off, again Both Off etc. as would do a real 2 bit Gray encoder without prior settings (as in the post “Encoder wiring problems” at http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/opencockpits-general-discussion/25344-encoder-wiring-problems.html).
After running the utility and setting the different 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 I got different results that I don’t pretend to understand, also because I don’t really know what to expect:
- With 1:1, I get in Windows Joysticks properties a cyclic double impulse 11-11/12-12, both cw and counter cw. DIview sees it as button 10 (x2)/button 11 (x2) and always down/up/down/up
- With 1:2 and 1:4, it gets completely erratic, with no clear pattern (i.e. many impulses sometimes on 12 followed by one or two 11, sometimes an alternation of both, sometimes only 11s followed by 12s, etc. I don’t know if it’s because of a bounce problem.
Now, I know that a real encoder would probably work straight out of the box, but as I said they are hard/impossible to find here where I currently live, mailing system is not reliable enough to buy encoders on the net and special courier like UPS or DHL would cost more than the encoders.
So please, based on your expertise, do you think there is a way to make it work for my purpose? Cause if making push, toggle and rotary switches work is fairly simple (I gave it a try for the overhead), I confess I didn’t really understand how to program the encoders actions when it comes to Hdg and Alt, and I would be very grateful for any info about how to make it work through the BU0836A (SIOC, FSUIPC, Macros,…).
Thank you in advance for any helpful info you may provide.
Stephane K.A.Comneno
7833
After connecting it to the BU card Pins(columns) 11-12 with their ground (Row 2), and before configuring it with Leo’s utility, I got a correct sequencing:
A off-B off, A off-B on, Both On, A on-B off, again Both Off etc. as would do a real 2 bit Gray encoder without prior settings (as in the post “Encoder wiring problems” at http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/opencockpits-general-discussion/25344-encoder-wiring-problems.html).
After running the utility and setting the different 1:1, 1:2, 1:4 I got different results that I don’t pretend to understand, also because I don’t really know what to expect:
- With 1:1, I get in Windows Joysticks properties a cyclic double impulse 11-11/12-12, both cw and counter cw. DIview sees it as button 10 (x2)/button 11 (x2) and always down/up/down/up
- With 1:2 and 1:4, it gets completely erratic, with no clear pattern (i.e. many impulses sometimes on 12 followed by one or two 11, sometimes an alternation of both, sometimes only 11s followed by 12s, etc. I don’t know if it’s because of a bounce problem.
Now, I know that a real encoder would probably work straight out of the box, but as I said they are hard/impossible to find here where I currently live, mailing system is not reliable enough to buy encoders on the net and special courier like UPS or DHL would cost more than the encoders.
So please, based on your expertise, do you think there is a way to make it work for my purpose? Cause if making push, toggle and rotary switches work is fairly simple (I gave it a try for the overhead), I confess I didn’t really understand how to program the encoders actions when it comes to Hdg and Alt, and I would be very grateful for any info about how to make it work through the BU0836A (SIOC, FSUIPC, Macros,…).
Thank you in advance for any helpful info you may provide.
Stephane K.A.Comneno