Well, I made the leap.

[jmig]

Went ahead and ordered some $300 worth of Opencockpit boards for the pit. I have been reading and looking ever since I decided to give up on Leo and Beta Innovations.

I still have a couple of his Plasma modules but, I purchased new axises controls as well. The Opencockpits electronics allows me to use the simple, "Button A do this" software or a more complex "Button A on B do this to C' approach, if it is needed later.

[Michael Carter]

Is the interface really that easy John?

I thought they used that SIOC or whatever language that was for instructions.

I have about given up on Leo as well. He's not supporting FS any longer. I'm using one of his cards for my quadrant and it's a good product. Too bad his focus changed. If you're interested, he is offering an interface board and a few analog engine instruments for fighters that might be right up your alley.

After you receive your boards, please write back and let us know how the interface is and their ease of use...and the shipping costs.

I was going to go with FDT, but I refuse to pay that amount of shipping.

[jmig]

Yes, I agree with Leo. He and I became email friends when he was just getting started. He sent me a couple of his first mini Plasma boards in exchange for me getting him some free samples of a controller IC. I later bought his Plasma 2, expecting to use it along with some other of his cards.

I had planed on using just his cards, as much as possible. Then came FSX and his decision to drop MSFS support. I can’t say I blame him. You only have to read the AVSIM boards for a while to see just how picky many flight simmer can be. Maybe it is because of the long time freeware products that built MSFS but, so many expect everything for free and complain if it isn’t perfect. Try that with any other hobby.

The Opencockpits Io cards use two types of programming. With IOCP you can use FS, FSUICP, or Project magenta variables and assign them to a LED, Button, Switch, encoder, etc. SIOC allows you to write sub routines with if, then statments. I will let you know how complicated it is for me. Believe me, if I can figure out how to program those cards, anybody can. I hate programing. It takes too much brain power and my brain tends to overheat.

I will say this, Open Cockpits people have communicated with me. Freight was 20 euros for second day air. That was the cheapest freight available. That is why I bought everything I thought I might need.

[sas550]

Hi!

I have just started to use io cards. I was recommended by a friend who has built a SAAB AJ37 Viggen cockpit that has many of the original systems working (fantastic achievement www.novelair.com (http://www.novelair.com)) by using io cards.

He suggested to start with sioc from the beginning because he ment that sooner or later I'd have to migrate to sioc anyway because of it's more flexible options.

I admit that it isn't fully clear to me but I start to get a basic understanding of it from cutting, pasting and looking at examples.

There are some good examples at opencockpits forum. Also a guy called Nico Kaan (www.nicokaan.nl (http://www.nicokaan.nl)) has a lot of examples and some tutorials aswell.

[jmig]

This is weird? I have a memory of replying to you last night Andres but, it isn't here? Guess, I did get old too soon?

What I said in the missing post is, I know Nico. I emailed him about the OpenCockpits cards before I purchased them. If anyone uses a Level D 757, he has all the code for that system posted on his site. Nico offers a lot of examples of SIOC code on his site.

[jmig]

Well the Opencockpit's cards came in. They delivered really quick. The only bad thing was the bubble wrap they used to protect them. With all the shifting quite a few pins were bent. However, I was able to straighten them out.

Now if business would slow down long enough for me to hook them up...