Airbus RMP interfacing

[Golflima]

Hi guys,

Has anybody ever converted an Original Airbus Radio Panel for the sim?
I got everything running except the displays. I just started yesterday with it but so far i have not found a solution to get them to work.
Any help here would be highly appreciated. If i come up with a solution myself i'll let you know to help someone with the Same problem in the Future

Cheers, Volker

[sstusek]

Hi Volker,

I am using original RMP´s. I also got everything running (OC boards) except the displays. Original displays are beyond my knowledge, I guess you need ARNIC interface or maybe Arduino controller board and proper code could work...! I had no time and energy to tackle that, I just replaced the original displays with 7 seg. displays. I think it looks close to original displays.
http://www.mycockpit.org/photopost/data/624/RMP.jpg

Did you use 5v to power optical encoder (IR diode)? What is the interpace you use?

Regards,
Simon

[Golflima]

Hi Simon,

thanks for you reply. To replace the Displays was my thought as well. I'll see if i can get them running otherwise i go for that easier solution as well. As i am planning to add an original Overhead i could then use this for the BAT Displays, but we'll see

Yes i have the Encoder powered with 5V and i am running it with a Bodnar Card. Was the easiest for me.

BR Volker

[daviszo]

Hi Volker,
Hi Simon,

I am also working on interfacing a real RMP with Flight Sim. I'm using nothing but some cables with female Dupont connectors at the end (ripped out of an old scrap PC case), an Arduino and a 20-pin RM3183D IC to convert the bipolar RZ ARINC429 messages to two outputs of low voltage logic 1's and 0's.

Last night I stayed up until 3 just trying to get it to work. After rewriting the Arduino code completely and using direct port manipulation instead of the slower but more universal commands like digitalRead(), I could flawlessly read the incoming data and pass it on as a serial message.
After some experimentation with the way it prints the data to the PC through Serial, I started working on a little VB sketch in VS2017 as a temporary solution to reading the incoming data, filtering it according to its label (VHF FREQ), converting the BCD to Decimal using a hacky and inefficient function I tossed together 2 minutes before bed, and then formatting and routing the end result to one of two textboxes (VHF1 and 3) depending on its SDI code.

Today I made a video on this huge progress. I apologize in advance for how incredibly cringy it is. I never speak while filming, and as you can see I am certainly not used to it.



The expenses that I've mentioned are really quite low. The converter chip itself cost me around 4-5 EUR and the shipping was really cheap too. The filtering capacitors, the Arduino, and the wires were things I already had.

As for hacking together a way to interface it ASAP to see if it works, I initially decided on the Jeehell RMP software because it operated through Simconnect and it looked simple yet pretty, however after spending 7 minutes in Cheat Engine trying to find where the frequency is stored and how, I only found a pile of messy data in a one of the addresses, so I gave up on that idea. On the other hand, in FSX I found the COM1 freq in 4 byte mode in a matter of few minutes, and it's quite easily recognizable too. For example, 137.375 would be stored as "13737500". Now all I need to figure out is where the pointer is, since normal addresses change every time you reopen the program.
I choose memory modification because I don't feel like rewriting or porting the code to C# and learning how to use SimConnect right now. First I want to make a stable program for reading and sorting the incoming data. I also want to improve the functions to increase their efficiency, so the program no longer looks and runs like the 50-minute code it actually is.

I'll let you know of any updates in the future if you'd like! : )

Best regards,
Dávid