Opencockpits USB servo card

[Rockeyes]

I recently purchased the above card and have two problems, one being win Xp often does not recognize the card/driver after a power up of the PC, the other being that when I do get it running I cant see how to tell the SOIC which servo to drive.
I’m fed up trolling through Google searches and the Open cockpit forums only to draw a blank. Has anyone else had this problem or got a solution, before i go mad ? I would also be interested in knowing if any one has based their cockpit on these cards or are they just a royal pain?

[fordgt40]

I have 6 overhead gauges working perfectly off this card. Yes, sometimes windows does not recognise the card, however, in my case this was down to only one machine running XP, the Vista machine has no problem. Generally avoid using add-on hubs (the cheap Chinese ones!) and if you continue to have problems recognising the device from Windows then go into Control Panel/Devices/Hardware and remove (de-install) all USB devices and reboot - this often works.

Telling SIOC which servo to drive is not difficult - it is explained in the friendly manual page 6 on the following link

http://www.opencockpits.com/uploads/...servos_eng.pdf

David

[737NUT]

you also need to make sure your SIOC.ini is properly configured for your servo card. They work flawless on my vista machine.

[Rockeyes]

I’m please to hear that the card works fine with your o/head gauges as that gives me confidence in the system itself (half the battle).
I’m not using a USB hub at the moment but I will be sure to take your advice when I make a purchase. The PC is using Windows XP pro with patch 3 installed and will recognise the OC card after numerous reboots and removals of the USB device under the Hardware/USB drivers section of Windows. I then can get the servo to test. However if I shut down the PC I’m back to the device not being recognised.
I’ve since plugged in the card to another computer running the same version of XP without any problems. So the fault clearly is with my PC.

Tomorrow I’m back to base where I have an i7 a PC running Win7 so I hopefully will be able to progress a little further.

Thanks for the help guys

Bill

[Rockeyes]

Built another card today and tests ok with the Windows 7 Pc (64) . Still having problems getting a servo to work as a VSI, guess I’m just thick

[fordgt40]

Hi

Does SIOC see your servo card ie in the top right sioc sign-on box there should be a device number? Does the servo move at all, but not as you would wish? Perhaps you could post your code and outline the problem.

David

[Rockeyes]

Thanks for helping David. I will post in list form to help to keep some order.

1, I have the following programs downloaded and installed :
a, Opencockpits SIOC ver 3.7B1
b, IOCard Servo ver 0.1 Beta
c, IOCards USB Test ver 0.2 Beta
d, USBCheck ver 2.0
e, FSX
f, Full licensed FSUIP

2, IOCard USB Test shows:
a, Device 2276
b, The servo is connected to Ser-1 and ranges lower=0, Mid point =572, Upper =1023

3, SIOC
a, IDX=0-10 Card-USBServo-Device=20

I presume one of the first things I need to do is tell the operating program that I have this card installed and using position one to drive a servo. It seems that there is already a program written for a VSI (good starting point) in the Config SIOC.

Any ideas where I go from here? I was up until late last night going through hundreds of Powerpoint slides which don't seem to reflect the current software.

The other point of confusion at the moment is what programs are required to be running and is there an order in which they should be run?

[fordgt40]

Thanks for the info

The good news is that you card works under IOcards test. The bad news is that SIOC is not seeing FS and the SIOC script you are using appears incomplete with no reference to the servo.

The only programmes you need to have running are FSX with FSUIPC and SIOC, if all on the same computer else if you are running SIOC on another computer then you need to run Wideclient on the remote computer. Wideclient provides a network link from a remote computer to FSX on a different computer. Your screen dump of SIOC shows that it is not connected to FSX - not certain why, perhaps you could post your sioc.ini file. Also make sure that your sioc.ini file is ammended to include reference to your servo card - amend the line USBServos=0,0 to USBServos=0,20 to reflect youe card device number.
With regard to a suitable SIOC script, the example you have posted appears incomplete with no entries for a servo motor.

Try this example which should move your servo to reflect the plane pitch


// *****************************************************************************
// * Config_SIOC ver 3.3 - By Manolo Vélez - www.opencockpits.com
// *****************************************************************************
// * FileName : servos.txt
// * Date : 22/4/2006



Var 0000, Value 0 // INICIALIZA - Initialization
{
V0001 = 511 // servo-motors to center
}

Var 0001, Link USB_SERVOS, Output 1, PosL 1, PosC 511, PosR 1023, Type 1 // Pitch

Var 0010, Link FSUIPC_IN, Offset $0578, Length 4 // PITCH, *360/(65536*65536) CONVERSION
{
L0 = V0010 * 8.38E-008 // convert to angle
IF L0 > 25 // Limit 25 degree Max.
{
L0 = 25
}
IF L0 < -25 // Limit -25 degree MAx.
{
L0 = -25
}
L1 = L0 * 20.32 // Calculate degrees for servo
V0001 = L1 + 511
}

[badbill65]

Hi Rockeyes ive just bought one of those servo cards and also finding a bit of difficulty in understanding WHATS GOING ON !! HELP

[Rockeyes]

Hi Rockeyes ive just bought one of those servo cards and also finding a bit of difficulty in understanding WHATS GOING ON !! HELP

Stick in here then chum as we can both learn a thing or two