In place

The panel is in place just on top of the right screen.

These are 2 shots of my flight simulator setup (without the 2 peices of my saitek X45 joy):

Done!

I did the first flight with the panel over the table and all the cables around me. The panel worked as expected and the simulator behaved very well without slowing down the simulator. Reaction tme was very good also under stress. This is didn´t surprise me because the hardware is connected to the laptop and the software runs there too.

I have discovered that one of the button of the panel is not implemented by 767LD SDK and so now the second button at le left side (the aisle flood) is free. I am thinking to remap this button to something else.. I don´t know yet. It might be the parking brake until I implement another panel. Or the external power supply... Well I don´t know yet...

The pictures below show the panel with the front cover and the second plexy screwed over it. I like it... I have put all these screws thinking that the final looking was better but I am not fully convinced... However it is how it is and I am not going to change it!


Sorry for the red pen... it is there to keep the panel straight in front of the camera. And sorry again for the miserable quality of the pictures...

I don´t need to paint the wodden because it would be invisible in the place where I have decided to install the panel.
And I have decided that this panel will have no backlight because the final result would be very bad in any case.

Panel connected to the simulator

Today I connected the hardware with FSX.

First of all I would thank Niko Kaan once more: it has been very vey easy.

SIOC runs in the laptop where I connected the OpenCockpits hardware through the USB. leksseecon instead runs in the same PC where the flight simulator runs.
I have a lan where each PC has a fixed IP number so I had to change the lekseecon config file giving the IP address of the laptop.
On the SIOC side instead I had a little problem because I forgot to configure sioc.ini telling which MasterCard is in the system and how it is connected. This problem was not easy to find because everything seemed to work well but it was not possible to read/change hardware values. At the end I found an hidden written in the main SIOC panel saying Stopped and after a short search in the forum I got the solution. What about writing iStopped in red?!?

Programming SIOC was much easier then I though but I have to say that the SIOC editor panel is slow and boring even for a short program like mine is. Next step is to program by writing a text file.

Before finishing and go to have dinner, I have to spend a couple of words on lekseecon. I think it is really wanderful and almost transparent. It connects to the remote SIOC with no need to buy WideClient from Peter Dowson.
Beside that, synchronization with the hardware happens by magic and in this way the SIOC program is shorter, faster to write and to debug. Thank you again Nico.

As I said everything worked Immediatly and I did what I want in just an afternoon playng with the software. I had to say that I am an expert programmer and sytem manager so I would not be surprised if those steps are less easy for someone else. But believe me, it is easy ;-)

Next step is to make the first fly with the panel. It is months that I am waiting this moment...

Successfully tested

A few minutes ago I succesfully tested all the connections (led sand buttons) with the OpenCockpits Controlador.
Initially nothing worked. I guess the problem was that I connected the MasterCard to the 4th socket of the expansion card instead of the first one.

The picture upon shows the test session where a couple of buttons are in the ON position and a couple of leds in the botton are lighted.

As I said in one of my previous post I decided to put the first masterCard together with the power supply. If you follow the cables of the picture upon you can that thea are connected to the upper right side of the box. The following picture shows the internal of the box.

The muster card is in the upper side. The first ouput socket is connected to a 40 pin flat cable. Tha cable is divided in 2 DB25 sockets. The output is taken from the DB9.

Having all in this box is a great because I can move the master card and the usb and the power supply eveywherewithout caring, for example, if it is upside down.

Sorry for the very poor quality of the attached pictures: my canon PowerShot S60 is almost dead!

Next step is to finish the panel by attaching the printed picture and the protective plexi over it. For the time being I am not going to add the backlight but in principle I have all I need in place (one free output line and 5V line).

It is also time to start connecting the panel to the 767LD. I will use lekseecon from Niko Kan together with SIOC. While testing I took the indexes of buttons and leds.

Wires

Here you can see a picture of the wiring of the outputs:

At the bottom there is the DB9.
The positive pole goes to directly to the left side of the 40 pins socket. A negative cable goes at the right side to. The LED for the power will be connected to these 2 cabel and installed into one side of the panel.
The negative pole is connected the 7 upper right pins while the seven positve cable goes in the seven bottom pins of the socket with a little resistance.

This wiring allows me to get a pair of cable from the 40 wires flat cable and connect dirctly the negative and the positive to each LED.
In my opinion the connection is very simple and more important I can decouple the panel from the frame olugging or unplugging the flat cable in the socket.

The design for the input lines is more or less the same as you can see in this picture:

The DB25 is below the pin holes card and connects 2 bloks of 20 wires, 2 of which are grounds.
The division resembles the master card architecture but the grounds extends for 9 poles.

The 40 pins socket is divided in 2 areas for the 2 blocks of inputs. The ground extends for 9 pins in the high left side and for other 9 pins in the left upper side. Each of the 9 inputs of the same block are just beow the respective ground.
The 4 pins at the center of the socket (2 at the top and 2 at the bottom) are unused.

Cabling

I have finally cabled all the leds and buttons in the panel.

I am not going to attach the schema here (please send me an email if you are interested).
The concept driving the wiring is the following:

• the box has a DB9 socket for the leds (the same that is in the master card). This means that there is one +5 line and one more out then the panel needs.
  
• the box has a DB25 with 18 input lines (plus 2 ground; it takes one half of one of the 2 output sockets of the master card). In this way ther are 4 spare output lines.
  
• it must be possible to remove the panel from the frame unplugging a socket but without damaging the connections
• a LED takes the +5V from the output and shows if the panel is connected to the master card

The idea is that the cables from the DB9 and the DB25 aof the frame re connected to a IDE 40 pins sockets screwed to the frame itself. A 40 pins cable is connected from one side into the socket and to the other side to the buttons (or the leds).
In this way if I want to remove the panel from the box I only have to unplug the 40 pins cable.

I have successfully tested the leds. While for the buttons I need some more work because I do not have a 25 pin cable.

I have decided the put the master card in the power supply box so I am now reshaping the box to fit both the cards.