New radio and MCP panel

The refactoring the radio and MCP panelsis finally completed. You can see a snapshot of the previous situation in this post. The radios were in the left side in two white wodden frames. The MCP and the EFIS were below the two monitors in a very big wodden box bought from Ikea a lot of time ago.

The idea was to have a new box with the EFIS and the MCP in the upper side and the radios at the bottom.The new panel is shown by the following picture.

As you can see the new panel is much more compact. The little screwed panel in the upper left side is intended to contain some buttons controlled via opencockpit. That panel is not as wide as I hoped so I think I will put there not more then 4 buttons. For sure it will contain the master switch and the toga.

Just behind the webcam there is the power switch and another switch to close the contacts of the dip switches of the CPFlight MCP for upgrading the firmware.

The wood is painted with a water paint and the color is RAL7043. The new CPFlight radios have almost the same color of the panel while the old ones, the MCP and the EFIS, are quite different. However the final result is not bad and for sure much better then the original situation.

Yesterday night I made my first flight with the new panel, from EHAM to LIMC. I took this photo while climbing to final FL310 under Brussel CTR:

You can see the panel back lighted. In the left screen the VC and in the rigth monitor IVAP, the FMC and the radio panel. Most of the time, I use the left monitor to browse the charts.

Just upon the rigth screen you can see the three leds of the cabin light, the read and white beacons from the opencockpits light panel.

Work in progress with MCP and radios

Last weekend I began the building of the new panel with MCP, EFIS and radios I bought from CPFlight.

The panel is composed of a box of 64x17 cm to be positioned below the left monitor. In the upper side of the box there will be the EFIS then the MCP. At the bottom, from left to righ, XPNDR, COM, ADF VOR. 

At the present the scheleton of box is completed and the elictrical components are in place. There will be one button for turning ON/OFF the electronics and a two poles switch button for upgarding the firmaware without insering the 2 dip switches in the rear side of the MCP by hand. In this way the firmaware can be upgraded without moving the panel.

At the right upper side of the front panel there is less space then I initially supposed: only  a 8x6 cm little panel. I will put there the master switch, the GA and the button to switch between auto and manual setting of the VOR for the capitain.

In the first step this panel will be empty but ready for the replacement with the panel with the buttons.

For the GA button I have found at conrad a little squared button that can be reasonably used. It has no led on board and so it can't be back lighted. 

The master switch is the most complex button because it has more then one led, at least a red and a yellow one for caution and warning. Till now I have found no button like that on the market. Of course it is sold by specialised web sites but it is very expansive.

The button to switch between manual and automatic VOR tuning can be one of the button (with a green led) I have already used for the light panel.

I am currently investigating the way to build the master switch and korry buttons. I subscribed to mycockpit forum and ther I have found some interesting solution. I will create a new post later with some good solution.

Refactoring of the MCP/EFIS/RADIOS panels

It seems that next week I have to put all my stuff out of the shelf :(

I'll take the chance to fix the not working button of the light panel. At the same time I want to change the setup of the MCP, EFIS and radios. Current setup was in fact a temporary solution that is in place for more then one year. 

The idea is to create a wodden frame having the MCP and the EFIS in the upper side and the 4 radio modules at the bottom. If I have enought space, I will insert some controls in the upper side of the panel. I am thinking of the master switch and GA button or the annunciators or something else. The new panel, painted in RAL 7043, will be placed below the 2 monitors, where the MCP and EFIS are at the present. Giving that I already have at home all the wood I need, i guess that this remake will last for some days only. 

At the end, I will have the left side free for new panels and space on the left for e new panel that I am designing right now.

My idea for this new panel and for the following is to be modular. I mean that frame of the panel will be fixed and sub-panels will be mounted. In this way it will be possible to unmount a sub panel for upgrading or fixing without the need of open everything. Actually, this is nothing new...

Beside this refactoring, I am thinking of a new panel to put on the right side of the MCP/radios panel. I ahve thought a little bit on what controls I have to put in and I am now focused on the engines startup, the gera lever and myabe the flap. I have brosed the net for componets and I have found a gera for the 767 for 280EUR. It is crazy so I am going to build my gear level from scratch and depending on the result I will build a flap lever too.

I am quite disappointed fro the prices of hardware components on the net. Specialised web sites have crazy prices and I am probably not the best to browse electorinc web sites...

IVAP moved in the laptop

Excited by having the hardware connected to the laptop, yesterday I moved IVAP from my desktop in the laptop. Just to be a little more clear (and repetitive): I run FSX in the desktop while opencockpit hardware (the light panel for instance) is connected to a Dell laptop.

The installation went quite smoothly apart that I had to install SimConnects in the laptop. But even this step was quite easy and automatic.
Initially I decided to have all the IVAP subprocesses running in the laptop but the connection with IVAO did not respond. I ended up having in the desktop only the GUI and the IVAO connection while all the rest runs in the laptop.

Surprisingly the IVAO traffic was immediately there, all the hardware (OpenCockpit and CPFlight) worked as usual as well as TeamSpeak for voice communications.

I still have to try with a full online flight to double check if the engine weather works well. By turning the encoders of CPFlight MCP it seems that it now reacts much better.
What is not satisfatory is that the online traffic that is not smooth enough: I have to check connecting the laptop through an RJ45 instead of the wireless.

Moens, the author of IVAP, does not warranty about increasing of performances having IVAP running in a separate windows box in connection with FSX. From this point of view my PC is too old and slow to give definite results but if my CPFlight hardware is more responsive than it means that the performances are better then before.

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.