Day?

[Mike.Powell]

The blocky sort of LCD character display is a seven segment LCD display. I don't recall seeing that specific type on Ebay except as part of a piece of equipment.

[AndyT]

Those are 'Liquid Crystal Displays' or LCD's.
Very inexpensive but fragile.

[fweinrebe]

If I can recommend an excellent product for Microchip PIC development, then it is the EasyPIC 5 from mikroElektronika. Here are an option of 3 compilers ie. Basic, Pascal and C.

I own an EasyPIC5 and the C-compiler for it, and I must say it is about 1000% easier to program these chips in C than it is in Assembler. The add-ons you get for this board is exceptional and everything comes with sample code.

Busy with a Comm2 and Nav2 radio at the moment which interfaces to the PC via USB with a PIC18F4550. On the PC side I use C# Express 2008.

Also check out their books section, there are a few free books about microcontrollers.

But you still need to build your own circuits after the development phase is complete. So you will need to invest in skills and tools to make PC boards. Or order them from somewhere if you don't want to make them yourself.

[Didrik]

Thanks a lot, is it hard to get info from FS to show in an external display?

[fweinrebe]

Thanks a lot, is it hard to get info from FS to show in an external display?

Depends on your programming / electronics experience. I agree with Mike, start small and work your way up. Start with switches and LEDs and turn up the volume from there. It is very fulfilling knowing you hacked something. But if you start with something too complicated for your experience, that can become very frustrating.

Also It would have been impossible if it wasn't for FSPUIC. So learn how to write your own program in VB.Net or C# (any other supported language) that interfaces with MSFS via FSPUIC.

[fweinrebe]

Is there any easy way to making a basic NAV / COM module with or without segment displays, i have the BU0836 board, could i wire encoders to this and control nav and com directly, or is there any simple controllers we can build that includes segment displays, ive always wanted to know how to build a simple radio?

Alex, look at this article about Controlling LCDs with a parallel port: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/cspplcds.aspx.

[Didrik]

I just wanted to check, Project Magenta is only for using digital screens to show your instruments like EICAS(?)? and electronic attitude indicator and stuff. If we'd like to use analogue gauges, is it possible to only buy FSUIPCS and WideFS and not PM?

Regards Didrik

[Per Alm]

Yes, FSUIPC and WideFS are sold separately. You can find them here:

http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html

However, if you buy PM software you should know that keys for FSUIPC and WideFS are included.

I agree with the other posts in this thread...... if you plan to build everything from scratch do consider to start with a smaller project. Previously I planned to make a 737NG, but eventually ended up with a customized Learjet. It's cheaper. I have designed and constructed all our instruments from scratch....
In this way you can also design whatever instruments you need/want.

Regards

Per Alm

[Mike.Powell]

Thanks a lot, is it hard to get info from FS to show in an external display?

If you're using FSX you can use SimConnect to extract data. SimConnect is the API Microsoft developed. The SDK ships with the deluxe version of FSX. There are a number of code samples in the SDK.

It is very similar to the ESP SimConnect SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526983.aspx

[Didrik]

That was exactly what I was looking for thanks a lot!!