giving up on real gauges?

[gspannelljr]

I have put aside my sim project for at least a year due to frustration. I lost motivation while trying to get real gauges to work with my sim. The problems were two fold. First, converting the gauges to servos was difficult trying to get it all to work mechanicaly. second, writing the code using fsupic was overwhelming, I am not a programmer for certain.
So, I had thought about giving up but instead am thinking about ditching the gauges and going with either monitor setup or a simkit type of display. I am looking for advice or comments. Should I give up and sell the gauges I have or give it another try?

[mach7]

I feel your frustration...which gauges are you trying to interface?

[Philb737]

Not sure which gauges you're trying to replicate?On another note, I have a complete set of B737 Flight illusion gauges for sale if you're interested .
Cheers,
Phil

[xplanematt]

I see this thread is kinda old. If the OP is still hanging around, let me chime in. First, don't assume you have to use servos for everything. You'll find that once you do the "R&D" on a few real instruments and see how they work and can be interfaced, reading/driving them directly is often easier than hacking them up to accept servos (plus servos don't go 360*...a HUGE drawback). For instance, I recently cracked out a workable solution for directly reading resolvers with an Arduino. Some gauges use DC motors and potentiometers, which are a cinch to interface. I've also found that synchros (and rotating parts in general) can be nicely interfaced by converting them to Hall encoders.

Second thing, SIOC (which I assume is what you're referring to when you mention "FSUIPC") is pretty bad. If you're having trouble programming in that thing, it's no wonder. What software are you programming in, if not SIOC?

My advice is to pick an instrument that you really want to interface, and focus on JUST that instrument. And, don't worry about the flight sim side of it...just work on driving the instrument with an Arduino or a test script on your PC or something similarly simple and isolated from your sim software. Once you have the ability to accurately and reliably control the instrument, you can move on to tying it to MSFS/P3D/X-Plane/etc.

Matt

[OmniAtlas]

Take a look at Cockpit Concept.

They have a 429 board and you can directly interface with your gauges.

[xplanematt]

Interesting, I'd never heard of these folks. I was keeping an eye on V1 Avionics, but they seem to have dropped off the face of the flight sim world. Looks like a cool product. Unfortunately it's USB, so it's a no-go in my sim. They have some other products that look like they could be valuable to sim builders.

EDIT: Just found these guys:

https://simulatorsolutions.com.au/simstack/simstack-arinc-429/

A bit pricey at $300, especially since you also have to buy the "foundation board" ($115) and it only handles two ARINC buses. But, it's ethernet!

I'll be doing some 429 experiments myself at some point, I need to dust off the Holt chip I picked up a while back.

Matt

[OmniAtlas]

Interesting, I'd never heard of these folks. I was keeping an eye on V1 Avionics, but they seem to have dropped off the face of the flight sim world. Looks like a cool product. Unfortunately it's USB, so it's a no-go in my sim. They have some other products that look like they could be valuable to sim builders.

EDIT: Just found these guys:

https://simulatorsolutions.com.au/simstack/simstack-arinc-429/

A bit pricey at $300, especially since you also have to buy the "foundation board" ($115) and it only handles two ARINC buses. But, it's ethernet!

I'll be doing some 429 experiments myself at some point, I need to dust off the Holt chip I picked up a while back.

Matt

Yes, Rodney and the team are also producing ARINC429 boards; I will be looking closely at their solution and planning to migrate over to their boards (they support genuine panels with the correct amperage requirements).