right kind of cable for SIOC?

Hi All,

can anyone advise me on the best kind of cable I should use to connect my hardware (I am building an A320 RMP) to the SIOC's (master, encoder & display).

thanks,
Ryan.

Hi,
Use a USB cable to connect the USB expansion card to your computer.
(do not connect the Master Card to the LPT port but use the USB expansion card).

Use a DB25 25 pins straight (1-1) data cable (Male-Female) of 1.8 meter to connect a Master Card to the USB expansion card.

Use two wires (not longer then 2,5 meters ) to connect +5V and GND of the Master Card to +5V and GND at a spare MOLEX connector of your PC's power supply (the same PC where your USB exp card is connected to).

For an encoder you can use 3 wires of ordinary flatcable to connect it to inputs of your MC (my advice, use a Break-out Box).

The same holds for displays and leds, use ordinary flatcable. Don't forget to put a current limiting resistor in series with each led, on which side of the led does not matter. Displays do not need extra resistors. Use the PCB's to solder 7-segment displays.

By the Way: SIOC is software, the hardware of Opencockpits is called IOCards.

best regards,
Nico Kaan
http://www.lekseecon.nl

Hi,

for the connection of inputs, outputs I have used quite some simple CAT5 UTP cable.
Many electricity or electronica store have this. This cable has 8 wires inside which is Ok
for 7 outputs and 1 ground or 7 inputs and 1 ground....
For the display I just used 8 lead flat cable.... 1 flat cable for the segment selection and
1 flat cable for the leds on the segments...

This is only one possibility....

There exists also cable with 16 wires inside used for installing domotica systems in the construction of houses.... this is really fine signalling cable so ideal for this kind of connections and you got 16 wires in one cable ...

Greetz Peter

Thanks Gents.

That's very helpful information.

cheers,
Ryan.

As Nico suggested, the breakout box is extremely helpful, and I believe Opencockpits still sells them.

As far as hooking up the 7-segment displays, I found flat cable along with IDC connectors very useful. They sell the IDC in all sorts of configurations such as ;10,16,20,40, etc, but are usually sold as dual row type. No soldering is necessary with these, you just feed the flat cable wire through, and clamp down with the IDC.

Polmer