Exporting ADAHARS

[brian_g]

Mr. Dowson,

I believe your FSUIPC.dll was used on one of our companies projects that sent data from MS Flight sim 2000 to an EGPWS computer, which then sent terrain data to one of our displays. It really makes for a nice way to demo/test the product.

I am now looking for a method to export ADAHARS data from the simulator to a triple-standby instrument. The input to this instrument is ARINC 429, and we are expecting lables for Pressure Altitude, Mach number, Vne, Airspeed, Mag Heading, Pitch, Roll, and Lateral Acceleration, and ILS information.

I have no experience writing dll's and don't know where to begin to get this information out of the simulator, but I believe it can be done. If necessary, I will find a means to convert from RS-232 to ARINC 429. (I believe I can do it with a CPLD or FPGA)

I would really appreciate any help to figure out how to do this!

Thanks,

Brian Garber

[Pete Dowson]

I believe your FSUIPC.dll was used on one of our companies projects that sent data from MS Flight sim 2000 to an EGPWS computer, which then sent terrain data to one of our displays. It really makes for a nice way to demo/test the product.

Maybe. Sorry, I don't know of most users of the DLL.

I am now looking for a method to export ADAHARS data from the simulator to a triple-standby instrument. The input to this instrument is ARINC 429, and we are expecting lables for Pressure Altitude, Mach number, Vne, Airspeed, Mag Heading, Pitch, Roll, and Lateral Acceleration, and ILS information.

I don't really know what ADAHARS or ARINC 429 means, but you can certainly get most if not all of that information from FS through the FSUIPC interface. You need the FSUIPC SDK, from http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.

I have no experience writing dll's and don't know where to begin to get this information out of the simulator

You don't need to write a DLL. You can write an external program, in C, C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, whatever (see the various packages in the SDK). The program can read the data from FSUIPC (for which you would need an Access Key) then convert it into whatever form you like and send to anything else you like.

Your first step is to get the SDK and peruse the stuff in there. One of the documents is about Access Registration, which will tell you the requirements for an access key. For a commercial application we would need to discuss terms, but I could arrange a free time-limited one if you simply wanted to explore possibilities initially.

Regards,

Pete

[brian_g]

Thank you for your reply.

For a commercial application we would need to discuss terms, ...

Absolutely; I'm going to have to talk to my boss to see if he would like to pursue this. I will definitely keep you informed if we decide to go forward with putting our resources into writing this interface, but it is certainly something I'd like to see.

FYI, ARINC 429 is just another data bus standard used on aircraft. It is one of the more commonly used protocol on commercial/GA aircraft.

Thanks again,

Brian

[Pete Dowson]

For a commercial application we would need to discuss terms, ...

Absolutely; I'm going to have to talk to my boss to see if he would like to pursue this.

Of course if it is for internal use or for a known limited number of user sites you could simply purchase appropriate full user licenses for FSUIPC instead. Then your program(s) would have free access through those in any case. The only need for a program access key would be if you were distributing the program and expecting non-user registered FSUIPC's to be installed.

Regards,

Pete

[vdkeybus]

Brian,

I have recently completed a project in which data is sent between FS200x and a remote simulator platform. The communication was done using RS-232. Communication is bidirectional and happens in the background. If you like, I can send more details.

For your problem, I would consider using a small, fast microcontroller (e.g. Atmel C2051) and a bus driver to generate the ARINC data stream from the RS-232 data stream from the PC.

This controller could be programmed in 'C', saving considerable amounts of development time. Only consider using a CPLD if ARINC is really fast ( > 1Mb/s ). CPLDs are expensive and not that easy to work with (you need excellent power supplies and plenty of EMI countermeasures due to their speed).

Regards,

J.

[brian_g]

Thanks all, but the feedback I'm getting is that if we were to do this project then we'd want to see an entire cockpit display suite designed for marketing purposes. And that is quite a big project! So for now I'll be flying the pattern.

I'll let you know, Pete, if that changes.

-Brian