Keyboard Programming

[tonypward]

Pete

Thanks for the excellent work you have and still are putting in to FSUIPC, great software.

A quick simple question, after reading through all the docs and pdf I find I still have to ask you one more. Can you do away with a relay for using a toggle switch to turn the lights on and off. Or would it cause a keyboard repeat. The P is for pulse on the button programming so am I right to assume that this could be similar for the keyboard. Obviously removing the keyboard assignment in FS and rely on fsuipc to do it all.

[Pete Dowson]

Can you do away with a relay for using a toggle switch to turn the lights on and off. Or would it cause a keyboard repeat. The P is for pulse on the button programming so am I right to assume that this could be similar for the keyboard. Obviously removing the keyboard assignment in FS and rely on fsuipc to do it all.

Ernot sure why you think you'd ever need a relay. nor do I know how a toggle switch is producing a key press. You'd need to explain a bit more.

If whatever you are using does a key press without a corresponding key release, then, yes, that does cause Windows (or maybe it'sthe BIOS) to repeat the key until the release appears. Having a real key or key code kept pressed is never a good idea because it can affect other keys on the keyboard matrix.

For a key which is repeating it wouldn't matter if the control it is sending is something other than a toggle. Some of the lights have separate on/off controls so they would be okay. All lights can be controlled via FSUIPC offsets though (eg there's a bit for 10 different lights in offset 0D0C) and you can make a keypress write to an FSUIPC offset via the Offset controls. So anything is possible, really.

Regards

Pete

[tonypward]

Sorry if I did not make myself clear. I have built a home made panel and a thruster control. The panel is using a usb keyboard card as an emulator, so it is like a second keyboard. Each of the buttons represent a keypress. I just want to use an on/off toggle for the lights as in real life rather than a keypress. The toggle would be on a keypress until I turn off the lights a release. Just bouncing ideas off you could the thruster box which has three buttons, could I use those as toggles and just pulse so no constant keypress and turn off on release.

Thanks Pete

[Pete Dowson]

I have built a home made panel and a thruster control. The panel is using a usb keyboard card as an emulator, so it is like a second keyboard. Each of the buttons represent a keypress. I just want to use an on/off toggle for the lights as in real life rather than a keypress. The toggle would be on a keypress until I turn off the lights a release.

Eryes. I understood what you were asking. And I thought I explained. Did you not understand my answer?

However, you "elaboration" actually make things more confused. You say they are buttons acting like keypresses. So where's the toggle switch?

If you do still really mean you are connecting a latching switch, i.e. a proper toggle switch, to one keypress input, then my answers above still apply. I think there may be problems if you effectively hold one key depressed all the time, but if you've tried this and it doesn't cause any loss of other "real" keyboard functions, then the auto-repeating won't matter if you avoid assigning toggle controls. You need to use methods to switch lights on and off separately, as I said.

If you really mean using one button to send a keypress to switch a light on, and another to send a different keypress to switch a light off, then of course that can be done too, and presumably without unwanted side effects from the keyboard matrix. That's easy to do in any case and I'm not sure what you are then asking.

Of course, if you used a double throw sprung centre-off switch you could use one contact as on and the other as off via two separate keypresses.

Just bouncing ideas off you could the thruster box which has three buttons, could I use those as toggles

ErI think there's a total misunderstanding about what "toggle" means here. A hardware toggle switch has two or more latching positions. In the case of a single throw one, like a light switch, it is off in one position, on in another. That is what I assumed you meant and what my answers are about.

If you mean to use a simple pair of buttons then I'm confused about what the question is -- where's the difficulty?

Regards

Pete

[Frank.O]

Good morning,

Pete, I think he is using the innards of a disassembled keyboard and instead of connecting keyboard type keys to it he connected toggle switches. This acts like an additional keyboard that works parallel to the original one.

Tony, if my above assumption is true, then yes the respective keypress would be repeated until the switch goes to off again. I had such a self built device in use long time ago and for exactly that reason I only used push buttons, not toggle switches.

It would be much better to get some cheap joysticks/gamepads with as much buttons as you can get and use their circuit boards with the connecting cords instead of the keyboard card you are using. The switches you use would have to be wired to the circuit boards instead of the original buttons and they would be plugged into the computer like normal joysticks/gamepads and be recognised by windows as just that. And then you could use the button assignment in FSUIPC to assign proper "on" and "off" controls to everything you want.

Regards,

Frank

[Pete Dowson]

Pete, I think he is using the innards of a disassembled keyboard and instead of connecting keyboard type keys to it he connected toggle switches. This acts like an additional keyboard that works parallel to the original one.

That's what I thought he was saying, and most of both my replies were concerned with that. But then the question about separate buttons arose so it got confused again.

Tony, if my above assumption is true, then yes the respective keypress would be repeated until the switch goes to off again. I had such a self built device in use long time ago and for exactly that reason I only used push buttons, not toggle switches.

Provided (a) the repeated keypress merely repeats the same Light ON or OFF control instead of a TOGGLE control, and (b) the fact of a key held down did not prevent any other keys working correctly (which seems unlikely), then the only disadvantage this has is that it is inefficient in performance terms.

One big disadvantage I can think of which might occur is if CTRL, SHIFT or ALT were used for something else whilst this other key is repeating -- that could produce a combination which might do something completely unwanted.

Regards

Pete