Can FSUIPC control stepper motors

[Darren Lee]

Hi there fellow flight simmers.

I have been using FSUIPC 4 for a few months now to control switches etc and work great.

I am currently working on a Compass project for my cessna 172. Using a Normal whiskey compass a stepper motor, driver card. All looks great and works well but I now want to interface this with FSX through FSUIPC. Has anyone controled stepper motors directly using FSUIPC with data coming from FSX.

Thanks

Darren :idea:

[Pete Dowson]

I am currently working on a Compass project for my cessna 172. Using a Normal whiskey compass a stepper motor, driver card. All looks great and works well but I now want to interface this with FSX through FSUIPC. Has anyone controled stepper motors directly using FSUIPC with data coming from FSX.

I think there are some control cards with interfaces written by others for FSUIPC, but i don't know any details. You might ask in the MyCockpits forums where many cockpit builders can be found.

http://www.mycockpit.org/forums/

Alternatively, If you can find a suitable control card with a USB HID or COM serial port interface, you could write a little driver for it as a Lua plug-in for FSUIPC.

Regards

Pete

[Darren Lee]

Hi Pete,

many thanks for your reply.

I am using a Stepper motor connected to a ULN2003 driver board which in turn is connected to the parallel port of my pc.

I have a little vb program to make the stepper move backward or forwards which when enclosed in the compas housing makes the compass rotate through the use of a little magnet stuck to the plastic disk atached to the stepper motor. This works well.

So... I have everything connected to my pc. I have FSX installed along with a registered version of FSUIPC (fab program by the way).

I just want to know how to send data from FSX to the stepper. I am not a programmer and was hoping that her may be a plugin available that would help me interface.

Kind regards

Darren

[Pete Dowson]

I am using a Stepper motor connected to a ULN2003 driver board which in turn is connected to the parallel port of my pc.

Wow! You still have a parallel port on your PC? They've almost completely died out -- though I know some motherboards do still sport the pinout headers for them.

I have a little vb program to make the stepper move backward or forwards which when enclosed in the compas housing makes the compass rotate through the use of a little magnet stuck to the plastic disk atached to the stepper motor. This works well.

So you know how to program the parallel port, or you have a driver provided with the ULN2003?

I just want to know how to send data from FSX to the stepper. I am not a programmer and was hoping that her may be a plugin available that would help me interface.

Not specifically for that board, and i don't know of any parallel port implementations at all. but getting one item of information out in in a VB program should be very easy -- there's a simple example in the FSUIPC SDK. Why not just adapte the program you have already written?

Regards

Pete

[Darren Lee]

Hi Pete,

Parallel is the future!!

Unfortunatley the VB program I am using to test has been found on the web and is a .exe file. All it does is control the motor backeward or forwards by moving the mouse wheel..

I would like to try the example in the FSUIPC SDK. Where do I find this?

Kind regards

Darren

[Pete Dowson]

I would like to try the example in the FSUIPC SDK. Where do I find this?

Same place as you find FSUIPC -- the Schiratti site or the Download Links subforum, as always.

Pete

[Darren Lee]

Excellent Cheers for that.. :razz: