LUA and FSINN with FSX on WIN 64 setting Squawkmode

[aua668]

Hi,

A short question to the community: Is there anybody, who has the following combination running and working:

• Windows 7 64 bit
  
• FSX + Accelleration Pack
  
• SimConnect (latest version)
  
• FSUIPC 4.84
  
• WideFS 6.977
  
• FSInn on second PC
  
• Setting of Squawkmode (S/C) is possible from LUA scripts
  

Before I changed from my old Win XP / FS9.1 combination the setting of the squawkmode worked perfectly without any problem. But since I have moved to my new FSX system, I am not able to get this feature working anymore. I searched many days through a lot of topics but not in all postings it was clear to me, in which combination this has worked and in which not.

So if I find here anyone, who can answer this question with YES, then I know, I have to continue searching the error. I installed all products according to the installation guides, which you find on the network, following the guidelines about UAC, installation paths etc. I am a long term FSInn user and therefore I know, how to configure the tool for online flying. And everything is working fine (including PTT, voice, etc.) - but only the setting of the transponder mode doesn't.

I also tried sb3gaugebridge.dll and I registered it via dll.xml. And of course a lot of other things. I also run FSInn on my FSX machine only. But also no success.

I would appreciate, if one of the pilots, who has this combination running, whould share the method here. And if no one answers, then I know at least, that I am not alone with this problem.

Many thanks in advance.

Reinhard

[Pete Dowson]

Before I changed from my old Win XP / FS9.1 combination the setting of the squawkmode worked perfectly without any problem. But since I have moved to my new FSX system, I am not able to get this feature working anymore.

I don't use this software (neither FSInn nor Squawkbox), but i'm curious to know what mechanism you used on FS9 for the transponder mode. I know Squawkbox 3 used offsets and I carried them on into fSX and automatically operated the transponder mode using the Simconnect facility SB4 implemented for this. But I don't know how FSInn does it -- is FSInn the same in this on both FS9 and FSX?

Pete

[aua668]

I don't use this software (neither FSInn nor Squawkbox), but i'm curious to know what mechanism you used on FS9 for the transponder mode. I know Squawkbox 3 used offsets and I carried them on into fSX and automatically operated the transponder mode using the Simconnect facility SB4 implemented for this. But I don't know how FSInn does it -- is FSInn the same in this on both FS9 and FSX?

Pete

Hi,

I typically used with FS9.1 your controls according to the "Advanced Users" documentation:

• 1119 Xpndr stby (sb3)
  
• 1120 Xpndr on/mode c (sb3)
  
• 1121 Xpndr toddle (sb3)
  
• 1122 Xpndr ident (sb3)
  

I used the sb3gaugebridge.dll in the Modules folder with FS9.1. And that's it. It worked perfectly. Therefore I assumed, that this should be no difference with FSX. My personal feeling is, that this is not related to FSUIPC but to the 64 bit environment (.NET etc.), which might not fit perfectly to the unmaintained FSInn. Some aircrafts also did set the offset 0x7B91 directly when triggering the correct actions on the panel with mouse macros, and then FSInn squawkmode was automatically set without the need of the controls.

But with FSX on Win 7 64bit I tried all these methods (offset, controls, etc.), but I didn't get this feature working.

Rgds

Reinhard

[Pete Dowson]

I typically used with FS9.1 your controls according to the "Advanced Users" documentation:

Ah, the Squawkbox ones. SB4 for sure, isn't using FSUIPC. With SB4 they provided SimConnect supported "client data" values for this, so all i did was map the offsets to the SB4 client data.

I don't know what FSInn did, if anything, for FSX. Isn't there anything in their website or their documentation about it?

I used the sb3gaugebridge.dll in the Modules folder with FS9.1. And that's it. It worked perfectly.

No idea what that does. I assume it's reading offsets and writing to FSInn's tranponder control gauge?

Therefore I assumed, that this should be no difference with FSX. My personal feeling is, that this is not related to FSUIPC but to the 64 bit environment (.NET etc.), which might not fit perfectly to the unmaintained FSInn.

Do you mean to say the FSX FSInn is identical to the FS9 one? That hardly seems possible. I don't think 64- vs 32- bit will have anything to do with it. All this is 32-bit software no matter what the Operating System. Seems more likely that the SB3gaugebridge, whatever it does, doesn't work in the FSX environment, or with the FSX version of FSInn.

You need info from FSInn about how it works. And where did SB3GaugeBridge come from and why is it related to FSInn?

Regards

Pete

[aua668]

Hi,

The sb3gaugebridge.dll has the following function according to Jose Oliveira:

This module allows to gateway between SB3 FSUIPC SDK/FSINN SDK/XML vars. It's necessary for making all my SB3 plugins to work with FSINN. It also allows gauge developers to use FS vars instead of FSUIPC. Just drop the dll in modules directory.
For developers:
Interfaces:
FSUIPC based as adopted by SB3
Offset 0x7b80, 1 byte, SB3 State, 0 = not running, 1 = running as an external app, 2 = running as a Flight Simulator module
Offset 0x7b91, 1 byte, Transponder mode, 0 = normal, 1 = standby
Offset 0x7b92 1 byte, ATC activity indicator. This value is normally set to 0. When SquawkBox receives a ping from a nearby ATC, it sets this value to 1. If you want your gauge control to flash your ident light you should check this value periodically. As soon as you notice the value is set to 1, you must reset it to 0.
Offset 0x7b93 1 byte, Transponder Ident pressed. When the user presses the ident button on your transponder gauge, you should set this value to 1. When SquawkBox notices it is set to 1, it will transmit an ident on the network and reset the value to 0.
BOOL32 named var as adopted by FSInn
FSCOPILOT_TRANSPONDER_MODE, BOOL32 named var transponder is client, Transponder mode 0=Standby, 1=Normal, 2=Ident
FSCOPILOT_INN_MODE, BOOL32 named var transponder is client, 1=FSInn running, 0=FSinn not running
XML L:VAR
859Mode: XML L:VAR, Transponder mode 0=Standby, 1=Normal
859ID: XML L:VAR, Transponder ident pressed, 0=Not pressed, 1=Pressed
859ATCInd: XML L:VAR, 0=No interrogation from ATC, 1= interrogation from ATC
859VFRMode: (optional), XML L:VAR, 0=IFR,1=VFR, The module will put in FS the transponder code indicated in the file sb3gaugebridge.ini at FS root directory under section and indicated by vfr=

Note1: The FSInn interface doesn’t support ATC activity indicator so there is no mapping between XML/SB3 interface to the FSInn interface for this.

Acknowledgments
Pete Dowson for FSUIPC and the key;
Joel DeYoung for SB3.
Any problems doubts please mail to jcboliveira@flysplash.org
Thanks for using my work
José Oliveira

[/CODE]

So it's necessary for some transponder gauges to use the FSUIPC/SB3 offsets. FSInn never used for its communication with the FS9 the FSUIPC interface but they had their own communication via FWInn etc. But obvoiusly FSInn reads the FSUIPC offsets either direct or via WideFS to change the squawkmode.

For testing purposes I logged the 0x7B91 offset and I see, that's correctly set by the controls and that's transported via WideFS to the second PC running FSInn. It really looks like, that FSInn in the 64bit environment now doesn't react on this offset any more.

Rgds

Reinhard

[Pete Dowson]

The sb3gaugebridge.dll has the following function according to Jose Oliveira:

It looks like it is designed to transfer the changes in the SB3 offset to FSInn via XML variables -- L:Vars I assume. It actually mentions that in some places, look:

859Mode: XML L:VAR, Transponder mode 0=Standby, 1=Normal
859ID: XML L:VAR, Transponder ident pressed, 0=Not pressed, 1=Pressed
859ATCInd: XML L:VAR, 0=No interrogation from ATC, 1= interrogation from ATC
859VFRMode: (optional), XML L:VAR, 0=IFR,1=VFR,

I assume this XML stuff is in FSCopilot or some gauge added into aircraft for FSInn/FSCopilot?

I don't know what these are though:

BOOL32 named var as adopted by FSInn
FSCOPILOT_TRANSPONDER_MODE, BOOL32 named var transponder is client, Transponder mode 0=Standby, 1=Normal, 2=Ident
FSCOPILOT_INN_MODE, BOOL32 named var transponder is client, 1=FSInn running, 0=FSinn not running[/CODE]

To be honest, most of that you quoted doesn't really make sense to me, except of course the first part which is the SB3 transponder interface in FS9.

So it's necessary for some transponder gauges to use the FSUIPC/SB3 offsets. FSInn never used for its communication with the FS9 the FSUIPC interface but they had their own communication via FWInn etc. But obvoiusly FSInn reads the FSUIPC offsets either direct or via WideFS to change the squawkmode.

No, I think you are misinterpreting this. I'm pretty sure that neither FSInn nor FSCopilot use FSUIPC (and therefore not WideFS either). They use some other variables, maybe L:Vars, for this stuff. Have you tried logging the L:Vars?

[CODE]For testing purposes I logged the 0x7B91 offset and I see, that's correctly set by the controls and that's transported via WideFS to the second PC running FSInn. It really looks like, that FSInn in the 64bit environment now doesn't react on this offset any more.[/CODE]

I don't think it does in any case. it is converted by SB3gaugebridge into XML or other variables supported by the FSInn transponder gauge. I think 64-bits is confusing you, I really doubt that has anything at all to do with it. It is more likely you have not installed the requisite gauge or it is not compatible with FSX.

Pete

[aua668]

Hi,

FSInn doesn't use the SB3 offsets but has it's own SDK to provide access for external programs (like gauges). sb3gaugebridge.dll closes the gap between panel designers (XML based or *.GAU based), SB3 offsets and the FSInn SDK by synchronizing changes between these worlds. By using this, DLL transponder gauges could controll FSInn and SB3 with one mechanism. I did detailled research yesterday and obviously this DLL doesn't work for FSInn in the FSX / WIN 7-64 environment. At least with my possibilities I wasn't able to get it working.

But during my investigations I stumbled across a much simpler solution, which I wasn't aware of: On The FSX PC in the FSCopilot menu you can use the "Settings" menu to define hotkeys for several FSInn functions. And BINGO: there is also the possibility to define hotkeys for squawkmode Standby/Charlie/Ident ! And the good messageis: This also works, if the FSInn UI is not running on the FSX PC but on the second PC, which handles the VATSIM, weather, etc. stuff in my environment. FSCopilot transports this to the FSInn UI via the FWInn framework.

So I defined three keys, and now I can control the squawkmode from LUA, with buttons etc. just by sending these three special keypresses to FSX.

So the problem is solved and I can include these commands into my transponder code for my GoFlight device. And it's an easy solution.

Thanks for sharing your ideas to overcome this problem.

:razz: :razz: :razz:

Rgds

Reinhard

[Pete Dowson]

But during my investigations I stumbled across a much simpler solution, which I wasn't aware of: On The FSX PC in the FSCopilot menu you can use the "Settings" menu to define hotkeys for several FSInn functions. And BINGO: there is also the possibility to define hotkeys for squawkmode Standby/Charlie/Ident ! And the good messageis: This also works, if the FSInn UI is not running on the FSX PC but on the second PC, which handles the VATSIM, weather, etc. stuff in my environment. FSCopilot transports this to the FSInn UI via the FWInn framework.

Ah. that's probably why the problem hadn't been raised before, that I recall anyway! ;-)

Pete