Bad Elf

[FerdinandB]

Hello, I would like to use my Bad Elf GPS device to provide GPS Position Data to my IOS Jeppesen Flight Deck. The Problem is, that my Cygnus Tool is unfortunately not working with P3V4. Therefore I hope I can use the GPS Out functionality of FSUIPC. I have a cable from Redbird/Cygnus which has an integrated USB-to-Serial chipset from FTDI that show up as COM port. Furthermore, I have allready contact to Bad Elf support and received the following message:

Please configure the speed to be 115200.

Set the interval to be 1000 msec.

Only check the RMC and GGA checkboxes, the Bad Elf GPS won't use the others.

If we're lucky that should get the information flowing.  You should see speed/course/altitude on the first LCD screen one the firmware detects a good NMEA stream.  Then you can verify the latitude/longitude are correct as well.

If that doesn't work, then ideally we need to see some sample data being sent by FSUIPC so we can plug that into our test harness. Maybe the logging functionality would include that?

But the Bad Elf is not receiving any GPS Data via FSUIPC - do you have any advice? Furhermore, can I provide some logging data to them?

Best Regards

Ferdinand

[Pete Dowson]

On 2/7/2018 at 10:25 PM, FerdinandB said:

But the Bad Elf is not receiving any GPS Data via FSUIPC - do you have any advice? Furhermore, can I provide some logging data to them?

FSUIPC simply chucks the data out to the serial port. If the FTDI diver is providing a COM port number (COMn) and you have set it correctly then nothing more can be done at the FSUIPC end.

Your best bet is to use a COM port monitor program to loag what is actually going to that port.  Something like the Aggsoft one (http://www.aggsoft.com/) for example. I think that's a payware one, but it might have a trial period which would be sufficient. Else Im sure you can find one which does.

Pete

 

[FerdinandB]

Hello Pete,

forst of all - thank you for your quick answer after holiday!

Actually, I expected FSUIPC working as that what you answered me. But we (me and my colleague from my university) think, that maybe FSUIPC is not working properly - maybe I didn't install it properly. He will contact you (Andres Arrango) because I am not at the university this week to check wether the cable/com port is working nor if I installed. We have there a small simulator enviroment based on Prepar3D and would like to use our Jeppesen EFB with the GPS Position from Prepar3D.

Best Regards

Ferdinand

[FerdinandB]

On 20.2.2018 at 1:11 PM, Pete Dowson said:

FSUIPC simply chucks the data out to the serial port. If the FTDI diver is providing a COM port number (COMn) and you have set it correctly then nothing more can be done at the FSUIPC end.

Your best bet is to use a COM port monitor program to loag what is actually going to that port.  Something like the Aggsoft one (http://www.aggsoft.com/) for example. I think that's a payware one, but it might have a trial period which would be sufficient. Else Im sure you can find one which does.

Pete

 

Hello Pete, it is working now properly - the folder for the data did not have the right rights to write in the folder. Now it works great, thank you very much for the software!

I have another question. We would like to use the possibility to log some data (Lat/Lon/Groundspeed/Heading) - but We don't now how are the variables/labels are called to put them in the user interface of the FSUIPC tool. Do you have any help, maybe a list how are the variable are called within Prepar3D?

Best regards

Ferdinand

[Pete Dowson]

3 hours ago, FerdinandB said:

I have another question. We would like to use the possibility to log some data (Lat/Lon/Groundspeed/Heading) - but We don't now how are the variables/labels are called to put them in the user interface of the FSUIPC tool.

Sorry, I don't quite know what you mean. Do you want to log these to your own file, or to a display, or what?

Those values are all contained in FSUIPC "Offsets" -- see the Offsets list supplied in your FSUIPC Documents folder. You can use the monitoring facilities in the Logging Tab of FSUIPC to log up to 4 different vslues, to the FSUIPC log file and/or a display on screen.

There is a Lua plug-in supplied in the Lua examples ZIP in your FSUIPC Documents folder too. "record to csv.lua". That logs the time, lat, lon, alt(ft), pitch, bank, hdgT, hdgM, vs, ias, tas, gs and mach, all to a "csv" file 20 times per second. It is intended as an example for you to adapt as you need. "csv" files can be displayed as a spreadsheet in Excel and other such programs.

Quote

Do you have any help, maybe a list how are the variable are called within Prepar3D?

You mean the SimConnect names for them? Are you writing your own SimConnect interfacing program then, not using FSUIPC for this? You'll need the P3D SDK reference material, on-line only at the L-M website.

Pete

 

[FerdinandB]

5 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

Sorry, I don't quite know what you mean. Do you want to log these to your own file, or to a display, or what?

Those values are all contained in FSUIPC "Offsets" -- see the Offsets list supplied in your FSUIPC Documents folder. You can use the monitoring facilities in the Logging Tab of FSUIPC to log up to 4 different vslues, to the FSUIPC log file and/or a display on screen.

There is a Lua plug-in supplied in the Lua examples ZIP in your FSUIPC Documents folder too. "record to csv.lua". That logs the time, lat, lon, alt(ft), pitch, bank, hdgT, hdgM, vs, ias, tas, gs and mach, all to a "csv" file 20 times per second. It is intended as an example for you to adapt as you need. "csv" files can be displayed as a spreadsheet in Excel and other such programs.

You mean the SimConnect names for them? Are you writing your own SimConnect interfacing program then, not using FSUIPC for this? You'll need the P3D SDK reference material, on-line only at the L-M website.

Pete

 

Hello Pete,

I just wan`t to log these values to the log file - or better to  .csv. Therefore you provided me the best answer I could expect - there is allready a possibility to do this with FSUIPC - 20 times a second is quite enough and yes - I would like to have these data within a spreadsheet for post-analysis. I try it out how it work. Thank you very much!