GPSOut not writing to COM port

[AAPSA]

Hello,

I have a setup where we use a BadElf GPS Pro to send GPS data over bluetooth to our iPads, where we have Jeppessen's JeppFD.

FSUIPC routes NMEA data to the BadElf GPS using a cable with a USB-RS232 convertor. The COM port is visible from both FSUIPC and Window's device manager.

Our problem is that, on occasion, FSUIPC seems to stop writing to the corresponding COM port. This has happened a few times already and it's been impossible so far to establish why. We also haven't been able to reproduce the problem, but we have narrowed it down to FSUIPC unsuccessfully writing to the configured COM ports.

We have tried testing the COM ports separately by just sending data through them and they seem to be fine. 

Does anyone have experience with something like this or has experienced something similar?

Is there a way to see from FSUIPC what is being written to the COM port? It is not possible to see this data from FSUIPC's console log.

The setup consists of:

• P3D v4
• FSUIPC5
• BadElf GPS Pro
• USB-RS232 converter cable

Thank you in advance.

 

[John Dowson]

Hi,

you can log the COM data by adding these lines to the [General] section of your FSUIPC5.ini file:

Debug=Please
LogExtras=x40

The data will be in hexadecimal of the ASCII byte values.

John

[Pete Dowson]

15 hours ago, AAPSA said:

Our problem is that, on occasion, FSUIPC seems to stop writing to the corresponding COM port. This has happened a few times already and it's been impossible so far to establish why. We also haven't been able to reproduce the problem, but we have narrowed it down to FSUIPC unsuccessfully writing to the configured COM ports.

As well as logging the output to check, I would seriously advise you to consider changing from a USB-RS232 converter cable to a proper RS232 connection. I had no end of problems with those cables. they just don't seem to be suited to continuous traffic, locking up after a while.

My PFC 737 cockpit is mostly based on RS232 com connections. I use BrainBoxes RS232 com port cards, installed in the PC. You can get them for the older PCI bus and for PCI-E. I've never had any trouble with those.

Brainboxes also do a plug-in adapter which should work almost as well as their computer cards. Here, for example:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brainboxes-RS232-Port-Serial-Adapter/dp/B00XUFCHQW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Brainboxes+serial&qid=1564484556&s=gateway&sr=8-1

They aren't cheap, but I think you'll find them worthwhile in the end.

Pete