How bout a little help with my EFIS.

[fpullanojr]

Greetings,

I have a Dynon EFIS and came across an interesting feature which prompted the following idea. (of course, I have no clue how to make it work.)

I own a VariEze which is a tandem seat aircraft with no instruments in the back seat. I have an idea to that would give my GIB something to look at besides the back of my head.

My Dynon Electronic Flight Instrument System sends a constant output via RS232 in the form of a text string with a carrage return. The string sends all of the measured flight data such as air speed, altitude, pitch, bank etc etc etc.

I want to use a laptop running Flight Simulator to receive this data via the Com port and have the sim parse out the data and display the proper flight data as if in say,, "Demo mode"

Get the idea?

Anyone know of a way for a novice programmer to make this all happen?

Just in case anyone has a fire under their butt to help me out.

As an example, the following is what one line of serial data looks like:

00082119+058-00541300000+9141+011-01+15001310

It's broken down as:

Hr Min Sec Sec_frac Pitch Roll Yaw Airspeed

Altitude Turn Rate Lateral G’s Vertical G’s AOA

00 08 21 19 +058 -0054 130 0000

+9141 +011 -01 +15 00

Thanks for the help. :)

- Frank

[Pete Dowson]

Hr Min Sec Sec_frac Pitch Roll Yaw Airspeed

Altitude Turn Rate Lateral G’s Vertical G’s AOA

You wouldn't want to change the time in FS more than once, it causes reloads of scenery, stuff like that, so you'd set that just the once (Zulu and Local) and then use your time value to time the injection of the other data.

You don't say how often it supplies the data, but if it is less than, say, 10 times per second, you'd probably need to interpolate between values to get smoother operation.

Of the other information, you can set Pitch Roll Yaw (Heading) and Altitude, but not airspeed, turn rate, G's or AofA -- all those are "effects" of simulation, not "causes", if you see what I mean.

The most important thing that appears to be missing in your data is position -- Latitude and Longitude! How will you determine that?

Regards,

Pete

[fpullanojr]

Pete Wrote:

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Of the other information, you can set Pitch Roll Yaw (Heading) and Altitude, but not airspeed, turn rate, G's or AofA -- all those are "effects" of simulation, not "causes", if you see what I mean.

The most important thing that appears to be missing in your data is position -- Latitude and Longitude! How will you determine that?

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Interesting. It sounds like you would be in slew mode (sort of). The lat long, could easily be captured by one of the two GPS units that are installed in the plane. I wasn't planning on showing any "out the window" stuff, just wanted some kind of instrumentation for the GIB so I don't have to constantly tell them that they are climbing, descending, etc...

I guess, to clarify, I want to take the Dynon output data and have it dumped onto the lap top screen in some fashion.

By the way, I'm not sure how many times per second the data is sent but it's a bunch.

Thanks for the reply. :)

-Frank

[Pete Dowson]

It sounds like you would be in slew mode (sort of).

There are three ways of externally controlling the aircraft position and attitude in FS2002 and before: slew mode, pause mode and setting the simulation rate to 0 (though the FSUIPC interface). Each has advantages and disadvantages, things like jerky operation, or various gauges not working in different modes.

In FS2004 you can actually change Lat/Long/Alt/Pitch/Bank/Heading (known together as LLAPBH) in normal flight modes too.

I wasn't planning on showing any "out the window" stuff, just wanted some kind of instrumentation for the GIB so I don't have to constantly tell them that they are climbing, descending, etc...

Really, then, you want instrumentation but no simulation. I think you'd be better off doing without FS altogether and just driving a set of external instruments. This can be done with Project Magenta modules and a special program I wrote for PM called IPCserver, which replaces FS but supplies the FSUIPC, WideFS and GPSout interfaces, so instruments driven from FSUIPC can respond to inputs from another program.

If this sounds like the avenue you wish to follow, check out the instrumentation available from http://www.projectmagenta.com. You'd need to talk to Enrico Schiratti about meeting your needs as these are commercial programs and he owns the rights to IPCServer too.

Regards,

Pete