Tutorial: Using Export.lua to export data to Export.log

Hi all, find attached a tutorial on using Export.lua to write to Export.log. As mentioned in my post here, I'm trying to document lots of stuff as I'm getting up to speed with this cockpit building lark. But the draft document in that post was messy and would probably do more harm than good, so I decided to tidy it up and re-post here. Hope it's a help for anyone getting started with the absolute basics.

- DerekM

Export_lua Write to Export_log.pdf

Okay, so after some feedback from Warhog I decided to add some more content to this, particularly related to better descriptions of the code. Any obvious errors, please let me know.

- DerekM

Export_lua Write to Export_log (1.0).pdf

Thanks Derek

I must say you did an impressive job explaining things so even Mr. Stupid (ME) can get a handle on what it all does. I dare say I couldn't write code like that from scratch but at least now I have a better understanding of some of the basic terminology and protocols and a general idea of how things work on a conceptual level with a lua file. And that's pretty much what a novice needs. What are the colors for...so you don't touch stuff your not suppose to. What are those letters for... a place holder for variables, etc.

And as I had suggested earlier to someone somewhere on this forum that if there was an export file that exported everything conceivable from, lets say, the A10, I could with confidence be able to delete all of those exports I didn't need and then end up with a fully functional export file that would get the data I want.

In the end I think that's all most users are looking for. They don't have the time or inclination to learn everything there is to know from getting data out of DCS to displaying it in their own little cockpit.

Thanks again Derek. Excellent work.:)

Thanks Derek

 

I must say you did an impressive job explaining things so even Mr. Stupid (ME) can get a handle on what it all does. I dare say I couldn't write code like that from scratch but at least now I have a better understanding of some of the basic terminology and protocols and a general idea of how things work on a conceptual level with a lua file. And that's pretty much what a novice needs. What are the colors for...so you don't touch stuff your not suppose to. What are those letters for... a place holder for variables, etc.

 

And as I had suggested earlier to someone somewhere on this forum that if there was an export file that exported everything conceivable from, lets say, the A10, I could with confidence be able to delete all of those exports I didn't need and then end up with a fully functional export file that would get the data I want.

 

In the end I think that's all most users are looking for. They don't have the time or inclination to learn everything there is to know from getting data out of DCS to displaying it in their own little cockpit.

 

Thanks again Derek. Excellent work.:)

The export.lua installed with HELIOS does pretty much everything hog. Really good place to start. The important thing is understanding whats being exported and how to use it.

The export.lua installed with HELIOS does pretty much everything hog. Really good place to start. The important thing is understanding whats being exported and how to use it.

Thanks DC. I didn't realize that. I will spend some time looking at that file in detail.

I guess it safe to say that there really isn't any need to change that file. So what if it exports the CMSP info and you don't have a CMSP. It has no impact on anything so there is no need to delete that from the file, is there?

Got it in one, however you picked the one of the few things you cant export via lua. the CMSP digital readout can only(afaik) be output via screen capture or OCR, but there are plenty of solutions for that here in the forums.

I thought that issue was solved in this post...

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=120945

I ran his program and it did export the CMSP and a few other displays. I couldn't get the radio frequencies to export.

Yup, the point being that you cant export it via lua, the radio frequencies you can export. I did it as my first experiment.