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Table mounted landing gear selector switch from a Tornado


DeadMeat

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So here’s one of my last updates... good news! I got a batch of new Mosfets (Cylewet, as I mentioned above), and now it works perfectly! I have a feeling I fried the first mosfet at some point, or maybe because I initially forgot to place the 10k resistor. Anyway, thanks again for the heaps of help and sharing your wealth of knowledge DeadMeat! I’ll share a video and some photos soon of my setup. Now I’m considering grabbing another gear lever to make a hook like yours too! You’re costing me a lot of money with your ideas DM! Haha!

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Question for any of you (or perhaps just DeadMeat) that is powering a solenoid in a gear lever.... So I’m noticing that with the 24V power I have connected to it, the unit gets really hot after maybe an hour our two of use. It heats up in one little area on the side of the unit, perhaps where the solenoid is. It’s so hot that I can barely touch it. It’s relatively exposed so I don’t think it’s a ventilation issue. Does this sound normal?

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@Sickdog, I noticed something similar when running the magnetic held switches at 24VDC. The bat got qiute hot. Since I was able to use 12VDC then that issue dissapeared. I know this will solve it for you as yours won't energize at 12VDC.

 

Cheers

Hans

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@Sickdog, I noticed something similar when running the magnetic held switches at 24VDC. The bat got qiute hot. Since I was able to use 12VDC then that issue dissapeared. I know this will solve it for you as yours won't energize at 12VDC.

 

Cheers

Hans

 

That’s helpful to at least know that, thanks for the reply Hans. I might try the 12VDC again now that she’s been humming along with 24VDC, maybe she’ll magically be happy with less voltage now. Either that or I’ll buy a Halon fire extinguisher and rig it up to a T-Handle to pull for a gear lever fire, kinda like for an engine fire, adding a mixed reality to emergencies in DCS! ;) But in all seriousness, thanks again.

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  • 3 months later...

Hey guys- I’m back with a question. It’s been awhile but my gear lever has been functioning great this whole time. However, my Cougar MFD that was in close proximity to the gear lever stopped working one day, just totally dead. Just a guess but thinking there’s a strong magnetic field when I power that sucker up, or something that fried the cougar. Anyway, I stopped powering the solenoid for awhile till I could remount the lever farther from electronics (but also for proper placement for my sim-pit).

 

So now that the gear lever is remounted where I want it, I tried plugging it in with my 24VDC and a weird thing is happening. Only when in the hornet pit and no other time, the solenoid cycles on and off over and over again. It’s been awhile since I wired it up so my trouble shooting skills are a bit rusty right now. But I confirmed the wires are all correct (gear lever functionality up/down is fine) and the DCS BIOS sketch hasn’t changed. Any ideas?

 

Thanks!!

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  • 6 months later...
  • 6 months later...

Hi all,

 

I want to use also a tornado gear lever for the gear up/down in DCS. I saw DeadMeat has made it work. Now I am wondering how to wire it up to DCS and which pins are connected to which pins to connect the right commands in DCS. I am using the PSCockpit PCB's to connect my cockpit simulator so I would like to use that for the switches and solenoid. How can I connect the Mosfet to make it work properly, including the retarded bulb lights?

 

Thanks!. 

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My unit had the wiring diagram printed right on the side of it. If yours doesn't you will need to find the connections yourself with a multimeter.

Basically the thing is just a big switch (or a number of switches in parallel), like a normal toggle switch and you can connect it to DCS like one.

 

I don't know the PSCockpit stuff so can't help you there unfortunately; I used DCS-BIOS.


Edited by DeadMeat
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  • 6 months later...

Coming back to this thread, I have a question for DeadMeat or anyone utilizing DCS-BIOS WOW (external animation category) for the F-16. I was back at making my gear solenoid work with various modules and can’t get the F-16 to work. I think I remember seeing somewhere that the F-16 was broken with either DCS-Bios or maybe specifically trying to use this WOW function, but can’t find where I read that. 
 

Has anyone gotten the F-16 to work? I’ve utilized the same technique as other modules to try to get it to work:

 

1) added the “external animation category” lines of code for WOW to the aircraft lua file in the DCSBIOS\Lib folder, and used unique naming conventions to differentiate between aircraft modules.

2) ran the module in game so it writes the new changes to the JSON file, so then I could pull up the web based configuration for the aircraft module. 

3) found the “external animation” WOW code and copy/pasted into my sketch for my arduino nano. 
4) uploaded the sketch and ran the DCS-BIOS command and tried in game.

 
 

On a slightly separate topic, I’ve noticed that DCS-BIOS appears to not be updated/supported anymore, which is a shame because there are new modules since and coming out that I wish I could use. Does anyone know how hard it is to create support for a new aircraft? All I want is to configure it to use WOW and maybe some lights, like the gear warning lights. 

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2 minutes ago, Sickdog said:

On a slightly separate topic, I’ve noticed that DCS-BIOS appears to not be updated/supported anymore, which is a shame because there are new modules since and coming out that I wish I could use. Does anyone know how hard it is to create support for a new aircraft? All I want is to configure it to use WOW and maybe some lights, like the gear warning lights. 

The "Hub" version isn't actively updated at the moment, but the "Flightpanels" version is actively updated and maintained.

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1 hour ago, No1sonuk said:

The "Hub" version isn't actively updated at the moment, but the "Flightpanels" version is actively updated and maintained.

Hmm, there was some reason why I switched back to the Hub from the newer Flightpanels version, but think that was maybe when I was running most my pit by DCS-Bios instead of Bodner boards. Maybe it's worth trying it again since I only use DCS-Bios for lights and my Gear solenoid switching now. Hmmm. Thanks for the reminder, I'll give this a try and see if that gets my F-16 working.

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The problem I have with Flightpanels is that there's no browser console interface for the COM port connection.  That might be why you switched back to Hub.
It's a bit of a faff if you want to connect more than one Arduino. 
I suppose a solution to that would be an RS485 network.  Then only one Arduino needs to connect to the computer.

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12 hours ago, No1sonuk said:

The problem I have with Flightpanels is that there's no browser console interface for the COM port connection.  That might be why you switched back to Hub.
It's a bit of a faff if you want to connect more than one Arduino. 
I suppose a solution to that would be an RS485 network.  Then only one Arduino needs to connect to the computer.

 

There should be a multiple-com-ports.cmd file to help connect multiple COM ports with one click:

@echo off
REM The COMPORTS variable should be set to a space-separated list of COM port numbers:
set COMPORTS=4 5 6 7 8 9

for %%i in (%COMPORTS%) do start /b cmd /c connect-serial-port.cmd /Q %%i

 

 

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On 9/9/2021 at 12:21 PM, No1sonuk said:

The problem I have with Flightpanels is that there's no browser console interface for the COM port connection.  That might be why you switched back to Hub.
It's a bit of a faff if you want to connect more than one Arduino. 
I suppose a solution to that would be an RS485 network.  Then only one Arduino needs to connect to the computer.

Yes, it’s beginning to come back to me now. I did much prefer the web browser connection version (I’m confused now what to call the two different versions, maybe I had them backwards earlier when mentioning them- I’ll just call them original batch file connection and web browser connection versions) for exactly that reason, back when I was controlling my entire pit with arduinos. Think I had 7 different inputs at one point. But then I switched over to using Leo Bodnar boards after getting frustrated with the pit losing connection now and then while flying (can’t remember the specific problems) but ultimately the ease of using Leo Bodnar boards to use my pit with other modules just made more sense. But I kept the arduinos for lights and my gear solenoid.

 

And the exact reason why I switched back from the version that connects the arduinos through the web browser interface was because I had a hook light that was working backwards, illuminating when handle was up and extinguishing when lowered using the hub. (I remembered when i tried using this web browser version for connecting  again the other day and saw weird behaviors with my lights) Think I had asked blacklibrary or someone high up in the DCS-BIOS wisdom what I was doing wrong/if there was a bug and they said it worked correctly for them, and then I figured out they were using original version of DCS-Bios using a batch file for connecting arduinos. So I switched back and life was good again. And yes DeadMeat, I use the multiple-com port batch file and it works great. 
 

conclusion- I might try the web browser connection version again but I suspect if have to go through each light assignment and rewrite the code in my arduino sketches to make sure it’s correct, then give it a whirl. 
 

Thanks for the reminders of the web browser connection version and replying guys. I’ll come back here and post my results for anyone curious when I find the time to tinker with this. In the meantime just so happy to have the solenoid working again, even if just for the Hornet. 
 

 Cheers!


Edited by Sickdog
Correction on nomenclature for both arduino versions

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"Hub" is the web browser interface one.
"Flightpanels" is the latest maintained version, but has "manual connection" programs.

WRT the LED: It's a relatively simple fix to switch the on and off states in hardware if software switching is a pain.  
Arduino I/O pins can sink or source enough current to drive an LED.  That basically means they can be either the +ve or -ve part of an LED's power supply.
See attached.
LEDs are normally wired as "active high" for DCS-BIOS.  That means the LED comes ON when the output turns ON.
However, if the LED behaviour is the wrong way round, you can wire the LED as "active low", meaning that the LED comes ON when the output turns OFF.

led-connection.jpg

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12 hours ago, No1sonuk said:

Hub" is the web browser interface one.
"Flightpanels" is the latest maintained version, but has "manual connection" programs.

That seems backwards to me. When I goto the flightpanels GitHub it appears that it’s not updated anymore. When I use what you call the hub/web browser interface, it appears that’s where the updated aircraft are. Going off the top of my head, I’ll double check tomorrow to confirm but what you’re saying is opposite of my understanding. But thanks for the info on the LEDs, maybe if it comes to it I’ll give that a try. 

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  • 1 month later...

Thought I’d pop back in to share my latest, in case it helps anyone. 
 

first of all, I think I must be mentally challenged as I just wasn’t understanding the different DCS bios versions before, have it all clear in my head now. I think my main problem was I wasn’t using the Flight panels Fork, not sure what I was using. But definitely using the HUB version was not working. 
 

I started using the Flight panels fork with a fresh install, had to make my own adjustments to each aircraft library lua in order to have unique WOW code for each aircraft, and now I have almost every module with retractable gear (including the two helos) working with my gear solenoid. (I’m sure there’s a smarter way to check the module being flown in the sketch and not have to change the WOW code to make unique for each aircraft so sketch doesn’t throw an error)

As for my LED issues, that also required the small changes in the Flight Panels version to be updated into my sketches and now all is working perfectly! 
 

thanks to everyone that helped me out!

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3 hours ago, Sickdog said:

(I’m sure there’s a smarter way to check the module being flown in the sketch and not have to change the WOW code to make unique for each aircraft so sketch doesn’t throw an error)

I've found there may be no need to know which aircraft if there are no address clashes.
Have a look here:

 

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