sim to cockpit connection

[Benny1964]

Hi, I am in the process of building my first throttle quadrant (737). I am using FSUIPC and teensy or Bodnar card for interfacing with FSX. How does one make the simulator communicate with the quadrant? For example, if I have the autothrottle set at 250 KIAS and suddenly arm my air speed brakes, there should be an increase in autothrottle which would mean that I should be observing the handles moving up. Do I make any sense?
Thanks for the expertise.
Cheers,
Ben

[Sam Franklin]

Hi Ben,

I'm doing exactly the same thing, in fact, I've been cutting the parts this evening - I assume you've found a good tutorial?

Anyway, to answer your question: What you need is servos (motors) to move the thrust levers as they would in the game - this requires an I/O (input/output) card. The Leo Bodnar card is just input (I don't know about the teensy). You need a way to get the thrust lever position from the sim and send it to a servo to move the lever. (somebody much more intelligent will explain it to you I'm sure!).

Sam

[Benny1964]

Hi Sam,
as far as finding a good tutorial, I have been looking for the last 18 months and maybe I have been searching too much.
What I have found is that many times, the tutorials assume that I know alot already about programming, electronics and so on. I would not mind starting a site where it would be explained (like a recipe) on how to make an amazing throttle quadrant, MCP, overhead and so on. But that will be when I retire.... In the mean time, I stumbled upon a site where the gentleman uses an ethernet cable with a CAN tranceiver. Here is the site: http://kokpitti.blogspot.ca/
I have to install the thrust reverser microswitches in the handles today. Should be fun. Then I have to learn about ethernet cables and CAN transceivers.
Cheers,
Ben

[Kennair]

Hi Sam and Ben,

Search for Phidgets and Opencockpits.  Both manufacture DC motor cards and the associated software to talk to FS for such things as motorized throttles, speedbrakes etc.

Cheers,

Ken.