Led annunciator help

[ncd200]

Hello fellow simpit builders!

This is my first post here so i will take this oppurtunity to introduce myself first.

I'm Rick Winkelman, live in the netherlands and are building a helicopter simulator.

Now is my problem / question.

I want to build a annunciator panel that works
now i want to know if it is possible to link a switch with a led, for example

I switch on the battery, than the cockpit gets to life and i see the warning lights show up.

now if i switch on the invertor switch the annunciator led for the invertor goes to off and the same if i do it in reverse way.

I think it should be possible but dont know for sure and dont know how.

Any help would be appreciated.

below a picture of my work so far

Kindly regards,

Rick Winkelman

[jackpilot]

I Rick
Welcome aboard the ship, aeroplane, helicopter, UFO, whatever flies...

Many here will answer your question.
Very briefly there are two ways to do it if I understand correctly your question.

1)  hardwiring ie: having a wire circuit which will power your leds when the switch is closed. It can be straightforward or sophisticated with diodes , delay timers, capacitors etc which allow some effects or conditions. Works a bit like a flowchart.
2) much more powerful and flexible: an interface card. Your switch will talk to the computer (via the interface card) and the computer will answer back with an instruction to the card to light up this or that according to the (helicopter) software logic. This is why these cards are called Input and output cards.
Just remember  that hadwire or software there is always a way to make it work with some ingenuity and ,sometimes, hours of frustration. 
Other members will for sure chime in with better explanations
Again,  Welcome here.
Jack

[ncd200]

Jack

Thanks for the reply!

I have the multi controller board from simkits.
a very nice board if i may say so.

another solution i've found is the anninciator panel of saitek that can handle allmost all the warnings i need in the helicopter.

exept for the invertor everything works, but i can say invertor for gen also because they can be linked together also.

Thank you for the welcome.

Regards,

Rick

[jackpilot]

I think GoFlight has one too..
But you can save a lot by doing it yourself. Not rocket science.
In case you do not know already check Ian's site..wealth of info.
http://www.737ng.co.uk/overhead.htm#CONNECTING YOUR SWITCHES
Jack

[ncd200]

thanks for the link jack,

I was aware of that website but have not looked at it because i didnt thought to find my answer there.
it is also possible to connect leds to the multi controller board of simkits, but is there an option to create an own offset for some indicators? this because the output list of this board is not that big and is missing a lot of indicators i need.

Regards,

Rick

[hexpope]

Wow Rick, that board you mention is 110 euro for so little functions. I know the no progamming knowledge thing is nice.

IMO, for looking what you want to do, opencockpits would have done all of that and tons more for 93 euros built and 52 euros in kit form, which would have given you 72 inputs, 45 outputs and control 4 pots for your axis. You can control your leds the way you would like them to behave or function via sioc which is very very easy to learn. There's tons of people using them and a wealth of info / scripts on the internet

http://www.opencockpits.com/catalog/info/information.php?info_id=44&cPath=#generic

and have a look at the others too.

This guy knows his stuff about sioc and if you need help with a certain function he would be happy to help as I have seen him do it many many times. Also there is this site "Cockpitbuilders" There are a good few of us using SIOC, so help wouldn't be a problem either.

http://www.lekseecon.nl/howto.html

I want to state that jack it totally right, it's not hard at all. It Just take's time, and practice. I hope I haven't offended you giving my opinon about Simkits. I am just trying to give you an idea like jack, that you can really save money in the long run.

Also, I can't see your picture in the first post. Is there any chance of fixing that as I would love to see it !!! I done a instrument panel for a friend of mine not to long ago. He was just using a monitor behind it to show all the gauges.

[dnoize]

allthough at 119 euros quite expensive, please note that the 23 ports of the multi controller can be used as input, output, but also for 23 servo's !!

Try to drive 23 servo's with the oc gear and you would spend around the same amount (4x25 euros for 4 x usb servo card), but would have to work with 4 boards and hassle with sioc (and lets admit, sioc can be quite a challenge for some, its FAR from plug and play).

admitted: for just driving a few leds or switches, the multicontroller is overpriced and overkill, but for someone who wants to drive ALOT of servo's its a very good value.
Add to that, that it is plug and play and can drive virtually any analog output (gauge) in FS it makes it a perfect controller for steam gauge builders !
Its a perfect add on for the single needle gauges, and a few leds and switches in his heli simulator. A mastercard + usb servo card would be more expensive for him (especially if he wants to connect to usb and would also need the usb expansion card)

One of these and you could drive all overhead gauges, flap gauge, break pressure and yaw damper of a 737 and still leave you 9 ports for other servo's and/or switches/leds.

Furthermore the resolution of the servo controller is far better than the oc cards. With the oc cards my (quality) servo's are far more jittery/nervous than with the simkits controller.

Stef