First installation of the RMC710 Autopilot

Late last week we completed the first installation of our new RMC710 Autopilot System into a local customer's King Air C90 simulator that we've been helping with. The post previous to this one explained most of the panel's details but we've now uploaded a short video of it operating to our YouTube channel as well.

Throughout this build we've customised a few components here and there and thought that this might be a good opportunity to share some of them, seeing as the astute amongst you will no doubt have noticed some differences to previous builds we've been involved with.

One of the most immediately noticeable differences is the colour scheme, which is a medium grey colour. This is probably illustrated by the following panels, as photographed whilst still in our workshop.

 

 

Actually (and if you've watched the above video, rather obviously), the above MIPs were made for a previous customer and incorporated the addition of two small Marker Beacon Indicators, each positioned at the top left of their respective panels. A more detailed photograph of one of these is below, although because of the amount of light in our workshop - and no available tripod upon which to mount the camera - it's a little difficult to see the illumination that we'd temporarily hooked up behind the blue legend. In person as it were, however, we were very pleased with the result.

Okay then, back to our local customer's simulator ... 

Below, you can see the two display units that had previously been purchased from another supplier and which were to be incorporated into the new build. We designed the main instrument panel around these and then the real work began: re-working the interfacing of the MFD and the PFD - although that's another post entirely if we ever find the hours needed to detail it. You can probably tell from the subsequent photos how involved the process was ... !

 

Oh, and skipping to the once again operational MFD and PFD ...

Conditional 64 Outputs Board

Over the past few weeks we've made some fairly significant changes to our 64 Outputs Board software which greatly improve its versatility. Below is a basic overview of what these alterations are, although more detailed posts regarding some of the aspects detailed here will likely follow in the next few weeks.

Also, the details on our website haven't been able to keep up with us, and these will be updated in the coming days. The PCBs themselves are the same (as indeed will be the price!), but the programming of the processor chips and the software interface behind them have been altered.

Anyway, on to the improvements ... 

Upgrade 1: Configurable Warning System now available

We have now added a Warning function to four outputs on our 64 Outputs Board. This allows users the ability to add a large number of conditions that can be used to trigger various warning lights. (Master Warning, Master Caution etc.)

We have allowed these special Warning outputs to use outputs 7 and 8 on banks 7 and 8.

The system works by having up to two specific conditions that must be true (ie. Battery Master, and Avionics Master etc.) (or they can be left blank) followed by any one of up to another 25 conditions being true.

One (or any) of these four warnings can also have a physical switch connected to the Ruscool 64 Outputs Board, which will act as a Reset button for the particular Warning light when it is activated. This means that if the Warning light is triggered, it can be turned off (reset) by pressing the button, and the Warning light will turn on again if another condition re-triggers the warning. If the warning condition resets itself, or an action by the pilot corrects the fault, the warning lamp will go out without the need to press the reset button.

The example below will light the Warning output if the Battery Switch and Avionics Switch are 'On' and any of the other conditions are true.

Upgrade 2: Configurable Switches added

Another new feature is that users now have the ability to connect to three inputs for use as custom switches or pushbuttons as well.

As shown in the example below, the first switch is set as 'momentary', which means that it will operate as a pushbutton toggle action.  

You can use these switches to control any FSUIPC offset or FS Control (event). They are labelled as 5, 6 and 7 because the first 4 switches are dedicated to the Warning resets and switch 8 is dedicated as a lamp test switch (more of which is explained below).

Upgrade 3: New Lamp Test options

There are now two options for how the lamp test can be operated.

Method 1: The lamp test can be triggered by the user through the assigning of an offset which will then be used to trigger the lamp test. When this offset is changed, the outputs that have been 'flagged' will be lit. 


This can either be a valid FSUIPC offset, or any unused (reserved) offset that you are using
either from a Ruscool 64 Input board, another input controller or from within Flight Simulator. The offset type must be a single byte that sends either "1" or "0".

Method 2: A physical switch can be connected to the Ruscool 64 Outputs board and the lamp test can be controlled that way. Switch 8 on the 64 Outputs board is dedicated to this function.

You can also specify whether the lamp test is only triggered if the battery bus has voltage or whether it's always triggered regardless of the battery status.

Eg. Offset Trigger

Eg. Switch Trigger

64 Outputs Board: Lamp Test Function

Due to a customer's suggestion, we are now incorporating a lamp test function into our 64 Output programs. This update is now in the final stages of development and will be made available through our website once fully tested. 

This addition allows the user to flag a selection of outputs that they wish to have included as part of a lamp test. For example, all outputs confined to a particular panel (say, the annunciators) can be flagged for a lamp test. The user then assigns an offset which will be used to trigger the lamp test, so that when this offset is changed the outputs that have been 'flagged' will then be lit. This offset can be changed via either Flight Sim, a Ruscool 64 Input Board, or any other means available (as long as the offset changes, the lamp test will be triggered). 

Another slight modification to our 64OUTS is that the Bytes column has been replaced with a Calculation column instead, which means that the On/Off or Range values can now be set to the 'calculated' data as opposed the 'raw' data. This information is more useful as it reflects what is actually seen in Flight Sim. 

Below is a screenshot highlighting the changes ...