Falcon-A Suite of Applications ------------------------------ Falcon-A and Falcon Universal Control Center are written by a programmer, for programmers. Chances are that out of the box this program is useless to you. It's a great example if you're a developer and with a little tweaking it will kick ass. I will be happy to help developers in getting the application tweaked, however, if you have no Visual Basic experience, please get some before posing your questions. I make no guarantees or warranties with these products. They work for me and I hope they will be useful to you. Finally, the Phidgets library is NOT included with the application. You must install the libaray PRIOR to installing Falcon Universal Control Center. The library is available free on the phidgets site at www.phidgets.com. Be sure to use version 2.07 Beta or higher or the software will not function correctly. Falcon-A -------- Falcon Universal Control Center now provides a more flexible interface, allowing you to define particular ports for varying Phidget devices. Falcon Universal Control Center now provides support for two PhidgetLED-64s, two Phidget 0/16/16s, Two PhidgetLCDs, one PhidgetTextLED and two PhidgetServos and 2 4-Port PhidgetServos. The biggest change to the Falcon-A Shared Memory driver is the addition of support for Open Falcon and Falcon 4: Allied Force. Users can now switch, on-the-fly between memory models for BMS 2.x OF and AF. A few glitches in the models were also corrected (nobody found them so - yay) and performance was further tweaked. FUCC.cfg ----------- Back up your existing F4Lites.CFG file. Some changes have been made, however, you'll want your original for reference. The program will create a copy of your F4Lites.CFG file called FUCC.CFG but you'll want to make a backup just in case. Through this file you can customize Falcon Universal Control Center to suit your particular hardware setup. Let's face it, we're not all going to wire all our Pits the same way. By editing the config file you can set your hardware and port settings as you wish. The config file is laid out like standard Windows configuration or INI style files. A heading is included in sqare parenthesis ([]) followed by ports for that particular device. The device headings are as follows; PLED64-1, PLED64-2, P01616-1, P01616-2, PTLED-1, PTLED-2, PTLCD-1, PTLCD-2, P4SERVO-1, P4SERVO-2, EPICANALOGS and GAUGES. The file is comma delimetted. Each line indicates the port, description, mask and lightbit number. For example; 0,Eyebrow - Master Caution,&H1&,1 This indicates Port zero with the desciption "Eyebrow - Master Caution". The mask for this lightbit is &H1&. Since this lightbit is contained in the variable "lightbits" it is assigned a value of 1. There are three "lightbits" variables in Shared Memory; lightbits, lightbits2 and lightbits3. These bits should be indicated by 1, 2 or 3 respectively when laying out this file. Some fiddling was done to support the fields which do not correspond to a specific light bit. This data can include things like Airspeed and Altitude. To accomodate this data, Falcon Universal Control Center does some fancy footwork in the ReadLampData section of the code. It will currently support a Countermeasures Display (although I've jazzed mine up a bit) and the Pilot Fault Display. The DED data is also being processed and displayed on screen, however, it's not being output to anything. Once I find a suitable display device I'll work the interface into the mix. A placement glitch for the DED data has also been corrected. Gauges may be servo driven using data from the simulator which may be converted to a new value corresponding to the servos position. Gauge data can also be output in a variety of methods depending on the interface hardware used. NOTES ----- The Falcon-A application must reside on the server. You can run FUCC either on the server or on multiple clients depending on your requirements. TCP/IP is the easiest way to accomplish this currently. More detailed DCOM installation instructions as well as an installation program will be distributed with the release version I hope you enjoy The Falcing Series of applications. Remember, they're not for everyone but they may be just what you need. ----------------------------- Latest Updates and Changes ----------------------------- Beta version .80 - 12/27/06 - Server application has been renamed to FalconA.exe. You'll have to run it once and exit it to have your COM parameters set in your PC. Once this is done, running the FUCC.EXE should automatically load FalconA.EXE - Renamed F4Lites.CFG FUCC.CFG. Program will copy your existing F4Lites.CFG to FUCC.CFG on startup if you don't create your own - Open Falcon and Allied Force Support has been added. You can switch memory models on the fly from the Falcon-A Server - TCP/IP support now functions. You can run Falcon-A on the server and FUCC on as many clients as necessary, each supporting a various (or multiple) pieces of hardware. NOTE: RWR data is Not output in this beta release but all lamp, gauge and display data is. Remember to check the "Transmit TCP/IP" box on the Falcon-A Data Server BEFORE selecting the TCP/IP Communication mode on the client. - Variable TCP/IP Ports can be used. The server defaults to 1001. This can be changed. In the final release this variable will be savable to a config file. - Data tweaks have been performed to some of the values including FTIT (thanks Michi). - Weight On Wheels has been added. This isn't a lamp but the return value could be used for other creative things - 2 new variables suppored in FUCC.cfg; [P4SERVO_1] [P4SERVO_2] These are 4 port servos for gauge control. Each servo can be associated with a data value. This section is still in development but all data is processed in the Gauges grid and is available. A seperate colum for an "adjusted" value is included on the gauge to apply calculations based on returned data - Renamed [SIMKITS] to [GAUGES] in FUCC.CFG When adding gauges format is; Servo #, Description, Keyword, zero - Added support to light grids for new data (again, thanks Michi); HSI - Outer Marker Beacon HSI - Middle Marker Beacon HSI - Inner Marker Beacon Left Console - Speed Brake These bit fields are calculated by FUCC based on inbound data. They can be added to the LED64 or 0/16/16 grids. The data in When adding these variable to the cfg file the format is; Port, Descripion, &H0, 0 (the last two bits of data are placeholders Examples are included in the distribution FUCC.CFG file - Added support for Gear Positions not supported in Lightbits (ie: Allied Force) Sample entry into [PLED64-1] (or 2); 35,Gear(Bit) - Left Gear Down,&H0,0 36,Gear(Bit) - Nose Gear Down,&H0,0 37,Gear(Bit) - Right Gear Down,&H0,0 - SIOC Server is coming but not yet supported in the beta - Switches Tab is not supported in the beta (but will be damn cool when it is!) - Added jrDebugMode to the properties of the FalconA server application. The distributed compiled version has a value of 0 (zero) set. When the value is set to 1 (one) a new window containing TCP/IP communication details appears. This may help in debugging for some of you developers. ----------------------------- Previous updates to Falcon Brite Mon that are applicable in FUCC ------------------- v1.08 Updates: January 14, 2006 - 2 new variables suppored in FUCC.cfg; [PTLCD-2] [PTLED-2] These variables plus newly added grids to the interface provide support for a second PhidgetTextLED and TextLCD. A CMDS option for the TextLED has been added. Remember that these variables do not come through the same as light bits. Information processed is handed off to a subroutine to determine what to do. These routines can be altered to suit your individual requirements [PTLED-2] 1,CMDS - 1,CMDS1,0 2,CMDS - 2,CMDS2,0 [PTLCD-2] 1,PFD - 1,PFD,0 3,PFD - 3,PFD,0 In the example above, the TextLED becomes a 2 line CMDS display and the TextLCD a PFD. Since only 2 lines of the PFD ever display in Falcon the TextLCD is a terrific little display unit. - Polling timer slider added to control screen for flexible customization. - Support for comments in FUCC.cfg file. Comment lines must be prefixed with 2 slashes // - Better error support for removed / inoperative Phidget devices - Tweaks and fixes Falcon-A -------- - Modified Interface slightly - Tweaks v.1751 Updates: December 31, 2005 Added support for 4 new variables in FUCC.cfg; [TCPIP-IP] 192.168.100.160 [TCPIP-PORT] 1001 [COMPREF] DCOM [NOSCREENUPDATE] True [UPDATEEPICANYWAY] False The variable names are enclosed in square brackets. The other data are sample values which can be used. Here's a quick rundown; TCPIP-IP - IP for TCP/IP Connection TCPIP-PORT - TCP/IP Port # COMPREF - DCOM or TCPIP. Sets default for program startup NOSCREENUPDATE - True or False. Sets default for program startup UPDATEEPICANYWAY - True or False. Sets default for program startup Other corrections have been made to certain modules where glitches were discovered. The All Lights On Function has also been re-written to avoid locking up on some systems.