Falcon-A Suite of Applications
------------------------------
Falcon-A and Falcon Brite-Mon 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.

The installation program included is for running both the Falcon-A Server and the Falcon Brite-Mon application on the same PC.  Falcon-A is designed so that multiple clients can run on multiple PCs.  To do this you will have to make a new installation program using DCOM.  Like I said, this ain't for everyone ;)

If you are already running Falcon Brite-Mon 1.7 or greater you can simply copy the new EXEs over your old ones without a full re-installation.

Finally, the Phidgets library is not included with the application.  You must install the libaray PRIOR to installing Falcon Brite-Mon.  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 Brite-Mon now provides a more flexible interface, allowing you to define particular ports for varying Phidget devices. Falcon Brite-Mon now provides support for two PhidgetLED-64s, two Phidget 0/16/16s, Two PhidgetLCDs, one PhidgetTextLED and two PhidgetServos.  Also roughed in is support for SimKits center console gauges.

The biggest change to the Falcon-A Shared Memory driver is the addition of support for Falcon 4: Allied Force.  Users can now switch, on-the-fly between memory models for BMS 2.x and AF.  A few glitches in the models were also corrected (nobody found them so - yay) and performance was further tweaked.  Please note that Falcon 4:Allied Farce has trouble with some light bits, particularily gear lights so please don't report them as errors.


Falcon Brite-Mon
----------------

The biggest change with FBM comes in the interface.  The system will now provide a view of each interface, the variables assigned to it and the state of those variables.


F4Lites.cfg
-----------

Through this file you can customize Falcon Brite-Mon 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 and SKITS.  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 Brite-Mon 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.  One I find a suitable display device I'll work the interface into the mix.

Finally, I plan to interface the SimKITS instruments packages so I've left a little provision in FBM to drive them as well.  I'd do more but I don't yet have the DLL to write for them.

NOTES
-----

This program is primarily used via DCOM rather than TCP/IP.  Because I run Falcon-A and Falcon Brite-Mon on the same PC it just makes more sense.  While the TCP/IP data transmission option still works with BMS data it does not yet work with AF data.  I plan to correct this in future versions.

I also haven't got the "auto formula entry" thingy working on the G-Suit tab.  Any formulas to affect the G values being read will have to be entered through the code.

I hope you enjoy The Falcing Series of applications.  Remember, they're not for everyone but they may be just what you need.


v.1751 Updates: December 31, 2005
Added support for 4 new variables in F4Lites.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.

v1.08 Updates: January 14, 2006

Falcon Brite-Mon
----------------
- 2 new variables suppored in F4Lites.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 F4Lites.cfg file.  Comment lines must be prefixed with 2 slashes //
- Better error support for removed / inoperative Phidget devices
- Tweaks and fixes

Falcon-A
--------

- Updated shared memory structure (corrected it actually)
- Tweaks and fixes

