Simviation Forum - A question about Hagstrom Boards

Apr 16^th, 2007 at 9:14am

visualchaosfx Offline
Colonel
I have no idea
Michigan

Gender:
Posts: 181

Hopefully soon, I'm gonna start building my desktop sim. I'm gonna start out with the overhead panel first which looks like this:

I'm gonna be using Hagstrom boards just because their cheaper and seem easy to work with. I fly the PMDG 747 and will be interfacing with that. However, I'm alittle bit leary of getting a Hagstrom board simply because I do I go about the programming aspects of it? Anyone on here who owns the PMDG 747 will know that the overhead panel is controlled by a series of mouse clicks i.e. left click or right click. In looking at the PMDG settings for keyboard assignments, there isn't a way to run the overhead panel using the keyboard. So how am I gonna program a Hagstrom board to use the overhead panel if I can't assign keys to a keyboard?

Systemax Desktop Computer&&AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 4600+&&2.41 GHz&&2GB of Ram&&250GB Hard Drive&&80GB Hard Drive&&Windows XP Professional&&Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB PCI-E (2 DVI)&&SoundBlaster Audigy SE Sound Card&&&&http://visualchaosfx.page.tl/

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #1 - Apr 16^th, 2007 at 12:25pm

Professor_Fate Offline
Colonel
"Push the button, Max!"

Posts: 49

This might be helpful:

http://www.wideview.it/key2mouse.htm

Fate

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #2 - Apr 16^th, 2007 at 12:40pm

JBaymore Offline
Global Moderator
Under the curse of the
hombuilt cockpit!

Gender:
Posts: 10261

visualchaosfx,

You have hit the perennial problem with interfacing stuff. Most of the really complex aircraft have systems accessed almost solely by mouseclicks on virtual panels. This is rather difficult to work with.

One tactic is Key2Mouse as the Professor mentioned above. The drawback is that the panel that has the gauges you are activating must be displayed on the screen. One tactic to get rid of the visual is to make a custom panel that has all invisible and transparent gauges. They are there .... ... but you can't see them.... just the outside view.

The Hagstrom KE-72 type cards pretty much mainly only send keypresses or sequences of keypreses in macros. So you are sort of lout of luck.

There is one complex aircraft .......... can't remember the name now............ that I am told has a lot of functions with keypress assignments possible. It is one of the older ones.......... is a 727 or something like that.

best,

......................john

Intel i7 960 quad 3.2G LGA 1366, Asus P6X58D Premium, 750W Corsair, 6 gig 1600 DDR3, Spinpoint 1TB 7200 HD, Caviar 500G 7200 HD, GTX275 1280M, Logitec Z640, Win7 Pro 64b, CH Products yoke, pedals + throttle quad, simpit

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #3 - Apr 16^th, 2007 at 3:31pm

visualchaosfx Offline
Colonel
I have no idea
Michigan

Gender:
Posts: 181

JBaymore wrote on Apr 16^th, 2007 at 12:40pm:

visualchaosfx,

You have hit the perennial problem with interfacing stuff. Most of the really complex aircraft have systems accessed almost solely by mouseclicks on virtual panels. This is rather difficult to work with.

One tactic is Key2Mouse as the Professor mentioned above. The drawback is that the panel that has the gauges you are activating must be displayed on the screen. One tactic to get rid of the visual is to make a custom panel that has all invisible and transparent gauges. They are there .... ... but you can't see them.... just the outside view.

The Hagstrom KE-72 type cards pretty much mainly only send keypresses or sequences of keypreses in macros. So you are sort of lout of luck.

There is one complex aircraft .......... can't remember the name now............ that I am told has a lot of functions with keypress assignments possible. It is one of the older ones.......... is a 727 or something like that.

best,

......................john

Ah ok. Well before I was thinking about using Hagstrom boards, I was gonna try and get the InterfaceIt boards over at Flight Deck Solutions. But I think thier boards only work for products that they sell and not custom ones like mine. So I thought about the Hagstrom boards. I might try and look for other types of boards that I can interface with. I know its not gonna be easy getting this desktop sim off the ground but I'm trying to make things as simple as possible.

Systemax Desktop Computer&&AMD Athlon 64 X2 Duel Core Processor 4600+&&2.41 GHz&&2GB of Ram&&250GB Hard Drive&&80GB Hard Drive&&Windows XP Professional&&Nvidia GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB PCI-E (2 DVI)&&SoundBlaster Audigy SE Sound Card&&&&http://visualchaosfx.page.tl/

Back to top

IP Logged

Reply #4 - Apr 16^th, 2007 at 4:24pm

SilverFox441 Offline
Colonel
Now What?
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Gender:
Posts: 1467

The Flightdeck Solutions FDS-SYS1 or FDS-SYS3 cards seem to be designed for a more generic application, you can download the user's manual and see if they fit your needs.

http://www.flightdecksolutions.com/pcupload/FDS-interfaceIT-SYS-Manual-V2.pdf

My concern with those boards is cost... but considering they handle both switch input and LED outputs, they might be worth looking at.

Steve (Silver Fox) Daly

&&

Back to top

IP Logged

	Search the archive: