I decided to stay with many of my instruments in the 28V realm. In order to switch that and to switch high current loads I decided to use ADVANTECH relay boards. These boards can be rather pricy, but I found them in surplus in Thailand and the first lot of boards has shipped to me this past week. The boards are in good shape and the folks in Thailand took good care during de-installation.
The exact type of the relay boards are ADVANTECH PCLD-785B with 24 relays. The boards are externally powered or can be bus powered. I plan on stacking two of the boards together with risers for 48 channels per stack. Four boards, or 96 channels, will be driven by a single National Instruments PC-DIO-96 card.
The L-1011 project will require a massive amount of relays because of the large amount of incandescent lights used on the various panels. The relay board is also handy for the many solenoids used in the L-1011 cockpit to hold switches in place.
Hi Curd! I was thinkin, about handling incandescent lamps and solenoids (which usually are rated below 500mA at 28V) why don't you choose like I did an opencockpits card? the USB output card can handle 64 Outputs up to 500mA each and has also PWM modulation if you want to dim them. Program it to use with FS2004 or FSX is really easy and the price is around 60€. Plus it is a stand alone module and doesn't require any other card to drive it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the input. I will look into the card.
ReplyDeleteOpencockpits cards are Windows only, not a flexible solution really. I'm using (www.fransedano.net) an "intelligent" controller which talks with cards using CAN. If you have some time we could have a chat and work together. Have a look at this demo I made yesterday:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.vimeo.com/28228410
Great video Francisco. Unfortunately I can't understand it, but the control logic looks pretty neat.
ReplyDeleteHi Frans! Nice to see your solution to drive instruments!
ReplyDeleteOC cards are for win only as you said, I didn't think about u guys were using Xplane on Linux :) Thay are anyway flexible enough to handle the whole pit with real instruments tho :)
I would be interested in something to drive the RMI for example using the syncros buil in through an interface. I am not a programmer (SIOC apart) but if I can help you guys in FSX field with your interface I'll be happy to do that
Hi curd really nice post.It is very nice to see your relay boards.I am looking forward for your updated information.
ReplyDelete