In the original A Simple Keypad post, we wrote some code to send keyboard events using the Teensy's built in Keyboard emulator libraries. While this works, the code as written pretty much acts as a momentary button works, by checking for a key press in the loop() function

This is a quick tutorial on how to debug UDP broadcast traffic sent from our code to ForeFlight. This method applies for any type of UDP traffic you want to monitor, but the fact that it is sent in plain text makes it even easier. Linux If you happen to

So let's do something different today. Now that we know how to read data from the sim and send it to our Arduino devices, let's use that same idea to send data to Electronic Flight Bags (EFB) apps like ForeFlight, Garmin Pilot and Avare. But what

In this final part of this Sending Events series, we'll put everything we learned so we can now send events from the device to the C# app, and then to Microsoft Flight Simulator. Arduino Sketch Changes Lets insert the rotary encoder code from part 2 with a small

In Part 1, we learned how to send events from C# to Microsoft Flight Simulator using the SimConnect SDK's EventIds. We added two buttons in our WPF app to increase and decrease the barometer setting and resetting it to standard 29.92 with the press of another button.

So up to this point we were only pulling data from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and sending it down to the devices. But what about interacting back with the sim? There are two things that you can do with the SimConnect SDK: setting some SimVars, and sending EventIds. I clarify

Now that we wired our Teensy to a TFT LCD ILI9341 display, lets go ahead and revisit our previous sketch that received data from Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 via our C# app. We'll add the SPI.h and ILI9341_t3.h libraries and #defines for the TFT and

In our previous post Choosing the right display we looked at a few options to use as our main display. We ended up choosing a 240x320 ILI9341 TFT Screen that is available to buy at a lot of places, like Amazon, AliExpress, PJRC, Ebay, etc. It is driven by a

The problem Up until this point, I've been sharing code examples for the Arduino Leonardo/Micro. Arduinos are an "ok" starter microcontroller board, but eventually you will realize that it doesn't have the specs needed for building something other than a keypad, game controller

Let's think about what data types. Remember the SimVar structure we created in Part 1 of the series, we created a struct with two floats that represent the Altitude and Barometric Setting of an altimeter. private struct SimVars { public float Altitude; // INDICATED ALTITUDE (feet) public float KohlsmanSettingHg; // KOHLSMAN

Expanding the code we used to send data from C# to Arduino in Part 1 of this series, let's define a SerialPort object and initialize it. public partial class MainWindow : Window { ... private SerialPort serialPort; ... private void InitializeSerialPort() { serialPort = new SerialPort("COM8", 115200); } } Note: My Arduino is

Let's continue thinking about building our Altimeter device. Now that we have the altimeter and barometer data from the sim, lets see what we need to be able to write a sketch to send the two SimVars to an Arduino and display them somehow. The obvious questions So.

Something I have to start thinking about at this point is how will I interact with these screens. All the ones I purchased for experimenting have touch capabilities. Some are capacitive, some are resistive. Both have their differences, so should I go in that direction? On one hand they all

Design restriction Remember back when I talked about measuring the 3U bracket that comes with the Logitech Multi Panel display, and designing a 2U bracket for my Switch Box that would be compatible with Logitech's and the yokes out there? I also ended up designing a 1U version

Prerequisites for Developing with the MSFS SDK Before we start developing with the MSFS SDK, there are a few things you’ll need to have installed: 1. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: Ensure you have a copy of MSFS 2020 installed on your machine. 2. Enable Developer Mode: While not strictly

After successfully building a simple switch box and keypad, I’m ready to take on a more ambitious project. My next goal is to create custom flight instruments by reading data from the simulator and displaying it on small LCD screens. To begin, I dove into the MSFS SDK documentation

Let's try to write a Sketch to send keyboard strokes using Arduino Leonardo's Keyboard.h library, based on keys pressed on a Keypad. About Keypads Normally if you had 16 pushbuttons, you would have to connect 1 pin on each button to a pin on the

If you're interested in building a custom controller for a Flight Simulator—or any other game—starting with an Arduino Leonardo is a great choice. These microcontrollers natively support acting as an HID device and provide keyboard and mouse emulation, making them incredibly convenient for a project like

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of flying planes. But growing up in a place where flight schools were not very accessible, my passion remained grounded—that was until I discovered Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. This allowed me to get get a glimpse at the world of aviation,