Baron Icing Switches
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I am attempting to assign the Fuel Vent, Stall Warning Heat, and Windshield Heat switches to toggle switches on the HC Bravo using Spad. Are there sim events or data values accessible through Spad that I can use?
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As usual, all things are possible with my aircraft. Nothing is out of reach of 3rd party bindings, as long as you can enter custom code.
For the fuel vent heat, "L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch" controls the switch position, and "A:CIRCUIT SWITCH ON:38" controls the circuit. (Sorry, I will make it just the L:Var in the next update. Always trying to improve the ease of binding.
Same thing for the stall warning: "L:var_StallWarningHeatSwitch", and "A:CIRCUIT SWITCH ON:39".
And the windshield heat: "L:var_windshieldHeatSwitch", and "A:CIRCUIT SWITCH ON:35".
These are also not too difficult to find in AnalogBaron.XML, if you want to try searching for anything yourself. Always happy to help.
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Thank you! I haven't tried custom coding yet but I think it is time to start learning how it works!
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@Black-Square I have viewed these Lvars in FS2020 but they don't show up in SPAD or in FSUIPC7. So can you help me find out how to actually assign these to a switch?
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I'm happy to help, but I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for. I just checked the code, and I gave the correct information above. The L:Vars are for the switch positions, and the circuit A:Vars control the systems of the aircraft.
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Thanks for the offer of help, which is gratefully accepted.
I realise that the information you gave is correct. I have also just searched the AnalogBaron.xml file and seen them in there. The critical part of my request above is in the last line.In your response to @RoughLandings above you said "As usual, all things are possible with my aircraft. Nothing is out of reach of 3rd party bindings, as long as you can enter custom code"; so I'm assuming that it's the art of "entering custom code" that I need to learn. So I was asking if you can point me in the right direction to study it and try to get these Lvars bound to my switches.
Cheers -
Thanks for the explanation. I'm no expert on using any of the 3rd party hardware binding applications, but SPAD, Axes and Oh's, and Mobiflight are probably the most popular ones used with my aircraft. I believe it's Mobiflight that has an entire online repository of community added bindings for my aircraft, which you can easily add to your own profiles.
Beyond that, all I can say is that each of these applications allows you to add "Reverse Polish Notation" (RPN) code to your assignments, which is the same language that you see in the XML file. This means that you can copy my code from the XML file right into SPAD, or the other applications, and that should guarantee you will get the desired behavior, just as if you were clicking the button in the virtual cockpit.
For example, for the fuel vent heat switch discussed above, the code from the XML, and therefore the code you would enter into SPAD, is as follows:
(L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool) ! (>L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool) (L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool) (>A:CIRCUIT SWITCH ON:@FuelVentHeatCircuit, bool)This will toggle the state of L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, and then write that state to the circuit variable. I hope that's more along the lines of what you were looking for. Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.
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Having this discussion with you is awesomely helpful.
I have just spent about four hours watching every video tutorial that I thought might be related to this topic (and quite a few that were not but which I thought I might glean some useful knowledge from)
I still am paralyzed by uncertainties!
I am beginning to think that it is more of a "how to handle SPAD" issue than anything else.
I managed to find these Lvars in the SPAD dropdown menus but am as yet unable to work out how to be able to select them and get them to show up in any switch settings panel.
Cheers
David -
May I ask what controllers you're setting up?
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@Black-Square, like djw4250, I am not sure where the code you provided for the fuel vent switch needs to be entered in Spad:
(L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool) ! (>L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool)
(L:var_FuelVentHeatSwitch, bool) (>A:CIRCUIT SWITCH ON:@FuelVentHeatCircuit, bool)I think I kind of understand what the code is doing, but I am just not sure how to apply it within the Spad environment.
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Here is what I did this afternoon and it seems to be working. Doing a test flight now.
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@GunStrauss it looks like @RoughLanding was setting up his Bravo but I am setting up individual switches that are set out on a back-lit panel pretty similar to the BKSQ Analog Baron 58P. (mine is actually modelled on the Beech Baron D55)
@RoughLandings has been more successful than I have because when I add the conditions regarding the CIRCUIT SWITCHES I see a big red circle on the left with a X in it and although, when I move my physical switch, I see the value changing, the switch in the sim does not move, likely because the circuit switch's condition is not working.
Not sure what I have done wrong. -
@djw4250, the first test flight went well. All the switches move in the cockpit when I use the relevant Bravo switches. I still need to do another flight with icing conditions to verify the systems are working properly.
I ended up not using scripts in Spad, instead I just set up normal assignments that are setting data values rather than sending events.
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@RoughLandings that's exactly how I was trying to do it but I have run in to problems adding the "Condition" for the "Action". I get a big red cross on the left of the condition and nothing works. With just a quick look I can't see what's different between what you finished up with (that works) and what I arrived at (that doesn't work) but I plan to download your offering today and have a real good look at it. Thanks for sharing.
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@djw4250, can you post a screenshot of your settings?
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@RoughLandings will do. It will be a few minutes because my sim is not running yet. I will boot it up and take a picture of it.
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@RoughLandings I can't upload an image from my PC sorry, Apparently it has to have a URL address.
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I have spent ages scrolling through the BaronAnalog.xml trying to answer this question - "What's the Lvar for the BKSQ Baron's prop deice heating?" There are more options for the naming of it than I can imagine. Is it "propDeice", "propHeat", "propBoot" or something I haven't thought of yet?
