Last week before going on vacation I stopped by the local Microsoft office to show them the BrainPad and let them take it for a test drive while I was there. Needless to say they loved it (and yes of course you already know I am going to say that 
) With that being said, while Dave was writing some sample projects I was talking to Stacy about a project that he and his son Chase are working. They are using NETMF to create a âreal worldâ cockpit for DCS: World aircraft, http://dcs-bios.a10c.de/. I of course asked him to send some pics and share the code, so if you are interested in that project please stay tuned for more updates.
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Here is the first update from Stacy and Chase (they sent it too me over the weekend but I was too sick to post it.).
[quote=âStacy & Chaseâ]If you post it (the video), please let people know that weâre still working out some bugs and will be adding more features. This is based on existing DCS BIOS code for Arduino, but we wrote a custom server component that runs on the PC. This server component will send only specific data to the microcontroller instead of all data from the simulation. That makes the micro perform a lot better, especially with the interpreted nature of NETMF. Weâll post the code on GIT Hub when we have it in reasonable shape.
Our next steps will be to clean up the code a bit and find additional hardware to make 1 or 2 complete panels. If you take a look at some photos or specs for the A10-C cockpit, youâll see what weâre up against 
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Here is a video the flight simulator interacting with NETMF.
You didnât here this from me but I also believe they are working on a Panda III implementation.
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Check out 1:22.
That looks like a really cool simulator 
Amazing!
@ ianlee74 - The simulator is very cool! Itâs Digital Combat Simulator | DCS World | Combat Simulator.
We have tested the library on the Panda III and it works very well. We had to customize the code that we use on the PC to connect the game and the NETMF device so that it doesnât send data that the NETMF device doesnât care about. We found that we were flooding the serial port on the NETMF board in a way that didnât happen on the original Arduino version. NETMF being interpreted probably makes a big difference!
To build a full cockpit, weâd likely end up with a few microcontrollers. The approach that I think weâll end up taking is a microcontroller per panel/group of controls. That way, you can make the whole thing very modular and only build the panels that you want. Our next step is deciding on build materials for the panels themselves. Probably sheet metal with black powder coat paint.
We still have some things to work out in the code, but weâre able to add switches and buttons as well and they send commands to the game. You do need a âclickableâ cockpit aircraft to make this work, so not every aircraft will work. Weâll keep working on this and figure out the best way to share the code. I also want to thank the developer of http://dcs-bios.a10c.de/. This is the great work that weâre building on.
Stacy
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