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Can you hook any USB Rotary encoder to the PFD/MFD selectors?


Gremlin
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Just wondering if I was to hook up something like this: Trackballs and Spinners :: Spinners :: SpinTrak Rotary Control (ultimarc.com) could I map it to the rotary inputs on the Entegra displays, or would I have to do something where I mapped it to a keypress and mapped the keypress to the control? I have a couple of 10" touch screens I'm using to pop those out (don't want to buy the premade units yet) and if I could bodge up a couple of rotary knobs that'd be fantastic thank you.

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The Entegra knobs use X-Plane commands to interface. If you are able to get those rotary controls to trigger X-Plane commands, then there shouldn't be an issue. I'm not familiar with the custom hardware side of X-Plane users, but I imagine there is a solution out there for using knobs to trigger X-Plane commands - if you find one, please report back what you find!

The commands for the Entegra knobs:

afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_l_knob_left
afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_l_knob_right
afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_l_knob_press

afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_r_knob_left
afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_r_knob_right
afm/sr/cmd/entegra/pfd_r_knob_press

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Thanks for that info, I found a very very promising you tube video on the topic: (285) Easy way to add Dual Rotary Encoders with push button to Flight Simulator 2020, Prepar3d and X-Plane - YouTube

I think you can easily use the same principle and zero code experience to wire up 4 rotary pushbutton encoders to wire up the Entegra displays, I'm also using two of these panels which I will try and get mounted into an enclosure: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0987468N2?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

Looks like adding a few push buttons only to that same board wouldn't be too hard, so I'll likely see if I can't make a quick approximation fo the DFC 90 on that same panel just to make things super easy.

 

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13 hours ago, Gremlin said:

@Coop I just had a look into hooking up a random button to some of these controls, looks like this could work, but I did notice that in my interface both the MFD and the PFD are listed as PFD can't seem to take a picture of it though

Can you make sure you are on the latest version of the Entegra's (v1.0.2)

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  • 3 weeks later...

@Coop I'm unsure of how to make sure of that, is it just re-run the installer for the SR22 Entegra? I can check. I'll also look again shortly since I just re-imaged my PC (moved boot, swap and xplane to a NVME for better Perf) so I believe I have everything installed from the last week now.

On another note, I got some dual encoders with push button from Propwash, and the Leo Bodnar board, and hooked one up so far, the rotary encoders work just fine on the Entegra (and make the GNS so much easier to use). The only issue I see is that they take a fair amount of motion for things like the heading bug because they don't pick up acceleration but really that's a small price to pay. Along with a set of 10" HDMI touch screens from Amazon so you can use the side buttons this should make a pretty nice setup for the system. 

I'm working on a layout to mount the screens and the encoders below my monitor, at the momen it will likely be a file to send to some place like SendCutSend and have them cut it out of metal.

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