MCDU Enlightenment - Interfacing FSX or X-Plane

Hi Forum Members,

i am designing a MCDU for an Airbus A320.

Most Devices you can buy have an VGA Connector. Do you have to run a single PC for the MCDU? Where does the VGA-Screen of the MCDU get its Content? Are there appropriate Plugins?

 

What I really want is this: Build a small Computer in that MCDU (e.g. raspberry), connect the small Screen to the Pi and then get the content of the MCDU from the flight simulator.

 

The Big Question is: is this possible? I cannot find the datapoints in the APIs of SimConnect or FSUIPC to get the content of the MCDU.

 

I hope someone understands my question and can enlighten me :-)

 

regards

Peter

If you Where going to Interface the Raspberry pi with Xplane 11 you would have to buy Xplane again and then network connect to the main computer with internet. But what I Would recommend would be to Buy a raspberry pi 5 inch monitor of of amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072558KZ4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3SASAWA8XPRT3&psc=1

 

That is touch screen and just using this with io card buttons or a bigger touch screen monitor for the whole thing. Yes it doesn't give the full realism but it is the easiest and least expensive. This would be connected directly to the main PC.

 

If any of this was confusing please give me a reply back and I will beter explain it with other examples.

Thanks slag for the quick reply. Yes, I have some questions. There are some APIs to interface x-plane.

 

The main question is: how to get the content of the mcdu screen? The buttons are not the problem. There are interfaces for the Teensy or for the Arduino to send messages to a flight sim, fsx or x.plane.

 

But - the direction back - i would hope there is a command to x-plane or fsx to get the content of the screen in - let's say - XML. Or - the not-so-good-solution - get the content of the MCDU-Screen-Part in fsx or x-plane. That is the part I don' t understand.

 

 

I think you are suggesting the latter way, is that right? Connect a small screen to a 2nd computer - run x-plane there and configure x-plane to only view the mcdu screen? That is possible? Then for each mcdu one has to buy a single computer and the license?

 

(Background: i am programmer and familiar with python, java, .NET - so i just need the programmier's interface)

 

kind regards

peter

I have found a thing that is offered by Prepar3D...

 

http://:8080/mcdu/mcdu.html

 

is this the content of the mcdu shown in a browser? this would be interesting. Does fsx or x.plane offer something like that?

 

i have found the URL in this forum-thread:

https://forums.flightsimlabs.com/index.php?/topic/10971-mcdu-on-ipad-enable-fullscreen/

After a long search, i changed the word for "MCDU" -> CDU, FMC

then i found the webpages of Wayne Piekarski (XPlaneCDU) and Ville Ranki (Extplane).

These github projects should give me all i need to know.

 

But - how is this done in FSX/P3D ?

Ok Yes I am a FSX flyer so I mainly know how to interface arduinos with fsx using link2fs. This program will send and receive data from the game using sim connect. Now if Xplane is anything like DCS you can use the Xplane Bios to interface your arduinos.(I am not sure if it works though) But what I use is just a raspberry pi monitor with some buttons around it. But if you are making a FMC I would strongly suggests using like a 5 inch monitor for your screen because it would make it look better. It would also make building them easier and interfacing them easier. Yes it is the easy way out but it would be the most cost effective and easiest to maintain.

You can always do something like this https://i.ytimg.com/vi/DF1l2-sCq9w/maxresdefault.jpg Where you use the screen but make the buttons.