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How to use Saitek radio panels Etc. with PSX

Started by Pipsara, Wed, 17 Jul 2019 14:47

Pipsara

Hi Folks... there has been a bit of discussion on the forum about using Saitek panels with PSX. As there is no software available to act as an interface its been a no go. However I've playing around with running various simulators on my cockpit setup and have recently been configuring PSX. I've got a complete set of Saitek panels and also a whole stack of real Boeing aircraft cockpit panels which I have interfaced into FSX, P3D and now PSX.
For PSX the defining piece of software is PSXSeecon running with SIOC opencockpits scripts. However none of this directly helps with getting Saitek panels to work. The problem is of course that there is no "Bridging" software interface which understands both the PSX/PSXseecon side of things and the Saitek Modules...... well actually there is! You may of heard of it, its called Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, or even FSX or possibly Prepar3d .
Yep..that good old program you have buried away would work with a few low cost/ no cost additions.
So what are the essentials you need?..
Well obviously Aerowinx PSX on a single or multi PC environment.
Some Saitek Radio panels.
PSXseecon and the PSXCockpit sioc scripts.
A copy of the SIOC software , preferably the latest version 7 from the Opencockpits site.
And to drive the Saitek radios etc. Spad.Next, the FSX/P3D Edition  software from https://www.spadnext.com/buy/get-spad-next.html at about 25 Euros.
A copy of MSFS 2004, FSX or P3d (any version)
If you are going to run everything on a single PC then the free version of Pete Dowsons FSUIPC utility for the version of FSX,P3D FS9 that you are running.
If you are going to run the Saitek panels on a different PC to the FSX/FS9/p3d simulator then you will need the paid version of FSUIPC plus the Wide-server component.
I expect that many of you will already be running FSX or P3d as a scenery engine for PSX, thats fine you can use that as the interface as long as the FSUIPC module is installed.

Im not going to give a 30 page tutorial as I reckon that once you see the idea it should be fairly straightforward for you to do the same if you wish..
So far I have done one of my radio Panels but the principle holds for any of the Saitek panels.
So in simple description it works like this....
You install The Saitek Panels and install and run Spad.next.
This allows you full control of all of the displays, knobs and buttons on the panels. Most importantly it allows you to use FSUIPC offsets to get data and send data from the panels.
The other side of the Bridge is PSXSeecon which connects PSX to SIOC which itself can read and write data to FSUIPC.
Although the lower 3 or 4 thousand FSUIPC offsets are used for FSX itself , there are thousands available in the upper ranges which as long as nothing else is using them (unlikely in a PSX scenario) are available to use in this bridging process .
Unfortunately as yet Spad.next can not directly connect to PSX, although I hope in time that this could be done by the developer, although it would be an immense task I imagine.
No matter we can use our MS flight sim or P3D as a bridge. The reason that a simulator which supports FSUIPC has to run somewhere in the network is that FSUIPC can not run alone, it has to be hosted by a running FS system. I am using Flight Simulator 2004 as I dont use a Scenery server and this version of FS is very low overhead in resources. I'm running it on the same machine as my PSX server and my PSXrouter software and also my SIOC software and PSXSeecon.

In order to use the non standard FSUIPC offsets with Spad.Next you can define other offsets in an XML file placed in the user/appdata/roaming/Spad.next/conf folder. This file is called FSUIPC Local.xml and to add an offset definition you just extra entries .

An entry would look like this ... I've defined two offsets here 9400 which is a 2 byte offset to hold the frequency display data.
and offset 942E which is a single byte offset to send data to the fsuipc bridge



<OffsetDataDefinition Selectable="true">
      <Name>9400</Name>
      <Valuetype>U16</Valuetype>
      <Size>2</Size>
      <Category>Pos./Attitude</Category>
     <SubCategory>Whatever</SubCategory>
      <Access>RW</Access>
      <Usage>
         Whatever
      </Usage>
      <Key>0000:9400</Key>
    </OffsetDataDefinition>
<OffsetDataDefinition Selectable="true">
      <Name>942E</Name>
      <Valuetype>U8</Valuetype>
      <Size>1</Size>
      <Category>Pos./Attitude</Category>
     <SubCategory>Whatever</SubCategory>
      <Access>RW</Access>
      <Usage>
         Whatever
      </Usage>
      <Key>0000:942E</Key>
    </OffsetDataDefinition>

Once these entries are made in the XML file they are then available to be used to retrive and send data from Spad.next.

On the other side of the bridge PSXSeecon connects with SIOC which also connects with FSUIPC via the FSX flight sim running in the background. I emphasise here the the flight sim version is irrelevant, just run it with a very simple aircraft with lowest scenery settings, start it up with the FSUIPC module running, minimise and forget it. You may want to run it on an old networked laptop or whatever.. if you do remember you will need the paid FSUIPC and also Wideserver... not expensive.

For the radios I took one of Nico sioc scripts available from his PSXCockpits set .
The one I used was RCP_L.TXT which is meant to drive an Opencockpits radio panel.
By modifying this script to use the Offsets that Spad.next was using to send and retrieve data it effectively connects everything together.
If you want copies of the scripts and SPAD.Next XML files I created , just PM me.
So When you Run PSX, Spad.next, FSX or whatever, PSXSeecon and SIOC.... this is what you get..
This is a video taken this morning showing my Saitek radio panel controlling the left hand radio in PSX.
On the other scree is the Spad.next monitoring window...not important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJf7-0ulFRU

Once I get some other panels working, using exactly the same ideas I will update you.
If you want any other info just ask..
Regards Mike

iceydee

Very nice work! I'm planning on using my saitek panels while I build myself one component at a time - so if I can get this working the way you described it'd be a blessing.

I'd love a copy of your spad.next config and scripts if you don't mind. I'll drop my email in a pm.

Thanks!

Pipsara

Scripts and details of use emailed to you...
Kind regards Mike