Motion Hardware Interface Plugin help

[bigboros]

Hi Guys

I asked this question over at x-simulator_de but the silence was deafening.

My intention is to build a 3DOF motion platorm mainly for racing sims.
I have at my disposial a bunch of indrustrial Servo motors, drives, power supplies and gear boxes sitting around and I intend to utiluse these in my simulator.

The problem I have is my servo drives have +10V to -10V DC velocity input signal requirement. 0v being no motion (Stopped).
I have a Galil DMC control board that provides suitable velocity signal to control the drives. All the Galil controller needs is the position commands and it takes care of all the motion.

The Galil board is designed to have serial and ethernet communication but for some reason the serial comms is not working.
If it was I would be able to use the USO to allow X-Sim to communicate the calculated position commands to the controller.

So I am stuck with ethercat communication.

I have the BBF software (Demo/time limited) and this has the ability to communicate with a Galil controller over ethernet.
It's all seems to be working fine on Xplane and MSX but as I stated above my interest is racing sims.
X-Sim seems full capable of doing what I wish, if I understand it correctly all I need is a plugin to pass the calculated positions from X-sim to the Galil software (GalilTools). this is My first goal. later after its working I'll try and communicate with the controller board directly.

I've had limited exposure to C++. But from what I can work out it should be a relatively simple plugin.
There is no PID, PWM or any calculations required, the Galil controller does all this.
All that needs to be done is to build a string with the position commands of the actuators and then pass this through a connection to GalilTools.

Here is a link to the GalilTools Communication Library and the command to pass the string from the X-sim plugin to the galil control software.
http://irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/~tcs3/tcs ... ml#command

I have looked through the examples of interface plugins provided in X-sim but am unable to work out how to access the individual position commands to allow me to build the string.

So my question is how do I go about getting the actuator positions from X sim from within the plugin?

Thanx

Boros

[sirnoname]

You know that USO supports ethernet since 3.0.0.7?

[bigboros]

Thanx for the quick reply

I didn't know USO supported ethernet
Is there any documentation/instructions on this?
I've done a search through the forum and docs but had no luck.

It seems like it would be worth a try.

[sirnoname]

There is no documentation needed because it is the same as fo serial ports.
Simple add a network instead of a comport out of the upper listbox.
Then enter the details of the connections, thats it.
Limitation: only output!

[bigboros]

Thank you very much sirnoname

I'm now able to pass the axis positions from X-sim to the galil controller via ethernet.

This should get my motion sim up and running.

I will trouble you later on down the track after the sim is workable for help on the hardware interface plugin.

But once again thanx.

[sirnoname]

Good news.
Can you please add a forum thread in the controller section:
viewforum.php?f=39
And explain the setup you did? Screenshots of the USO etc. ...
This thread is then automatically mapped to the controller gallery.
As first picture use a picture of that controller.
Do not explain there a simulator, only the controller.
If you have additional infos sometimes later you can easily add them there by edit this post. Your start setup is worthfull for others.

[samrunyon]

bigboros, did you get xsim working with galil controller?

Sam