Thanks for the offer. I’ll give it a go. I can’t do anything tomorrow or Thursday, but I can have a crack after that.
The only issue I have is starting the engine using the Switch Panel’s magneto switch. The “Off”, “Left”, “Right” and “Both” positions work fine. “Start” works, in that the engine is cranked but only for about 2.5s, which isn’t sufficient to start it. I have bound “Magneto Start” to a switch on the TQ, which cranks the engine for as long as the switch is set. After about 4s, the engine bursts into life.
I’ve installed the Spad trial, and found a profile for the PA28 Warrior II which seems to do the business. All the buttons and switches on my Switch Panel and MultiPanel are bound to sensible looking variables. The Yoke and TQ are not set up, but that suits me fine.
But the sim still behaves the same way, even if I change the “default” settings in the profile… Presumably, I’m missing something that interposes Spad into the process.
I am getting a number of warning messages when Spad starts about Windows USB power management and that Logitech plugin is running. Are they responsible?
I’ve been starting Spad before MSFS. Is that right?
Remove the Logitech plug-in. I’ve never used this so I don’t know if it’s simply a Community mod you delete, and/or uninstall it from Add/Remove programs.
There is a SPAD LVAR bridge, only need for LVAR access….which is a good thing. There is an installer for that in of the SPAD sub-folders.
Enhanced power management can cause USB devices to go to sleep, which for the Logitech panels is bad. If you run SPAD as administrator it will be able to tweak the registry to disable this for all detected Logitech panels.
You can start SPAD before or after the sim. It’s never been an issue for me.
General advice would be to do what you have already done. Download a profile for a plane, confirm that it works, then dig in and see why it works. Understanding the relationship between what you see in the virtual cockpit, and what those switches are actually doing under hood is key to build8mg your own, turn it’s not as daunting as it first appears.
Chances are you already know what you want to do, but you may not know how to achieve that, or even how to search for what you need. But you will.
I uninstalled the Logitech plug-in (from Add/Remove programs), but it’s made no difference at all.
I haven’t done anything with power management, because I’ve seen no evidence at all of the panels gong to sleep. The Multipanel is constantly illuminated and the Switch Panel constantly responsive. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
I must admit I forgot about the LVAR bridge, but I think it was installed. The setting on Magneto_Start didn’t use LVARs anyway.
There are 12 days left on the trial, so I’ll try and spend some more time on it. But at the moment, it’s a bust, sadly.
The only problem I had with the Logitech Panels was that engine wouldn’t start when the Switch Panel magneto switch was moved to “Start”. The engine cranked, but only for about 2.5s. I had two work arounds - first to use the virtual cockpit and hold the switch at “Start” until the engine fired, second, I bound “Magneto_Start” to a spare switch on my TQ, and by holding that on until the engine fired, all was good. In both cases the engine fired after about 4s.
The Spad profile I found assigned a Magneto_Start Action to the “START Position set” event. I was hoping that that would act like the above workarounds, but it didn’t. The engine still cranked for only about 2.5s, and didn’t start. Everything else worked fine.
I then started to fiddle. I assigned unrelated actions to the “START Position set” event and even removed all actions from it. No effect. Every time the engine cranks and stops after 2.5s even when a completely unrelated Action was assigned. So I began to wonder if I have either done something to stop Spad talking to MSFS, or failed to do something that was necessary for it to talk to MSFS.
I freely admit that my “testing” wasn’t as structured as it should have been so perhaps I should do something to check whether the Spad is in charge or still the Logitech defaults, somehow. It is awkward when all the buttons are programmed in Spad to reproduce their Logitech assigned functions…
Have a look at the second post, right near the top of the the thread, where I showed I was using “SET_STARTER1_HELD”, which when unset i.e. you rotate the key from START back to BOTH, then it un-sets this.
It should hold the starter on as long as you have the key in the START position.
Yay! That worked! Now I need to do a thorough test to check everything else works properly.
Thank you. I didn’t understand your post last year, not having encountered Spad. And nine months and several medical treatments have intervened, so I’d forgotten, or never appreciated, its significance.
One question. What do the “Prio” and “Ct” columns indicate? I found what controls Prio, but don’t understand what it’s doing, but I’ve no idea what Ct is about
Priority lets you choose the order that actions are taken. Higher numbered ones go first. For the most part I find that a handy way to give some order to the list if I have multiple actions for one button based on some conditional, and I want to keep them in groups. Ct is the number of times it has been used that session, so Count.
Yes. For example, on the Learjet 35 I played around with a config for the landing lights. With the landing gear down it would turn on the landing lights, with the gear up it would turn on the anti-collision lights on the front of the wing nacelles.
I could keep those nigh on identical configs together in blocks by setting the Priorities.
