Interface development history, archive

X-Plane and Baron 58 Panel:

When we have moved from FS to X-Plane, which has a built-in UDP data exchange protocol, we decided it was time to create X-Plane interface using our professional experience. At the same time I started building a full-size Baron 58 panel simulator and decided to use an Arduino Mega1280 as a convenient and cheap platform to write input/output code for X-Plane UDP network protocol. It was a standalone custom I/O code for my panel.

Like many aviation enthusiasts, I became a fan of flight sims as soon as they appeared on the PC, and naturally began to look for a suitable I / O interface for FS and tried solutions available at that time (early 2000s), but not with great success.

Many of the home cockpits we've seen on the internet since then have been left unfinished or were building over the years due to the limitations or complexity of the interface. You had to become an expert in coding or electronics (or spend a lot of money) to get all the controls in your cockpit to work.

XPData Arduino Library

Then I have wrote the library for Arduino - the XPData Library. It was the convenient library with a set of functions for input/output, that used built-in X-Plane UDP communication protocol (Ethernet) to send input data to X-Plane.

Later, when Roman (son) has involved into X-Plane project and has created plugins and protocols for communication with his instrument panel program (now it's SimVimPanel) and with hardware, I have created Arduino libraries to work with ARDref, and ArdSim(X) plugins.

Here is the brief historyI/O interface: