Knobster and Airbus family Push/Pull

[catflyer38]

Hi, i just build a DIY knobster and changed several of my FlightFactor Airbus A320 panels to be knobster enabled.

In the Airbus family EFIS and FCU panels contain several knobs that use a push/pull function e.g EFIS baro, FCU: SPD, Heading, Alt and vertical speed.
If you push the knob, control is given to the autopilot, if you pull the pilot has control via turning the knob (e.g changin the speed).

With the knobster you are able to perform the push function, but how to handle the pull with only one push button?

One idea to solve this, could be to implement a timer function. If you press the knob and release it right away (lets say < 500 ms) its a push, if you press and hold the knob for some
time (> 500 ms) its a pull.

Any thoughts about this ?

Regards Alexander
(Airbus lover)

[Sling]

Alexander,

You shouldn't have to do anything to your code to make knobster work with it. It will automatically work with all dials and multi way (more than 2 way) switches.

For the button operation the instrument just needs a co-located button which is smaller than the dial. The best way I've found to deal with this type of thing is to implement a toggle on the button push operation. so in this case each push of the button toggles between autopilot and manual. You may or may not want to incorporate a visual indication of the knob state. As an example, you can do this by changing the graphic to show the knob in a pulled out state when in that mode.

The beauty of the knobster is it performs just like the soft controls.

Tony

[catflyer38]

Hi Tony thanks for your reply.
It could be that I was thinking to complicated and will will try to redesign my setup.

Regards Alex

[Sling]

No worries Alex. I’m glad this proved useful.

[catflyer38]

Hi Tony I tried your proposal but had some difficulties with handling the Barometric selector.
I tried the timer approach and that works fine.
When pushing the knob, a timer is started (e.g. 500ms) when releasing the knob its is checked if the timer still runs. If timer is still running, its a pull, if already stopped its a push.

Regards Alexander

[Sling]

Not sure what your issue was but it sounds like what you ended up with you are happy with.