Air Manager Physical Panel with 2 G5 units best practice

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massild
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:56 pm

Air Manager Physical Panel with 2 G5 units best practice

#1 Post by massild »

I am running Air Manager 4 and have a bunch of physical equipment. I have the following:
A GFC500 by realsimgear
A GTN650 by realsiimgear
2 homemade G5 units that each have a rotary encoder a power button and a 320x240 LCD
A homemade switch stack for flaps, lights, avionics, master etc
A homemade audio panel with 4 buttons and a rotary encoder
3 VID66 X27 steppers (airspeed, Tach, MAP)
A 4wire stepper altimeter
and a , a homemade radio stack that is using SiMessagePort for the 2 displays 16x2 and 2 dual encoders

Now that is out of the way, I have some questions about how this should all be setup in AM. Right now, I have 2 "panels", one for each G5 display. This works fine and the G5s behave as a PFD and HSI with high fidelity.

I have also created a panel in the create tab and put all the code in the logic.lua of that panel. This requires that I start this panel separately and it feels clunky. I am really confused about the right way to do all this. How have others navigated this and what is best practice? Should I create "instruments" for each subcategory (like radio) and put the lua code in those? Then add those instruments to one of the G5 panels?

I followed a youtube tutorial that suggested doing layout in the first tab and then adding a panel in the create/edit tab and import them. This feels like doubling effort and it also creates a weird floating 3rd G5 screen that sits on my main screen.

If anyone has advice about the right way to create a combination of physical interfaces with multiple displays I would really appreciate it.

Thanks

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Ralph
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Re: Air Manager Physical Panel with 2 G5 units best practice

#2 Post by Ralph »

Forget about the Create/Edit tab, you don't need that. Everything you need is on the Home tab.

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Sling
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Re: Air Manager Physical Panel with 2 G5 units best practice

#3 Post by Sling »

Sounds like you have added all the hardware code to a panel script. You could just create a hardware function with all this in and add it to your Home tab panel or you have to follow the steps to creating a panel in create/edit. The video to which you refer is likely the one I made and it explains exactly what you need to do. There is no doubling of effort in this process as you can move work between the two. Using a single hardware function or multiple smaller hardware functions is easier to implement and understand.

massild
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:56 pm

Re: Air Manager Physical Panel with 2 G5 units best practice

#4 Post by massild »

Thank you for the reply. I watched the video again and I think I now understand. The Home tab is where you set your panels up and the Create/Edit tab is where you edit any LUA code you want to run.
I have now created 3 "Hardware" units. One for the Instrument panel that controls the stepper motors, one for the NavCom radio and one for all the switches. I have added these 3 "hardware" units to the Panel 1 that has the primary G5. Now they start up with Air Manager and all is working.

Thank you

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