MobiFlight Community Support

Hi community
i am a retired engineer from germany and i want to expand the possibilities of MOBIFLIGHT on a MEGA .....by passing through numerical values like ALT, HDG etc from the first MEGA to a second MEGA which would than be FREE PROGRAMMABLE to use any kind of displays like OLEDs or TFTs - because the use and functionality of LCDs and 7SEGs are very limited.
I am experimenting with Teensy 4.xx boards and Touch-TFTs to present flight-data in all graphical manners .
Today i have to collect and prepare the values myself via XPLANE-Direct or spad.next .

The idea is to use MOBIFLIGHT on a MEGA ( or better on a PI PICO ) to handle all INPUT/OUTPUT jobs with switches and encoders with the normal software tools from Mobiflight.
Instead of using LCDs or 7SEGs i would like to transfer some important numerical values to a second MEGA ( or PI PICO or TEENSY ) which would be free programmable and act like a I2C slave or a serial receiver via Rx,Tx . This second system would provide all its functionality and connectivity for display devices of all kinds.

Has there been any efforts within MOBIFLIGHT to transfer data - or does anyone see a good chance for that ?

I did a test and programmed a second MEGA as an I2C slave on adress 0x27 to mimic 20*4 LCD and to receive the data .
It works well, but the transferred data ( shown in the serial monitor of the ARDUINO IDE ) are very complicated and hardly readable , as every line of the LCD is handled seperately and all the formating of text and data has to be taken into account.

ANY IDEA out there ????

Bernd Schmitt

Hello Bernd,
best would be to join Discord to discuss this. The most experienced user are only there.
There are a few user who already used an own LCD/TFT to display values.
In one of the channels (support topics/mobiflight/custom firmware - please elaborate) are a lot of informations how to do it. If these informations are not sufficient, you can open a new topic.

For one of the next releases a custom device is planed to implement with informations how to extend it.

Since version 9.7 the raspberry pico is supported which has a lot of RAM and flash. I think it's better to extend the firmware to support a LCD/TFT on the same board instead to connect an additional board via I2C or serial connection. I have setup a demo on the Pico with support of a TFT using the 2nd core. All graphic routines are running on this 2nd core where on the 1st core mobiflight is running. Basic information how to transfer data between the cores are implemented. User Neil has this extended.

Informations how to get the data out of the existing LCD information are available in the above mentioned topic on Discord (https://discord.com/channels/608690978081210392/1074157960621719603)

Regards

Ralf

Hallo Ralf

es geschehen Zeichen und Wunder !

I am really happy to get such a QUICK AND PROMISING ANSWER .
Thank you very much - Ralf - for guiding me to the right place - i wouldnt have found it on my own !

This is exactly my taste - using both cores of a PICO - one for MF and the second for display-handling and grafics .

I will visit the discord-group tomorrow and look for all the infos i need.

I started panel building 5 years ago with SimVim for XPlane11 . After building a desktop panel with 15 !!!! encoders , a lot of switches and buttons and two 20*4 LCDs
( 7 multiplexers were integrated , to handle all the I/O ) i learned, that for all CONFIGURABLE SOLUTIONS you will reach a blocking point after a certain time , where you cannot any more realize your ideas .

Fortunatelly you learn a lot by doing and so i started programming myself with Teensy Boards and the special USB-FlightSimLanguage created by Paul Stoffregen.
But than came MSFS2020 - and i wanted , that my next desktop panel could manage both SIMs XPlane and MSFS.

So i came to XPlane-Direct as one interface and spad.neXt for the other .

All the years i was observing Mobiflight - but i would never return to a system with build in limits.
With 9.7 i noticed that there is another MOMENTUM there - the PI PICO opens the door to another world and I wanted to give it a try.

What i appreciate VERY MUCH in the new Mobiflight is the access TO ALL Variables and Events and the elegant way to find it by filtering the plane or the technical system.
With spad.neXt it takes a lot of time to find and test the right variable for your purpose - with MF its a pleasure to select and test in just a moment.

So thank you once more
bs.fortdefrance@gmail.com

Bernd Schmitt