wiring transmitter for FMS

On 12/23/2003 6:37 AM Ted shuffled out of his cave and grunted these great (and sometimes not so great) words of knowledge:

If you look on the FMS web site they have schematics for serial and parallel ports for various makes. As far as I know there is no USB. If you must have USB, you can try the following: Wire up a connector for a serial port, MAKE SURE IT WORKS, then pick up a Radio Shack "Serial to USB" converter and set it to position 2. Go into your Game Controller options on your OS and set it to realflight (if it is there) or you will have to try various 4 axis controllers until you hit the right combo. This setup works with Realflight G2 and FMS. I no longer have the FMS settings since changing to G2.

I had a commercial version of the serial port connector for FMS and did this setup for my machine.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

A) For Win 95-98-Millennium with FMS, 2 easy possibilities (above all possibilities that are also possible for Win 2000 and XP, see section "B").

1) THROUGH THE PARALLEL-port (LPT1) eventually with a resistor and zenerdiode, see the manual of FMS or some examples on my website which I personally tested figure 7f-fms and others in chapter 7. Or here : (German).

2) THROUGH THE SERIAL-port See the manual of FMS

If you think you're not able to make such a cable, buy eventually one : (German)

B) For Win 2000 and Win XP with FMS, a SIMPLE connection through the parallel-port or serial port is not working, those 2 versions of Windows are handling other protocols on these ports than Win 95-98-Millenium.

Your options then :

1) THROUGH THE SOUNDCARD With smartpropo : advantage is that it's simple to make : 1 audio-cable and a resistor or potmeter

2) THROUGH THE SERIAL PORT (Com-port) a) via an interface with a programmable IC (PIC), which is described in the directory of FMS, see .FMS\Doc\Interface\readme_en.htm on your harddisk. Or

or the same electronic interface that you can buy ready to use here : (German) (French)

3) THROUGH THE USB-port (selfmade) (French) (French) : kit) (German) (German) If you have a 4-axis joystick, you can use an interface-cable gameport-->USB, for sale in every computershop, thus ideal for modern laptops without a COM-port

4) THROUGH THE GAME-port a) with an interface which transforms the signal of the transmitter in a joystick-signal

(selfmade) (French) (German) (German)

b) buy a 4-axis-controller joystick

(German)

c) or make yourself a 4-axis joystick with an old RC-transmitter, removing all electronics, replacing the 4 potmeters by potmeters of 200K (not 100K like mostly mentioned), and wiring like in :

(French) (French)

5) Or make a partition on your harddisk where you will install Windows 95-98-Millennium. Then you can connect your radio simply via the parallel-port or Serial-port as described in the manual of FMS and start the older Windows (see section "A").

Hope this helps, Olivier

Interface Vendor Links:

they do USB adapters for a FMS.

They have first class customer service, Fast delivery and even wired up a real wierdo connection I wanted. I'd heartily recommend them.

(Altho with the current weakness of the west atlantic Peso, you might find them expensive) Roy

(just a customer, not affiliated in any way)

Ditto.

Cost is moderate compared with the alternatives.

At the time I purchased my FMS PIC TX interface from them Smartpropo wasn't available. Now that it is, for anyone who has a SmartPropo compatible TX and OS (Win XP), it's the least expensive way to go and works a treat.

pimpf

Absolutley..

I had a serial lead from them and a months later (due to a new PC and XP being a PITA) I had to swap to a USB version, I was just got charged the difference to upgrade plus the postage to send mine back and the new one to me.

Highly recommended...

I think the TX-to-USB cables run ~$50 from most of the usual vendors. I'm happy with the cable I got from simblaster.com.