What is needed to output voltage signals from PC

Hi,

I am working on a project with my dad to turn a 7/8 replica spitfire into a flight simulator program on a hydraulic platform. I bought an arduino uno and have panned out the basics of signalling to control the platform motion, but i am at a loss of how to get the simulator program to send signals to the arduino. It accepts analog and digital input but I have no idea what hardware i would need on my CPU to output these signals.

I am not expecting anyone to look for me as i am continually searching but i hoped somone here already had some previous experience that could shed some light on this.

Thanks for your time.

A quick Google search for "USB analog digital IO" turned up this, among many others.

>> I bought an arduino uno and have panned out the basics of signalling to control the platform motion, but i am at a loss of how to get the simulator program to send signals to the arduino.
Is the simulator running on the PC?
Isn't there usually an RS232 connection to the arduino of some sort?

gg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Codeplug

>>
Is the simulator running on the PC?
Isn't there usually an RS232 connection to the arduino of some sort?

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1. Yes I planned on just using one of my old laptops to run the simulator on.

2. The Uno doesn't, but I'm sure I can buy an extension for it.

I was hoping for a cheap solution rather than a $200.00 piece of hardware for a hobby project. Scrounging up all the hydraulics has already been a decent cost.

Thanks for the insight ya'll have provided.

My other thought was just to make a joystick that split signals to both the hydraulics and the simulator, but I was concerned the pitch and yaw of the real plane may not match the in game with good resolution.

I was temporarily stupid and misread your question. You don't need the $200 thing I linked to, though there are likely much cheaper versions -- it was simply the first link I clicked. That could bypass the arduino all together, and the simulator would talk directly to the hydraulics. Codeplug is on the right track if you want to stick with the arduino though. The hardware you need, if any should be cheap. You need to get the arduino and PC talking RS232. There are several decent looking tutorials for the arduino on the web, and you can buy a cheap USB to serial for your PC. Another alternative is to buy an ethernet shield or wifi shield for the arduino and communicate that way.

Arduino - Serial
The Uno seems capable of running a serial interface over USB.

Arduino - ArduinoBoardUno
Scroll down to "Communication".

I read through that Serial communication for the arduino before. It is useful for communication control via the console that runs from your PC. Receiving the data and opening the relays is the easy part.

The part I am stuck on is getting the Standalone C++ Flight Simulator program to send a readable signal to the arduino. I think the RS232 is probably going to be what I'm looking for on that side.

I appreciate all the information.