Emulate key press with air manager

[Jerryss]

Need advice for a noob.

I have been using air manager for several months and am enjoying it.

How do I emulate keyboard commands as air manager buttons.

For example, how do I put a button that emulates the “G” key. ( just an example) My goal io make a bunch of buttons so I don’t need my keyboard as much

Thank you

[jph]

Hi,
you can do this without air manager.
An Arduino Leonardo or preferably the chinese Pro Micro at a couple of euros can be programmed to emulate a PC Joystick with up to 32 buttons, you can use some 165 shift registers for the inputs for the buttons.

Your sim will recognise the unit as a joystick / game controller with however many buttons you have designated. You can even run multiple joysticks hence multiple sets of 32 buttons.
In the sim, any joystick button can be assigned to a keypress.

Enjoy

Joe

[Jerryss]

Thanks for the reply.

I already have a spare touch screen and just want to emulate a stream deck with my existing hardware and software

[Tim.Huston]

Hi,
you can do this without air manager.
An Arduino Leonardo or preferably the chinese Pro Micro at a couple of euros can be programmed to emulate a PC Joystick with up to 32 buttons, you can use some 165 shift registers for the inputs for the buttons.

Your sim will recognise the unit as a joystick / game controller with however many buttons you have designated. You can even run multiple joysticks hence multiple sets of 32 buttons.
In the sim, any joystick button can be assigned to a keypress.

Enjoy

Joe

Thanks ! I was gonna ask this in another post but like to search for previous Q's on my topic..... Can I use a Push Button then program it for a Keyboard function ? If yes How ? I have a Arduino Mega 2560 and of course AM Premium Baron 58 Panel. Thanks !

[jph]

Hi,
you can do this without air manager.
An Arduino Leonardo or preferably the chinese Pro Micro at a couple of euros can be programmed to emulate a PC Joystick with up to 32 buttons, you can use some 165 shift registers for the inputs for the buttons.

Your sim will recognise the unit as a joystick / game controller with however many buttons you have designated. You can even run multiple joysticks hence multiple sets of 32 buttons.
In the sim, any joystick button can be assigned to a keypress.

Enjoy

Joe

Thanks ! I was gonna ask this in another post but like to search for previous Q's on my topic..... Can I use a Push Button then program it for a Keyboard function ? If yes How ? I have a Arduino Mega 2560 and of course AM Premium Baron 58 Panel. Thanks !

hi,
It all depends on the sim and what it supports. You would have to look in the sim settings for joystick and buttons to see what is available.
Also, a 'mega' would not work. It has to be an 'arduino' with a 32u4 (or u2) processor to enable the joystick usb functionality.

[JackZ]

I don't think this is possible to emulate a Joystick or Keyboard directly from Air Manager. AFAIK The API has only functions to enable you to READ a Joystick.

There is probably a workaround using FSUIPC as a "man in the middle" to achieve that goal (send keypresses from AM), but it's gonna be tricky

On the other hand, most if not all of the MSFS keyboard events can be emulated in AM via Simconnect Keyboard events...
For example Pressing "G" to cycle the gear is equivalent to a simple line of code in AM:

Code: Select all

fs2020_event("GEAR_TOGGLE")

And for your Stream deck equivalent,it is just a matter of creating in AM a graphical "button" and assign the abovementioned command to the button's callback function
But granted it's not a plug and play process, you'll have to create your own instrument. Time to get your hands dirty and dive into the joys of Lua programming!

The forum is here to help