Hi Ray,>> This is news! Looking through the CH help nowhere do I see reference to CTL and SHF. They give no clues that you can simply enter SHF or CTL. They really are letting the side down badly with their help. <<
They are there, actually, under the "Control Manager Dialogs" section. It's a lot of information, though, and easily overlooked. The Help file will be improved as time goes along, hopefully it will become a bit less confusing.
>> However, I tried as you suggested and it didn't work. Well, I don't think it did. Let me explain...
I'm trying to establish which buttons are which on the Throttle as the CH software has no test facility to identify them.... <<
The orientation of the hats on the throttle is a little confusing. It's fairly consistent, but not too intuitive. First, if you locate the "Up" position, that's the lowest numbered button of the group for that hat, both in the CM and (if the device is mapped straight-through) in the Game Controllers applet. The other positions are then assigned in increasing order as you go 'round the hat in a clockwise direction.
The "Up" itself is misleading, but there really is no good way to designate it, it's seldom really "Up". Basically, if you think of the finger or thumb that activates the hat, "Up" is in the direction that that finger/thumb points. On the yoke hat, it's actually forward, on the sticks it's forward or up (depending on the hat), for the throttle hats on the side that faces you it's to the right, and on the hat on the front of the throttle, it's really down. You can see it if you put the CM into Direct Mode (so it's showing Yoke, Throttle, and Pedals rather than "Control Manager Devices") and walk around the hats. Of course, if you change the DX assignments via the map, they'll move around in the Game Controllers test and in what DX sees. Insofar as what you're programming, though, they stay where they are, i.e. "Up" is always hat-to-the-right on the facing throttle hats, when you go to program something. It's only the reported button number that will change if you map it to something like Joystick #1, Button 16 or whatever.
>> Also, whilst I'm able to choose Properties with Control Manager Device 2 I get an error message when I attempt to select Device 1 (the yoke). The error reads... Your Game Controller is not connected correctly. Ensure that it is plugged into your computer. I have no idea why I'm getting this error message. <<
The only thing that comes to mind is that perhaps you've calibrated the Control Manager device in Windows, and subsequently remapped an axis. Try going to the "Advanced" tab in Game Controllers and clicking the "Reset Defaults" button. What can happen is that when you calibrate in Windows, Windows not only stores the calibration data, it also stores what axes are on the device. If you later come back and change the axis complement so it doesn't match what Windows has flagged, it can report disconnected. The CM was not really meant to be calibrated in Windows. It normally does no real harm to do so, but it can result in the axis flags getting saved and creating the problem.
If that doesn't fix it, would you send me a copy of the .MAP file that you're using? Maybe I can see what's gone awry.
>> I suspect it may be to do with the way the USB devices are connected to the PC. The yoke, throttle and pedals are plugged into a 4-way hub on an Iiyama monitor. The 4th socket is occupied with my Logitech cordless mouse. The monitor's USB outlet is then plugged into the USB port on the PC. the other port on the PC is occupied by a ADSL modem. <<
You might be running into a bandwidth problem. It's not obvious from the way they tout USB, but the total bandwidth resides with the host controller, you probably have but one on the mother board which. See the comments below.
>> In Device Manager I have 2 mouse entries under Mouse - HID-compliant Cordless Mouse and HID-compliant mouse. Under Human Interface Devices I also have a Logitech Cordless USB Mouse entry. So, three mouse entries for a single mouse. How come? I have disabled the bolded entry under Mouse as it was affecting the mouse speed badly. I'm wondering if it is connected with any, all or some of my problems with the CM software. <<
That's normal. You should have two entries for a mouse. First, you'll get one for the hardware itself (the USB device), then you'll get a second for the HID device that the system creates so it can collect the data. Your Logitech Cordless USB entry under HID represents the mouse hardware, the entry under Mouse represents the logical device that's supplying the data. The second HID mouse represents the virtual mouse that the Control Manager creates to send mouse commands to the system. It's "hardware" entry will be under "CH Products" in the Device Manager as the "Aux2 Device". There's also a virtual keyboard, "Aux1 Device" under CH Products and then a HID-compliant keyboard under "Keyboards". The CM virtuals don't have real hardware, of course, but it's logically the same. What you've removed is one of the two entries for the CM mouse.
The mouse shouldn't normally be interfering with your regular mouse. I've not heard of anyone running into the problem, and I checked with CH today and they've had no reports of that happening. I suppose you could be the first, or it could be some odd hardware interaction, but it's apparently not something that's happening commonly. What can happen, though, is that if you have the microstick or joystick mapped to generate mouse motion and it's not calibrated in the Control Manager, it can be 'drifting' slightly. The system treats all mice as one big mouse and merges the data together. What can happen is that the mouse movements sent by the drifting virtual mouse will come in right on top of the real mouse movements and it causes them to get cancelled. For example, if you click and hold the button on your regular mouse, and the CM mouse then sends a report that has all the buttons released, your initial click will get cancelled even though the button is still down.
>> I will shortly be building a new machine and I intend to plug the 3 CH devices into the PC via a dedicated hub. The mouse will not be included in this arrangement. I think it best to postpone any further investigations with my existing PC until the new one is build and operational. It may well be that some of these problems are resolved once I've changed things. <<
It may be that it's causing some problems, though that usually manifests itself differently. Hubs aren't the best solution, really. The limitation on USB stuff is a result of bandwidth. Each host controller provides 12 megabits of bandwidth. You've probably only got one host controller on your system. The two ports on your system share this initial bandwidth between them. When you plug the Ilyama hub into the port, it then divvies up it's piece of the initial bandwidth into the four ports on the hub. You can see that it's not long before a bottleneck can occur and begin to create problems. If you're building a new system, I think a better solution is to use the PCI cards. Those include another host controller and so actually add at least another 12 megabits of bandwidth to the system.
There's a new Belkin Quadra-Port card that supplies the usual 4 USB plugs, but actually provides a host controller for each and a total of 48 megabits of bandwidth. That should be plenty for most anything you need to run. I've not used it myself, my Entrega 4-port is working well, but the USBMan gives it his highest rating and the link on his page to price-watch shows a cost of about $32, not overly pricey. You might want to drop by his page:
http://www.usbman.com
and check the reviews section. He also has a lot of info there on the different chipsets, the problems that show up with manufacturers such as VIA and SiS, which ones to avoid, what patches you might need, etc.
>> Can I also postpone discussion on your suggestion in your penultimate paragraph a lot of which has gone over my head (hangs head in shame) <<
Whenever you're ready, I'll be here.
>> Thanks Bob for all your help. May I suggest that when you do write up your paper on joysticks you include a section for programming the CH USB gear using the CM software. I'm sure it would be a great improvement on CH's effort! <<
Probably I should just put it into the CM Help file. 
- Bob
The StickWorks
http://www.stickworks.com
Printer-friendly
version of this topic
Bookmark this topic
(Registered users only)
FSFORUM
![[Guest]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/key-s.gif)
![[Admin]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/4bar.gif)
![[Crew]](http://www.flightadventures.com/Forum/htdocs/dcforum/Images/1bar.gif)
) and a lot has been achieved since Saturday thanks to your efforts.