Plug and Play problem with Honeycomb Controls when controllers are unplugged and re-plugged-in

[Dornier728 0]

Having already experienced the phenomenon in earlier versions of X-Plane when using less complex controllers like the Saitek Throttle a problem is now becoming compounded by more complex controllers like the Honeycomb Bravo Throttle.

I have noticed since early on that whenever an individual controller is disconnected and then reconnected or the hub that serves all the controllers is being disconnected from the PC and then re-connected, the settings of controllers and joysticks  get mixed up like fresh tossed garden salad. This is very annoying, because it affects all the individual settings for all aircraft, which means they all have to be manually re-bound. In the case of the of the HBT this is especially bad, since there are so many different axis and buttons that need to be reassigned.

The major occurrences are same axis assigned assigned to various of the controllers and in the wrong order. Functions for buttons and hat switches i.e. take on the settings of the HBT or the Airbus joystick's axis suddenly assume the axis of the rudder pedals. It is a merry-go-around where all is scrambled, which basically means one has to start from scratch before doing a flight.

Isn't there a way to make the settings stick? I thought the joystick preferences were supposed to serve as interface to avoid having to do this reassigning.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

I do not think the USB protocol is designed to handle that, but I feel your pain for sure. This is the set I need to mix and match:

 

Please login to display this image.

 

[Dornier728 0]

Looks almost like my setup. You seem to be missing some rudder pedals. I tend to use English in forums for the benefit of English folks visiting this forum as well. 

 

I think this problem needs to be addressed though, as it is not that uncommon to use different controls for different aircraft. I also posted this thread on the  X-Plane Forum as bug report, but haven't heard back or garnered much attention to it.

 

With Aerosoft being the supplier of the software side for the Honeycomb flight controls, I feel they should have a part in tackling this problem as well.

 

There are other issues too with the throttle profiles that need to be addressed. Maybe a survey among customers how happy they are with the controls would be an idea that could shed some light. Not everyone is coming forward to talk about issues that might have him/her look foolish.

[SimWare 729]

Hi Dornier728,

 

This mainly happens with hubs as they usually reenumerate the ports when something is disconnected.

 

Each usb device has a 7 bit identifier (so 2^7 gives a maximum of 128 devices connectable).
What sometimes messes the things up is that the USB hub is also considered as a usb device and, when disconnected and reconnected,
sometimes gets a new identifier (or is "reenumerated")
The identifier is given according to the order they are found.

 

There isn't much the simulator (and even less the hardware) can do about that.

I would suggest make sure all the devices and controls are connected as you want before 

configuring them in the simulator, then save the configuration under specific profile names.
If the configuration is messed up for any reason, just reload the saved profiles.

Aslo make sure you always have some USB ports free incase you need to add some extra device.
This will avoid disconnecting the ones already connected.

 

Also always use externally powered hubs.

Best regards.
 

[Dornier728 0]

The way this sounds to me is that this problem will be difficult to overcome. Considering my Mac equipment I only have one free USB C. Even if I had ten separate USB C's I would not be able to connect all my SSD's and peripherals.

 

The flight controls are in a secondary powered hub and usually don't get disconnected, except after the pc is powered down in order to save energy. To a nother secondary hub I have got two HDD's and any external flash drives connected. Those two secondary hubs are connected to the primary hub which itself is fed by the free USB C mentioned above. In addition off of that hub I run an ultra fast SSD that holds the X-Plane install.

 

So I wonder what the best way would be to describe the reenumeration problem you mentioned in your post.

 

I think this should also happen to other users, but I am not reading about it.

 

Best regards

 

P.S. Just happened to find the following link by X-Force PC the provider of hardware to Laminar. In this video Brown talks about how certain Saitek controllers must only be plugged into USB 2 connector. USB 3 will not work. Now I wonder what the requirement of the Honeycomb Controllers is and if there could be a conflict with other controllers?

 

[SimWare 729]

Hi Dornier728,

 

"So I wonder what the best way would be to describe the reenumeration problem you mentioned in your post."

---> Sorry but I don't understand your question.

           Based on the description of your own setup in the lines above, what do you want to know exactly ? 

 

"Now I wonder what the requirement of the Honeycomb Controllers is and if there could be a conflict with other controllers?"

---> The Honeycomb will accept USB2 and USB3.

          As this is a standard one-way HID device, no special conflict is expected.

          From a pure simulator standpoint, just make sure you don't have redundant assignments, i.e. multiple axes or buttons 

          assigned to the same function. This would indeed lead to conflict in the simulator behavior.

 

Best regards.

[Dornier728 0]

OK, so I have to get more specific:

 

Thanks to your explanation above regarding the USB ID's I actually noted that they can get changed around when unplugging and reinserting other devices. I made a trial with my previous setup where I had all my joysticks on a powered USB that was also supporting other peripherals, like mouse, usb-flash drives or a dvd-reader accessing the x-plane license DVD. This kind of setup revealed the problem you alluded to, where the joysticks could get new ID's assigned to them the next time the was started, or the computer itself. This would completely mess up all previous configurations made for the different aircraft in X-Plane. The Bravo Throttle with innate complexity does not exactly help, multiplied by the number of aircraft profiles in X-Plane.

 

As I also run several SSD and HD drives holding the  x-plane 11 install and sceneries and ortho files I decided to concentrate the joystick on one hub while all the other peripherals are fed off the powered USB hub. So far my observation is that the ID's for the joysticks have not changed. See the hardware system overview screenshots below. The USB ID's  5,10,9,8,7 order of the second screenshot seems to be good for now.

 

I wonder now whether my Saitek pedals would also work off a USB 3.0 powered hub. Michael Brown above mentions the Saitek controls somehow only like USB 2.0.

 

Now I am begging for more support on configuring the Bravo Throttle with the Airbus lever pack for the Airbus Range of X-Plane. Reverse thrust seems to be sore spot. But that is reserved for another post.