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Throttle Quadrant Operation
The CH Throttle Quadrant is a multiple-throttle device that provides 24 buttons and six axes when used with the Control Manager. Each axis has a calibrated detent position slightly ahead of the full back position. While it operates in a fashion similar to the other CH USB devices supported by the Control Manager, there are also some notable differences in the way it functions and in the dialogs used to program it. This section covers those differences in detail. If you're using the Throttle Quadrant, you should also read the section on Throttle Quadrant Calibration in the Calibration section of this guide.

Throttle Quadrant Buttons

The buttons fall into two groups. First, there are 12 buttons activated by two-position toggle switches on the front of the Throttle Quadrant. There are 12 more "pseudo-buttons", 2 for each axis, that indicate when the throttle lever is behind the detent and when the throttle lever is in the detent. The buttons are assigned in pairs, with the X axis getting Buttons 13 (behind the detent) and 14 (at the detent), the Y axis getting buttons 15 and 16, etc. All 24 buttons use the standard Button Dialog and can be used for any of the normal button functions that the Control Manager provides. You can observe the operation of these special buttons in the Control Manager controller test screen.

There are 12 auxiliary button points at the bottom of the throttle quadrant dialog. These are similar to the ones used in the CMS controls and are used to select the 12 pseudo-buttons since there is no physical button on the Throttle Quadrant that can be "clicked". The "ClickSelect" feature is inoperative for these buttons since any selection of the button would require the axis to move into the appropriate zone and the axis movement itself overrides the button selection and selects the axis instead. You must use the mouse to select the pseudo-axes for programming. The CllckSelect function does work normally for the toggle switches (and the axes).

Throttle Quadrant Axes

As mentioned above, there are 6 axes referenced in the GUI as X, Y, Z, R, U, and V. They are all basically identical. There is a physical detent position slightly ahead of the fully-back position. This is usually used as the actual minimum position, the area behind the detent used to control some other related function such as thrust-reversers or brakes. Due to the presence of the detent and the expected usage of the throttle axes, the settings available and the axis dialogs used for the Throttle Quadrant are different from those for the axes on other CH USB devices. This section talks about the different dialogs the functions that they perform.

Common Sections

The Throttle Quadrant dialogs all share two common elements just as the dialogs for the other devices do. One of these is the checkbox located near the top of the dialog and marked "DirectX Mode". By default, causing the axis to be presented to Windows as a normal joystick axis. If the box is unchecked, the axis is put into "Programmed Mode" and used to send characters. This will result in different dialogs being presented, these are discussed below. The second common element is the Comment box. It is used to enter some text to describe the function in the Control Manager map. Both of these items are discussed in more detail in the section on Axis Dialogs. You should refer to those for more information on these items.

DirectX Mode

When the DirectX Mode box is checked, the axis dialog for the Throttle Quadrant looks like this:


DX Device Box

The primary items that need to be set are the boxes labeled "DX Device" and "DX Axis". The DX Device box defines which of the Control Manager Devices that will get the axis. The effect of this setting for the Throttle Quadrant is the same as for the other CH USB devices. Consult the section on Axis Dialogs for more information.

DX Axis box

The DX Axis box tells the Control Manager which axis on the CM device specified in the DX Device Box the selected axis should be assigned to. If you were to assign the X Axis to "CM Device 1" and "X Axis", for example, then the X axis lever would end up controlling the X-Axis on Control Manager Device 1. Again, this is more thoroughly covered in the section on Axis Dialogs.

DX Axis Parameters

Because of the detent, the Direct X parameters that can be set for the Throttle Quadrant are quite different from those for axes on other devices. There are four separate parameters that control the way the axis is seen and what the values will be. These are "Min Val", "Max Val", "Detent Val" and "Deadzone". The first three of these parameters define what values will be returned by the throttle when it is in the indicated position. Value changes between these positions are linear. For example, if you were to set Min Val to 0, Detent Val to 240, and Max Val to 255, you would see values from that lever of 0 when in the fully-forward position, 240 when in the detent, and 255 when in the fully-back position. Like other axes, the Throttle Quadrant axes normally produce a range of 0 to 255.

One of the common uses of these settings is to put both he Max Val and the Detent Val to 255 and the Min Val to 0. This gives full throttle control between the detents and the fully-forward position, leaving the area behind the detent free. This can be used to activate things like brakes and reverse thrust using the special "buttons". Alternatively, the value can be processed by the CMS script. To maintain consistency, the values seen by CMS are scaled such that the throttle always produces 240 at the detent. A script that needs to know when the throttle lever is in the detent can simply check for this value. Min and Max values seen in the script are 0 and 255 respectively.

One further note on the use of these settings. They are interlocked to prevent them from being placed out of order. There is logic in the Control Manager that checks that the Max Value is greater than or equal to the Detent Value and that the Detent Value is greater than or equal to the Min Value. If you try to enter a Max Value that is less than the Detent Value, it will be set back to the Detent Value. A similar thing happens if you try to set the Min Value above the Detent Value. If you run into a problem, set the Detent Value first, then you should be able to set the Max Value and Min Value to their desired values without problem.

Deadzone

The fourth parameter is the "Deadzone". This really defines the width of the detent. There is still room for a small amount of physical movement when the lever is in the detent position, this setting allows you to make the zone a little wider to compensate for this imprecision.

Invert Check Box

The final item available for Direct X Mode is the "Invert" check box. When this box is checked, the values coming from the throttle are inverted, the output will be 255 to 0 rather than 0 to 255. This would be useful perhaps in a helicopter simulation where reversing the action might more closely simulate the collective.

Programmed Mode

When the DirectX Mode check box is unchecked the dialog will change to one of two possible dialogs. One of these is for programming the axis to send characters in "Up/Down" mode, the other for "Position" mode. The particular dialog that appears will depend on the setting of a pair of Radio Buttons on the dialog marked "Up/Down" and "Position". The default is "Up/Down". These two modes operate much the same as their counterparts on the more conventional devices, but there are significant differences necessitated by the use of the detent position. The following section covers the two modes and what the dialogs do. Both of these types are covered in somewhat more detail in the section on Axis Dialogs and those sections should be referenced for further information.

Up/Down Mode

The default mode is "Up/Down" mode. When this mode is selected, the dialog will look like this:


Up/Down Mode is the more complex of the two modes. Like its more conventional counterparts, the point of the Up/Down Mode is to send one character a specific number of times when the axis is moved in one direction, to send a second character that same number of times when the axis is moved in the other direction. The Throttle Quad expands on this a bit by using separate pairs of characters to be used in the zones behind and in front of the detent, and further by providing pairs of characters that are sent as the throttle enters and leaves the detent moving up or down.

Step Counts

Below the radio buttons for mode selection are two boxes for numeric entry. These are labeled "Min Zone" and "Normal Zone" and define the number of characters that will be sent as the lever is moved through the area between the fully-back position and the detent and between the detent and the fully-forward position respectively. The characters that are generated are defined below.

Character Definition

The dialog uses two lines of edit boxes to represent this action. The upper line shows four boxes like this, representing the lever moving forward:

Inc Key -> Enter Det -> Exit Det -> Inc Key ->

and the lower line represents the throttle moving to the back:

<- Dec Key <- Exit Det <- Enter Det <- Dec Key

The upper line, reading from left to right, shows four boxes. First there is the first "Inc Key" which defines the character that will be sent while the lever moves from the fully-back position to the detent position. Next it defines the "Enter Det", which is a character that is sent one time as the lever enters the detent. Next, an "Exit Det" key is defined which is a single character sent when the lever leaves the detent moving forward, and finally a second "Inc Key" is defined which is the character sent when the lever is moved from the detent to the fully-forward position. The lower line makes similar definitions for the characters to be generated when the lever is moved in the other direction. Not that, in practice, you may not be able to get more than a few characters in the Min Zone as the zone is physically very narrow and their simply may not be enough change available to generate many characters.

Position Dialog

The second type of dialog available in Programmed Mode is termed the Position Dialog. Like the Up/Down dialog, this dialog emulates its standard-axis counterparts, but provides some additional functionality because of the detent. When you select "Position", the dialog will look like this:


Zone Keys

There are two boxes of interest. These are marked "Min Zone Keys" and "Normal Zone Keys". These define the characters that are sent in the zone between the detent and the fully-forward position and the character sent between the detent and the fully-back position respectively. The characters are all sent exactly one time, the character being sent depends entirely on the position of the lever and not on the direction that the lever is moving. Note that, as with the Up/Down control, the number of steps available in the Min Zone is likely to be rather limited.

Other Notes

The SCALE statement is currently ignored when applied to a throttle quadrant axis. Only the settings made in the GUI Axis Dialogs are in effect. You can manually scale the axes in the script, or you can copy them to a CMS axis and apply the SCALE operation to that axis.