i want to use gefs flight simulater to send the information to my nerd kit to send to the air craft i am not good at writing codes so help from mike

plus i am only 8

I don’t want to discourage you, But you are thinking about doing something much too advanced for your age. It would take a great deal of time for an experienced adult to do anything like you wish to do. You will need a lot more then some code.

If you are interested in learning about electronics and writing code to make things happen on a computer or your NerdKit you should start with very simple ideas and projects. If you have someone older with some experience to help you and explain things it would be best. With the help of an interested older person you could start with ideas like printing your name on the computer screen or on the nerd kit LCD screen by using some code. If you have some help you will start to learn some basic ideas about electricity and computers.

My son started playing around with some simple electric circuits as well as doing a little code writing in basic when he was about your age. He now has a degree in electrical engineering with a second degree in computer science and works for a company that designs digital parts used in computers and communications equipment.

If Nerdkit kind of things interest you, don’t give up. Get someone that knows about these ideas to help you. Think about much simpler ideas for now.

Hi Mike -

That flight simulator looks pretty cool. What kind of information do you want sent to your Nerdkit? Is it the flight data (altitude, speed, position, etc)? Or is it the control information like keyboard, mouse, or joystick info? If it is the flight data you might have to decode the HTML data sent to your computer from Google Earth. Or it might be the information you send to Google Earth. It all depends on how the plug-in operates. You might be able to search the web for how it's done. Either way you'd have to have a program on your computer to take that data and send it over your Com port to the Nerdkit. So the Nerdkit part is easy...the computer program is hard. Also, you have to check and see if it is even "legal" to fiddle with the guts of the Google Earth plug-in.

Hi again Mike -

sask55 makes some good points. If you have someone to help you out, you could get through the basics first and then jump up to more complicated projects. If you are really determined to get the flight simulator data, THIS WEBSITE will give you an idea what is involved. The more I looked at it, the less complicated it seemed. Turns out, not only can you get data from Google Earth, they give you all the tools you need to set-up a webpage so you can read altitude, position etc. using Javascript (so you don't have to worry about it being "legal"). So I guess the hard part is getting Javascript to send the data to a COM port. Generally this isn't allowed, but there are some ways to do it. Different browsers and operating systems have their own "rules" you need to follow.

well i allready started writing the script but yeah i want to send altitude and speed and other stuff thanks for the help i might need more right now i will se what i can do

Hi Mike -

I found a link HERE that explains how to send HTML data over a Com port using Javascript. Once you are able to get the info from Google Earth, hopefully you should be able to write it out to the Nerdkit.

Mike -

One thing...the link posted above uses VBScript, not Javascript to use the Com ports. Still you can use it inside web pages.