HMMWV Blue Force Tracker Setup

Got Windows 10 loaded on the SSD. Ethernet works fine (did all the updates) - USB works fine - and for giggles I set the disappearing taskbar, set the desktop icons to off - and am using an old screengrab I had of an FBCB2 in operation as a desktop

Display resolution seems fixed at 800x600 (ike a lot of touchscreens) but I swear I read somewhere that the DU could go to 1024x768 so maybe there's a specific driver I need to find somewhere. Anyway - really happy with it so far.

Wile E. Coyote said:

View attachment 913527

Got Windows 10 loaded on the SSD. Ethernet works fine (did all the updates) - USB works fine - and for giggles I set the disappearing taskbar, set the desktop icons to off - and am using an old screengrab I had of an FBCB2 in operation as a desktop

Display resolution seems fixed at 800x600 (ike a lot of touchscreens) but I swear I read somewhere that the DU could go to 1024x768 so maybe there's a specific driver I need to find somewhere. Anyway - really happy with it so far.

Click to expand...

Does the touch work? I’m struggling with that still…


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badgerd said:

Does the touch work? I’m struggling with that still…


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Click to expand...

No. I haven't looked into it too seriously yet. Based on what everyone else said I was thinking of installing XP to see if it would come up with working drivers and may still try that on another drive. I'll play with puTTY a bit too.

Next thing I want to try is to see if it recognizes the output from the DAGR via the SIAD break-out connector on a serial port. I can take the NMEA 0183 output from DAGR via the SIAD and feed it into whatever moving-map solution I wind up going with (now that Windows Maps has decided to discontinue offline map support as of the end of the month.)

Audio is another deal. You can grab audio via USB but there's a perfectly good audio port just sitting there. Supposedly the JV5 was spec'd to have an internal speaker being driven by the left audio channel but I see no evidence there ever was one fitted. As a result the output connector only has Right audio output - at least according to the pinout. USB appears to provide both Left and Right.

Okay, so - a few weird things with the serial ports. Win 10 doubled up on the same names (i.e. two COM 1 ports, two COM 2 ports) in Device Manager even though they all got different IRQs. So, I went in and renamed them COM 1 through COM 7 in order.

In the literature, 'COM A' is supposed to be the touchscreen serial data stream which is supposed to map internally to COM 1 by default. PuTTY would not let me open any serial port which meant a trip to the overly-intrusive settings in Windows Security to turn off a bunch of stuff likely interfering. When I came back to PuTTY I could open COM 1, and do indeed get a data stream when I touch the screen in different places. So all that works.

Device Manager is a bit of a train wreck. Win 10 did not find drivers for what it decided was 5 ethernet controllers and the Multimedia Audio Controller. Under Human Interface Devices it recognizes 3 USB Input Devices all with drivers loaded. I would have expected to see a Touchscreen listed there with a missing/ unloaded driver...so Windows either doesn't recognize there is one - or enumerated it as one of the USB Input Devices and loaded a generic USB driver by default.

I'll have a go at installing the drivers back down the thread a-ways and see what happens there.

Wile E. Coyote said:

Okay, so - a few weird things with the serial ports. Win 10 doubled up on the same names (i.e. two COM 1 ports, two COM 2 ports) in Device Manager even though they all got different IRQs. So, I went in and renamed them COM 1 through COM 7 in order.

In the literature, 'COM A' is supposed to be the touchscreen serial data stream which is supposed to map internally to COM 1 by default. PuTTY would not let me open any serial port which meant a trip to the overly-intrusive settings in Windows Security to turn off a bunch of stuff likely interfering. When I came back to PuTTY I could open COM 1, and do indeed get a data stream when I touch the screen in different places. So all that works.

Device Manager is a bit of a train wreck. Win 10 did not find drivers for what it decided was 5 ethernet controllers and the Multimedia Audio Controller. Under Human Interface Devices it recognizes 3 USB Input Devices all with drivers loaded. I would have expected to see a Touchscreen listed there with a missing/ unloaded driver...so Windows either doesn't recognize there is one - or enumerated it as one of the USB Input Devices and loaded a generic USB driver by default.

I'll have a go at installing the drivers back down the thread a-ways and see what happens there.

Click to expand...

I’ve been fiddling with this for years

step one get virtual machine
Step two download windows ce onto vm
step three download winshark comparable w bergquist pn 400213
Step four run digital comport to com 1 on physical machine
Step five calibrate screen on vm with output to windows and hope for agreeable outcome
Step six run over box stop wasting your time you’ll never get this to work you need to run a Linux os…

wildbill88 said:

I’ve been fiddling with this for years

step one get virtual machine
Step two download windows ce onto vm
step three download winshark comparable w bergquist pn 400213
Step four run digital comport to com 1 on physical machine
Step five calibrate screen on vm with output to windows and hope for agreeable outcome
Step six run over box stop wasting your time you’ll never get this to work you need to run a Linux os…

Click to expand...

Lol yeah...ha. I've used Unix flavors back to the HP-UX days so if someone can get the touchscreen drivers to behave under some flavor of Linux -- I'll be all over it. Maybe I'll set up some dual-boot arrangement with Win 10. Messing with VM stuff is not something I'll be into while I still have fingernails to pull out one-by-one.

For people playing along at home...I used every trick in the black bag to get Win XP on it but got nothing but BSOD, which is really strange because I can put XP on anything and everything else the same way. Didn't investigate further. I'll wait until the Bottle-of-Scotch network comes up with the BIOS password so I can change the boot order to try USB first and have another go. It came across like XP installs were rejected on purpose.

Loaded Win 7. Pretty much exactly the same experience as with Win 10 with the exception that Win 7 Device Manager enumerates something that Win 10 didn't - namely in the 'Other Devices' category where Win 10 found nothing but Ethernet stacks - Win 7 found "DRS SMMC HSL processor" and couldn't find a driver for it. Searching around every dark corner on the web I couldn't find one either - but I'd hazard a guess that 'SMMC' probably means 'System Maintenance Management Controller' or something similar. Win 7 also loaded no audio/ multimedia controller drivers which comes across a bit...unlikely. At first I thought the FBCB2 system may have been set up to process audio externally full-stop - through a VIC-3 maybe - but if that were the case then Device Manager wouldn't have enumerated a device it couldn't find drivers for.

Hooked everything back up in the vehicle which also has wired in the SIAD interface which in turn is hooked up to a DAGR and an AM-7239E / SINCGARS installation with RT-1523A. After some playing, PuTTY will indeed start reading NMEA 0183 sentences from the DAGR via DAGR's J2 port, COM1/ COM2 - through to Fuzzy Bunny's COM 2 at 9600. You have to configure DAGR to output NMEA sentences manually (and pick which sentences) but through SIAD/ Serial interfaces - it makes it all the way to the PU and OS. When I get a minute I'll try a GPS TOD into the SINCGARS.

Because I have the adapter that hooks up to J5 on the PU - I was also able to use a USB wireless dongle to hook up to the wireless in the compound here. No great speed demon but it works without additional headache less the driver install from the mfg.

Based on a previous post I'm now wondering if touchscreen drivers only work in X-Windows as looped through the Redhat 2 environment - which would likely mean there *are* no drivers for a pure x86 environment? I've only really played with Linux in the past as all my day-job stuff is MS - but the military's use of X-Windows in a UNIX environment for example isn't new (IMETS and others) so maybe old habits die hard.

Wile E. Coyote said:

For people playing along at home...I used every trick in the black bag to get Win XP on it but got nothing but BSOD, which is really strange because I can put XP on anything and everything else the same way. Didn't investigate further. I'll wait until the Bottle-of-Scotch network comes up with the BIOS password so I can change the boot order to try USB first and have another go. It came across like XP installs were rejected on purpose.

Loaded Win 7. Pretty much exactly the same experience as with Win 10 with the exception that Win 7 Device Manager enumerates something that Win 10 didn't - namely in the 'Other Devices' category where Win 10 found nothing but Ethernet stacks - Win 7 found "DRS SMMC HSL processor" and couldn't find a driver for it. Searching around every dark corner on the web I couldn't find one either - but I'd hazard a guess that 'SMMC' probably means 'System Maintenance Management Controller' or something similar. Win 7 also loaded no audio/ multimedia controller drivers which comes across a bit...unlikely. At first I thought the FBCB2 system may have been set up to process audio externally full-stop - through a VIC-3 maybe - but if that were the case then Device Manager wouldn't have enumerated a device it couldn't find drivers for.

Hooked everything back up in the vehicle which also has wired in the SIAD interface which in turn is hooked up to a DAGR and an AM-7239E / SINCGARS installation with RT-1523A. After some playing, PuTTY will indeed start reading NMEA 0183 sentences from the DAGR via DAGR's J2 port, COM1/ COM2 - through to Fuzzy Bunny's COM 2 at 9600. You have to configure DAGR to output NMEA sentences manually (and pick which sentences) but through SIAD/ Serial interfaces - it makes it all the way to the PU and OS. When I get a minute I'll try a GPS TOD into the SINCGARS.

Because I have the adapter that hooks up to J5 on the PU - I was also able to use a USB wireless dongle to hook up to the wireless in the compound here. No great speed demon but it works without additional headache less the driver install from the mfg.

Based on a previous post I'm now wondering if touchscreen drivers only work in X-Windows as looped through the Redhat 2 environment - which would likely mean there *are* no drivers for a pure x86 environment? I've only really played with Linux in the past as all my day-job stuff is MS - but the military's use of X-Windows in a UNIX environment for example isn't new (IMETS and others) so maybe old habits die hard.

Click to expand...

I’ll get your windows running if you get me gps data windows / google maps plug in with dagr and then we can work on touch screen I know I can work it I just don’t care too as there is no ROI after I spend hours working on this junk

Wile E. Coyote said:

For people playing along at home...I used every trick in the black bag to get Win XP on it but got nothing but BSOD, which is really strange because I can put XP on anything and everything else the same way. Didn't investigate further. I'll wait until the Bottle-of-Scotch network comes up with the BIOS password so I can change the boot order to try USB first and have another go. It came across like XP installs were rejected on purpose.

Loaded Win 7. Pretty much exactly the same experience as with Win 10 with the exception that Win 7 Device Manager enumerates something that Win 10 didn't - namely in the 'Other Devices' category where Win 10 found nothing but Ethernet stacks - Win 7 found "DRS SMMC HSL processor" and couldn't find a driver for it. Searching around every dark corner on the web I couldn't find one either - but I'd hazard a guess that 'SMMC' probably means 'System Maintenance Management Controller' or something similar. Win 7 also loaded no audio/ multimedia controller drivers which comes across a bit...unlikely. At first I thought the FBCB2 system may have been set up to process audio externally full-stop - through a VIC-3 maybe - but if that were the case then Device Manager wouldn't have enumerated a device it couldn't find drivers for.

Hooked everything back up in the vehicle which also has wired in the SIAD interface which in turn is hooked up to a DAGR and an AM-7239E / SINCGARS installation with RT-1523A. After some playing, PuTTY will indeed start reading NMEA 0183 sentences from the DAGR via DAGR's J2 port, COM1/ COM2 - through to Fuzzy Bunny's COM 2 at 9600. You have to configure DAGR to output NMEA sentences manually (and pick which sentences) but through SIAD/ Serial interfaces - it makes it all the way to the PU and OS. When I get a minute I'll try a GPS TOD into the SINCGARS.

Because I have the adapter that hooks up to J5 on the PU - I was also able to use a USB wireless dongle to hook up to the wireless in the compound here. No great speed demon but it works without additional headache less the driver install from the mfg.

Based on a previous post I'm now wondering if touchscreen drivers only work in X-Windows as looped through the Redhat 2 environment - which would likely mean there *are* no drivers for a pure x86 environment? I've only really played with Linux in the past as all my day-job stuff is MS - but the military's use of X-Windows in a UNIX environment for example isn't new (IMETS and others) so maybe old habits die hard.

Click to expand...

Following

Anyone find a creative way to link up a raspberry pi or other (more modern) computer to the touch display?

it's been a while since i've seen the screen display on bft!! although I used it what you're doing is far beyond my capabilites, congrats and for those in the know it'd be impressive to see 'on the road'.

Just picked up a MRT104 tablet and am working on trying to get it to turn on. It came with no batteries so I will need to figure out the battery pinout and try to apply power there. There were two unpopulated SATA drive bays so I threw in some SSD's I had laying around. I would like to find a dock or mount for it to put it in my HMMWV. I would also need to find a cable to go from the dock to the tablet. There is no dock connector so it must connect by cable. Really to new for my what I want to do but I couldn't pass it up. If anyone has the cable or dock stuff for the tablet MRT104 please hit me up. I havnt found much documentation except the sales literature from the DRS website.

Super interesting post that I regret to have previously missed!
If you’ve seen my ‘anyone put an infotainment‘ topic in another forum (I can’t find it anymore) I’ve been working on building a computer for my ‘vees but with some I/Os so that I can get telemetry and signals from the truck and actuate things from the software. Unfortunately serious projects for work take most of my time and I’m doing little progress on it (maybe a couple week-ends a year)

I’d love to make it look like the BFT!

By the way, the using of a pelletier effect element for the CPU was a common thing (and may still be) when the ambiant temperature might be less than about 30 Celsius degrees below the throttling temp for the CPU. So in the current case, it’s not exceptional to hit 50C degrees in the desert and an Intel military grade might start getting hot around 80C degrees so a pelletier is a good way to cool it down at the cost of using more energy.
Back in the 90’s it wasn’t rare to find them in Unix servers, and even Macs (I believe the PowerPCs back then) had them.

Let's bump this up. My newer MRT104 Tablet is shelved for the moment. I can find no information on it like pinout for the connectors. The new thing is I have two JV5 units. One had a bunch of internal corrosion like a battery exploded in it. I have to tear it all the way down to check it. I also got a cleaner CPU unit. I have a smashed newer display unit with both the touch screen and the display screen damaged by corrosion jacking. I also have an older display screen unit that lacks the row of buttons at the bottom of the display, but it does have exactly the same buttons on the left. The status lights look to be a different configuration, but they may just be labeled differently. It has a USB connector on the side with a deep rubber plug to seal it. It also is slightly larger and does not fit any of the display mounts I have for the newer style units.
I recently got power cords, so I got power to the units to check them. The dirty CPU unit gives more life than the clean unit. The dirty unit has 1303 hours, and the cleaner one has 600. I plugged in the clean one to the damaged newer display and it seemed to begin start up but at some point, the magic smoke began so I removed power and will have to tear it down to check and see if I can find the offending component. I am hoping it is just a power capacitor. Only one of the status lights on the main board lights up. I tried the dirty unit, and it got farther and most of the status lights came up. The display show error on the broken display as expected but all the other status lights show good. I don't think the battery is charging much. I also took out the 9 volt in the battery tray and I know the cmos battery is toast on the dirty CPU unit. It may have blown and cause the internal corrosion. I then tried the older display unit, and it showed a white screen and nothing else. It does have the same connector for the keyboard but the clocking of the location slots are different on the older display so my keyboard for the newer unit will not fit. I have another display on the way and hope I get to see kind of display on it other than a blank broken display or the total white display.

My question is, what did you guys see on startup when the bios was smoked?

Also, I will grab some pics and post.

I really want to get this working but if I have left over parts that are not fixable then I will probably put an aftermarket touch screen in a display unit and run it to a raspberry PI or similar small computer so I can make a map display or maybe a slideshow of BFT screen caps. I could gut the display cable to run power, HDMI, and USB through it. I really hope to get at least one original unit going. I also think it would be pretty easy to replace the 5 wire touch screen in the original display unit but the actual screen seems to have a different cable than all the other NEC replacement displays I see.

I am so glad to see that working. I'd love to have it in one of my cars but looking at your pics is the closest i'll ever get to seeing one. good work, post photos, pass the word, keep up the endeavor.
thx, jim

Here are pictures. I am hijacking the thread. The others in the thread are the ones that have made some headway. I am way behind them at the moment.

Hijack away! That’s a neat older unit in the photo. Wonder what resolution that even ran. The most common ones are 800x600.