Engravity CDU Installation Instructions
From PMDG Ops
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ENGRAVITY CDU Installation Instructions
Installation of the ENGRAVITY CDU to work with your PMDG Products is relatively simple for most users to accomplish on their own.
What you need before you start
First, you will need the following items:
- Your Engravity CDU, it's power cable and USB cable.
- The USB Driver CD that came with your CDU when it arrived from Engravity.
- Your PMDG-Engravity Interface License
- Your PMDG-Engravity Interface Installer
- Either PMDG 747-400/400F or the PMDG 737-800/900.
Where do I get these items?
Obviously, the CDU, power chord and USB cable should have come in the box from Engravity! You should also have received the USB driver CD in the same box. If you didn't, then download it here. Unzip the contents of the downloaded files into a temporary folder and note the location of the contents for step 2 below.
When your CDU arrived, you should have turned it over, looked at the license number on the reverse side, then purchased your PMDG-Engravity Interface License. The license is named PMDG_EngCDU.key and was emailed to you by PMDG.
You should have downloaded the PMDG-Engravity interface installer from PMDG after your License purchase. The download link was contained in the confirmation that was sent to you at the time of purchase.
Installing your CDU
Once you have all of these items, you are ready to procede with installation and setup.
Follow these steps in this order:
- 1) Install your PMDG 737-800/900 and/or PMDG 747-400/400F product.
- 2) Insert the Engravity disc containing the USB drivers into your CD drive. If you have AUTORUN enabled, then the setup process will start automatically. If you do not have AUTORUN enabled then simply click on the SETUP.EXE file that you see as in this image here:
In case you downloaded the drivers from this page instead, find SETUP.EXE in the folder you unzipped the contents into and run that.
- 3) When you have installed the USB drivers, the plug the power cable to your CDU and plug the cable into a power source. (The CDU will power up and power down after a self test.)
- 4) Plug the supplied USB cable into your machine, then into the base of your CDU. Your windowsXP machine will identify that you have new hardware connected. At this point, you may be prompted by windows to install drivers for the new device. Allow windows to conduct the search and it will identify the correct drivers and continue with their installation. (Note: On some machines, Windows may do this TWICE... Just let Windows search for the drivers automatically and when it is finished, you will know!)
- 5) When Windows is satisfied with the new hardware setup, you should notice the following was added to the DEVICE MANAGER window:
- Note that you can find this window by selecting START/CONTROL PANEL/SYSTEM- then select the HARDWARE tab and click on DEVICE MANAGER. Next scroll down until you see: PORTS(COM & LPT)
- 6) In your DEVICE MANAGER, notice that you now have an item listed as: Engravity CDU COM Port Controller (COMX) where X is the COM port that your machine has selected for use with the CDU. (REMEMBER THIS COM PORT NUMBER!) (You might also notice, depending on whether you're using older CDU drivers, that the name of the driver is CP20x USB to UART Bridge Controller - that's the same type of driver).
- 7) Next, save the attached PMDG_Eng_CDU.key file that was provided to you by PMDG into the folder /FS9/PMDG. This is the key that will authorize your CDU to communicate with PMDG's airliner simulation software.
- 8) Now run the installer you downloaded from PMDG at the time you purchased your license key. The file name is PMDG_Engravity_Interface.exe.
- 9) Next, run FS9! Select the PMDG 747-400/400F or 737-800/900 and enter the simulator.
- 10) Pull down the PMDG menu located along the top of your FS menu bar- and select the "ENGRAVITY CDU..." item from the PMDG Menu. IMPORTANT!!! Make sure that you are NOT running in Full Screen mode for this, or the following dialog box will popup and disappear behind the Flight Simulator full screen. Instead, you should be running FS9 in Window Mode - to switch back and forth, hit Alt-Enter.
Once you're in Windows Mode and select the "Engravity CDU..." menu item, you will then see a menu below that should look like this:
- 11) Select 38400 as your desired baud rate, and select the COM port that we reviewed in item #6 above.
- 12) Press CONNECT!
Your Engravity CDU should come alive, displaying the same screen as you'd see on the CDU within the simulator. Your Engravity CDU is now fully functional and will control the FMS within the simulation!
Once you're satisfied that everything works as advertised, uncheck the "Enable Debug Window" checkbox if you had selected it previously and hit the "Close" button to return to your Flight Simulator screen. You have now completed the installation process!
Connection Problems
The most common problem we see during installation is that users receive a message from within MSFS stating "Could Not Open Port." Yet you have looked and you know the port numbers match up!
This is generally an indication that you have another piece of software attempting to use the same COM port. This is most often caused by infrequently used BlueTooth applications such as HotSynchs for PDAs etc. Try turning that software off and see if that doesn't solve the problem for you!
CDU Driver Installation Problems
If you receive an error about 'slabunin.exe' not being copied properly, make sure that you have uninstalled any previously installed CDU Drivers, as they conflict with the installation process. For further instructions, let us know by emailing our support team.
