Quickstart

Quickstart — cold & dark to a powered network

This walks the Phase-1 target scenario in the REPL: take a cold, dark A320 on the apron, put the batteries on, then bring in external power and watch the whole AC network wake up. It assumes you have the bindings and CLI installed — see Installation.

Start the REPL:

a320-cli

You land cold & dark on the apron. Nothing is seeded — every pushbutton starts OFF (this is the real cold & dark; see Controls-and-Variables).

1. Batteries on

a320 [t=   0.0s]> step 1000
  stepped 1000 ms  (t=1.000s)

a320 [t=   1.0s]> set bat_1 on
  bat_1 <- 1
a320 [t=   1.0s]> set bat_2 on
  bat_2 <- 1

a320 [t=   1.0s]> watch ELEC_DC_BAT_BUS_IS_POWERED ELEC_AC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED
watching 2 var(s) at 5 Hz - Ctrl+C to stop
* ELEC_DC_BAT_BUS_IS_POWERED   1     <- DC BAT bus comes alive around t=2.0s
  ELEC_AC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED     0        (AC stays dead: no AC source yet)
  t=    2.00s
^C
  [watch stopped at t=3.20s]

The * marks a powered bus. Around t=2.0 s the DC BAT bus flips from 0 to 1 as the battery contactors close. AC stays dead — there is no AC source yet. Ctrl+C stops watching; the sim keeps its state.

2. External power on

The bus tie must be in AUTO: with no state seeding, the pushbutton starts OFF and the AC tie contactors would otherwise stay open.

a320 [t=   3.2s]> set bus_tie auto
  bus_tie <- 1
a320 [t=   3.2s]> set ext_pwr_avail 1     # world control: the GPU is plugged in
  ext_pwr_avail <- 1
a320 [t=   3.2s]> set ext_pwr on
  ext_pwr <- 1

a320 [t=   3.2s]> watch ELEC_AC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED ELEC_AC_2_BUS_IS_POWERED ELEC_DC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED ELEC_DC_2_BUS_IS_POWERED
watching 4 var(s) at 5 Hz - Ctrl+C to stop
* ELEC_AC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED     1     <- whole AC network wakes up around t=3.6s
* ELEC_AC_2_BUS_IS_POWERED     1
* ELEC_DC_1_BUS_IS_POWERED     1
* ELEC_DC_2_BUS_IS_POWERED     1
  t=    3.60s

Around t=3.6 s the whole AC network wakes up — AC 1/2 powered through the bus-tie contactors, TR 1/2 giving normal potential, DC 1/2 fed via the TRs. You have taken the aircraft from cold & dark to a fully powered network from a terminal.

watch advances the sim at ~5 Hz and re-renders in place, so you see the contactors sequence — not just a before and an after. When stdout is piped (for capture/automation) it prints one compact line per refresh instead.

What to try next

• Break something — inject a failure and watch the ECAM react:

  set apu_master on
  set apu_start on
  run 65                 # APU spins up (~60 s simulated)
  set apu_gen on
  fail elec.apu_gen.1
  run 5
  ecam                   # APU GEN FAULT + AC ESS BUS FAULT
  

  See Failures-and-ECAM.
• Discover controls and variables — controls, vars ELEC_DC, snapshot ELEC_AC.
• Full command reference — CLI-Reference.
• Let an LLM fly it — MCP-Server.