Managed to grab an Opencockpit Radio Management Panel. Here it is compared to a genuine panel –

Guess which one is the genuine panel?

It is a pretty straight forward affair.  Surprisingly it worked straight out of the box ‘plug and play’ after plugging in a USB cable and installation of the OpenCockpit IOCModules. 

I launched vpilot to confirm standby and active channels – VHF1 and VHF2 function seamlessly. 

Look at all those pretty electronics. 

Some quirks – there is no separate backlight. Instead this is controlled with the on off switch and this may make it difficult chaining up to your 5v integral light potentiometer. 

There is an issue with the Nav component of the RNP not speaking with the host system and MCDU – you get different VOR frequencies jumping back and forth because your simulator software is not talking to IOCModules. 

The solution is to use SIOC which others have done. 

Sounds complicated? There are other vendors with similar plug and play approach and external backlight which may be more closely interfaced with simulator software.