bnepethomas

Hi Guys Little fyi - Very close to having the wiring complete in the pit, one thing I did run into was the need to add some pull-up resistors as the cables lengthened, even though the sketch enables pull-up resistors, found I needed to add 10K pull-ups to the columns. cheers Peter

They are close to the full width of the motor assembly, but the real magic is the narrow slit, which gives a pretty repeatable zero point to within a degree. Given your skills it'll be easy as :) I've got the IR receiver connected to an analog port on the Arduino so I can adjust the sensitivity. cheers Peter

Hi John If you are looking at using a stepper that does not have an integrated zero position sensor, look at using a disk with a small slot in it' that's what is inside the vid steppers and it works very well. Cheers Peter

No answers from me John, but hey thats beautiful work that'll you've done there! Cheers Peter

Its an incredibly cool idea - planning to do one for the F18? cheers Peter

Nice job!

Thanks for the pointers, I'll go digging. cheers Peter

Too easy thanks for the tip, much easier than what I was going to try and do. Silly question, how do you get the radio I'd mappi ts? And does that include TACAN and ILS? Cheers Peter

Thanks Ian Yeap got it about the numbers being painted onto the radios, as I don't have those I'm using displays. Your UHF code got me thinks about the other radio and how to achieve a similar result, basically if the pit is cold and dark, and don't want to see any displays until the associated device is active (power rail live and unit power switch on). The on the Intercom, I've added an OLED to reflect the status of the buttons which mute the different audio sources. I know FSX is a completely different beast, but in FSX I watch the avionics bus to match radio displays to power availability. Cheers Peter

Hi guys Cleaning up some pieces of the pit. One thing I'd like to do is blank the oleds of the radios and intercom if power isn't available. Has anyone explored what logic is needed to do this. In addition to checking the power switch position of the radio itself (already got that working), I'm guessing in its most simple format I need battery switch on and either of the inverters, is that a fair check, or is something more detailed needed? Ta Peter

A quick grab with the iPhone. The PRI and SEP buttons are one panel down from the photo, have not yet got the excitement to tear the front panel apart to make the CMSC fit with all buttons (have a 737 to finish before that happens). The project started as a quick and dirty with the MFDs and Simmeters panels. Neat thing about white OLED displays is you simply add a filter to make them any colour you like, and the contrast is amazing. Small correction to my first reply, seller is wide.hk. And the ebay link http://r.ebay.com/VvznK7

I cheated with the OLED displays from wideview, a compromise but functional. Cheers Peter

Hi Ian I've only just got to watch a few of your videos, really nice work. cheers Peter

:) Well we could talk about the other 2.5 pits in another room.....

Hi Guys We recently had an event at work where we did a show and tell of slightly crazy hobbies. The boss came over with the camera and captured the A10 and Jet Ranger in action. Yes the ugly mug in the video is me... cheers Peter

Hi OverPro Its been the longest time, but I'm back working on panels with Rotary Encoders, the great news is the code works really well, thanks for getting that right. Cheers Peter

On the joystick, you may want to check out Overpros project it gives you a good sized matrix for the cost of an ArduinoMega. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=117011 It'll give you a 16*8 matrix. I used it on my Jet Ranger project, and as I'm adding new panels on the A10C, they are being wired up to this. Cheers Peter

Hi HarSu - They work individually, although if you haven't had your aircraft destroyed by SAMs or AAA (I must be a SAM magnet), and return to base successfully, and perform a graceful shutdown they all shut off yes together. Cheers Peter

Nice work Anton. Now a question for both Anton and Ian, Probably a numpty question, I'm good at the missing the obvious, but is there a particular reason why you haven't used a joystick input? (As opposed to keystroke?) Also if you are looking for a reasonably simple to use PCB drawing and layout package, Diptrace is free to 300 pins. I struggled with Kicad, and found Diptrace works a treat. Cheers Peter

Thanks Boltz - White Acrylic with a good flat black spray paint works wonders. Initially we started with an oyster white, but the letters did not stand out that well.

:) Ta Hans - the good news is it got the all important tick of approval from the rest of the family when I showed them it running in the pit, nothing like approval from Parliament :)

Thanks John That's a good question, i had a head start as the Simmeters team LUA export file provides some useful clues: https://simmeters.com/wiki/index.php?title=DCS_World_Wrapper The hugely cool thing about steppers is they are linear, so if gauge is linear its insanely simple. 1: First establish the 0 point. I spend time on the first gauges trying to get it exactly on zero, but missed the point about the there being a little movement, so you can stick the needle on move the gauge to maximum, return to minimum and find it isn't exactly on zero. For the later gauges I purposefully place the needle a little before the 0 point (eg -0.5), and then in the LUA variable add an offset to move it to zero. 2: Then send a value close to maximum and increase the multiplier until the needle points to the right value. So the LUA looks like -- LOX Liters 230 Zero point General_Stepper_Packet = General_Stepper_Packet .. ":" .. math.floor(230 + soic_conv_mp:get_argument_value(274) * 10 * 436) 230 gets the needle to 0 and the 436 is the multiplier to max value. For gauges that aren't linear then here's what the simmeters guys do: local AGL03 = mp:get_argument_value(93) -- A_036_DangerRALT_index {0,20,50,150,200,300,350}{0.0,0.1838,0.4631,0.7541,0.8330,0.9329,1.0} Meters if (AGL03 > 0 and AGL03 <= 0.1838) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (AGL03 * 144.92)) end if (AGL03 > 0.1838 and AGL03 <= 0.4631) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (20 + ((AGL03 - 0.1838) * 107.41))) end if (AGL03 > 0.4631 and AGL03 <= 0.7541) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (50 + ((AGL03 - 0.4631) * 343.64))) end if (AGL03 > 0.7541 and AGL03 <= 0.8330) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (150 + ((AGL03 - 0.7541) * 633.71))) end if (AGL03 > 0.8330 and AGL03 <= 0.9329) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (200 + ((AGL03 - 0.8330) * 1001.0))) end if (AGL03 > 0.9329 and AGL03 <= 1.0) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=" .. (300 + ((AGL03 - 0.9329) * 745.15))) end if (AGL03 > 1.0) then table.insert(flightData,"AGL03=350") end I originally was using C# 'shims to receive a UDP payload from DCS, massage it, and then deliver over the COM Port to the Ardunio, adding a $15 shield removed the need for the C# shim, and removed one of the botttle necks. It isn't as elegant or flexible as DCS-BIOS, but does the trick for me. does that help? cheers peter

Thanks Gents - its coming together, might actually do some flying instead of building before too long... naaa...building is much more fun :)

For FSX check out Linda- http://fs-linda.com/, that enables you to use 128 buttons in FSX. I'm using it in the helicopter, works a treat. cheers Peter

Largely completed this round of gauges and panels. All comms to the gauges is over the network (UDP). The meant adding an ethernet shield to each of the arduinos, but it makes my poor coding easier to do :). There are 4 Arduinos in action: 1: Driving the seconds OLED in the clock, 2: Driving the Clock analog hands and the Compass (uses zero position sensors 3: Driving the general stepper gauges 4: Driving the dual pointer and hyd gauges in the fuel panel. That got special treatment as a little more dampening was needed for the dual pointer stepper. For the code hackers and those interested in a little more detail, the sketches and LUA scripts, along with a little supporting documentation for the steppers can be found here: https://code.google.com/p/bne-arduino-flight-simulator-interfaces/