gardnerjr

In action pic trying to AAR: Trying to AAR with the A10 by John Gardner, on Flickr What's next? since i have the fire switches elsewhere, the fake pull handles are taking up space. I'm thinking to remove those and make backlit sections for gun ready/nosewheel steering/canopy unlocked/etc in that spot as well. Underneath the mfds, im thinking about doing pushbuttons+lights for the nmsp panel to have egi/tacan/ils buttons/etc. Not really shown in any of the pics is how i have the hotas now in monstertech knockoff mounts. i'm also thinking about making a fuel panel but also adding the SAS switches to that and mounting that with the throttle. I also have a mini keyboard mounte on the top of the throttle mount that has all the F keys and esc/pause so i can pretty much do all the startup+radio without having a real keyboard at all.

i wasn't sure what i wanted to put on the right side, but my first guess was the hydraulic + fuel gauge panel. My brother in law has a vinyl shop, so i had him print some stickers for me to try on that side and to fill in some of the blank spaces (again, by stealing more things that RK has posted: More panel stuff by John Gardner, on Flickr i cut out various parts for the glare shield and fire pull handles and put them on too, and it really adds a little realism. More panel stuff by John Gardner, on Flickr But the fuel gauge takes up a LOT of space for how much i'd use it. so i decided to put the electrical panel there. So i got another panel from pclights and cut it down to fit (at this point, i *almost* should have just bought a laser cutter to start doing my own panels? aaaalmost) Here's the partial fuel panel/partial electrical panel (and canopy controls) Done with the mini simpit? by John Gardner, on Flickr the joystick board for the left side of the panel is all used up (20 switches/buttons) so i had to buy another one to run the right side of the panel. I also cut and drilled out a cylinder to make a jettison button, and then tried to figure out how to do the engine fire cutoff pull handles. originally i wanted to mount some pull switches where the decals are, BUT, the top edge of the monitor for the MFD's is there, so there's literally no space there to do it. So i randomly found some yellow LED ringed pushbutton toggle switches on ebay: engine fire lights on by John Gardner, on Flickr The fire cutoff lights and buttons are wired up to the same Arduino as the landing gear setup, and now the nano is pretty much full on that side. When the fire light is on, the light ring lights up, and i can press the button to "pull" the handle, and press it again to "push" the handle back in.

I got a giant roll of 5v usb powered led strip lighting, and started playing with it Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr Soldering is another one of those things i'd done *some* of, but i'm not very good at it. To this point, it's all just "wiring" things up, hooking things up to pins on various boards. But now for the backlighting i'm going to have to cut up the LED strips, and wire them back together, and figure out how to dim them (they're WAY too bright, it's amazing what even 5v can do! Here's where i also dug into and used more of the stuff i learned from RomeoKilo's warthog project about making individual panels and using motherboard standoff's to layer things. in my original idea i just was going to put the strip lihts in the back of my "panel", but the light was very inconsistent. Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr I found a usb dimmer circuit somewhere online (amazon? ebay?) and wired that into the panel so i can dim the backlighting: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr (you can see the dimmer knob right behind the UFC, and yes, the UFC isn't really in there straight. it's just double-stick taped to the panel there, i need to fix that. the pics make it seem WAY more off than it is?) But man, look how empty the right side of the panel is. i have to do something about that!

I saw RK's landing gear panel setup, and that was my next project. I wish i had time (or space, and the knowledge required) to run a laser cutter setup, so i bought another pcflights panel for the landing gear, and stole his idea of using a RC car shock to make a landing gear lever: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr I laminated several layers of plexi together and cut it out to make a landing gear lever and knob, with a hole drilled through it to run wires and an LED. this is when i then learned how to use an Arduino and DCS-BIOS. I've been a programmer professionally for more than 20 years but had never done any real hardware projects, and was a little intimidated by the thought of this. but OMG, the people who set up DCS-BIOS did an amazing job. i had a panel set up with the flaps gauge, landing gear transit light, the landing gear status lights in like what, 5 lines of code? Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr The landing gear panel and switches was then hooked up to the joystick board in the hud & armament panel and i had mostly working panel: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr then i needed backlighting!

And things began. Then i got some plexi to fill in the front panel and started mounting the MFD's and the panel i had: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr i got a joystick board from desktop aviator to do all the switches and got all that working, and that other switch on the left side was for landing gear. AND THEN I FOUND THIS FORUM and @romeokilo 's posts, and his youtube videos and omg i was just.... i literally can't even!

Back in like March, Amazon had the warthog hotas setup on sale. I've been interested in those for years for other stuff, and i knew that a new version of MS Flight Simulator was coming, so i jumped on that. When they came, i installed them and looked for things to play. I'm really embarassed to say i'd never even *heard* of DCS before that. I found it randomly on steam and OMG i've been hooked! I've played FS2020 some but i've put a lot of time into learning how to fly the A10C, going through the basic flight qualification and now the advanced one. As i play more and more of these mission's i've wanted more and more things on my desk... I found the cougar MFD's randomly on ebay, and then saw the buddy fox UFC somewhere (youtube?) before finding the Warthog Project (RomeoKilo) and this forum! So as with anything, it started off small... Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr the MFD's and the UFC on a piece of leftover 1/4" plywood... Then i foundout you could export the screens from the real mfds to a real monitor, and found a monitor on amazon (interestingly, if you look up the mfd's on amazon, it suggests a monitor apparently a lot of us are using!) So i double sticked tape the MFD's and utc to the monitor and my simpit adventure began Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr My general thought process... Has to fit on the desk, between me and the monitor. - i use this as my work from home (all the friggin time now) so it can't be a dedicated pit Have mfd's and as much instrumentation as possible Lots of cool switches/etc. Look semi-realistic Ideally: Can fly without a keyboard at all Can get through startup with minimal mouse Mostly functional/usable with FS2020 too, not just DCS After that, i started looking up random things online, joystick boards, pre-built panels, and got a panel from pcflights.com, and mocked it up as cardboard: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr Then i started building. had a bunch of leftover plywood/wood from other household project. Had an unused powered usb hub i can use inside, some ideas. Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr some paint and some test fitting: Untitled by John Gardner, on Flickr

does the display work if you leave all the code, but unplug all the other devices from the nano? it might be that you're simply drawing more power than the nano can provide, and you might need an additional 5v power source to power the display?