Boot910

So far everything looks good. No problems with the paint at all.

Hi Feed. I hadn't checked the forum in a few days. My method was very low-tech. I got a bag of black caps (easiest to get from Digikey stock-wise) and painted them by hand with Testor's Model Master Aircraft Gray. I used a P-Touch label maker to do the text on my caps using White on Clear extra-strength adhesive. If you have the means to do engraving then I think getting white caps if you can is a great idea.

Hi Smoky. I've certainly learned a lot building this first one. Still ironing out a few things like fabricating an ENT key, and getting it to work as I want in-game. The buttons and rockers all work at least! That I know already. :) I still have to do a final tally to figure a cost/unit and see if I bought the big pieces in bulk what it would cost before I could offer to sell completed units. I'll work this all out and post back. If demand is high enough and final price is too high to scare everyone off I might be tempted to do this.

Hi Pendra. I'd be interested to hear more about your app. I don't think it's necessary if the gamepad buttons work but I think you're right in that it'd make things much more flexible.

If you're looking for a good general supply of just about everything electrical and electronic, give Digikey a try. http://www.digikey.com You can either look online or download their huge 2000+ page pdf catalog. I've gotten most of my stuff from them. As for labeling metal panels, there are 4 ways I can think of in increasing order of expense. 1. You can buy pre-made white dry transfer letter sheets from a hobby store and label your panel one letter at a time. 2. You can use white on clear P-Touch label maker tape if you own a P-Touch. If not, that's an added expense. 3. If you own or have a friend who has a laser printer, you can get a toner-transfer decal kit (available @ digikey by the way) and make your own dry-transfer sheets. This process not only requires a laser printer, but also a hot roll laminator and a heat gun to make the decal sheets so it can get a bit pricey. 4. Buy a desktop CNC machine and create/engrave your own panels. Would be the most fun and is easily the most expensive option.

Just the front panel by itself was somewhere around $65-70, yes. I had them do the entire enclosure. Front, back, top, bottom, sides, and corner extrusions to hold it all together. The top and sides were simple pieces of black anodized aluminum @ 1.5mm thickness so they didn't cost much overall. I had a slot cut out of the back panel for the cable, and the bottom panel was thicker to provide a more stable base @ 3mm or so. I also had 5 threaded holes drilled in the bottom piece to mount the control board and a stand-off for a cable restraint, and I had the sides machined to fit the grooves in the extrusions so those two cost a bit. Total for the whole package (all six panels, 4 extrusions, 8 M5 screws, 4 rubber feet) was a bit over $200 with shipping.

The front panel was engraved and backfilled with white paint when it was manufactured by Front Panel Express. The labeling on the buttons I did with a P-Touch using white on clear extra strength adhesive tape. I didn't have any plans to hook it up to the lighting system or else I would've made the front panel out of perspex instead of black anodized aluminum.

Quick update for those still interested. I finished up the soldering/wiring the other night but I haven't been able to program/test the UFC until tonight. Plugged it in and no sparks or magic smoke so that was good. :) I used the U-HID Config utility to program all the named buttons/rockers as gamepad buttons. You can do keystrokes but it doesn't do combos like Left Shift-A it seems, so gamepad buttons look to be the way to go. I can still program the blank 3 buttons (under FWD, MID, and AFT) with keystrokes to do other things later. Windows only allows 32 gamepad buttons and fortunately all the required functions add up to exactly 32! Anyways, everything works. Now it's just a matter of integrating it into DCS:A-10C. To test out the Master Caution LED I programmed it to turn on when I depress the MC button and that works too. If I can figure out how to interface that with the game it should work. Only thing really left to do is fabricate the final ENT button.

The U-HID card I'm using has an SDK that would allow me to drive an LED (Master Caution) from an external program. I'm guessing this is where export.lua comes into play. If I can get this figured out then the MC light will be functional. The actual button reading should be pretty straight forward. I can configure the buttons as either standard key presses or as game pad buttons. I might set them as game pad buttons since the card outputs standard keyscan codes and it doesn't look like there's a way to combine them; I can output an A, or Left Control, but I don't think I can do LCtrl+A.

Thanks! I downloaded Digikey's entire PDF catalog. It's huge and would take a bit of searching to find that I think, so thanks for the link. To be honest, once I settled on the NKK switch I stopped looking but it's cool someone is thinking on it. Since I already have the front panel and it'd cost another 65 bucks to do a new one I guess I'll stick with what I have. :)

Thanks! I have a U-HID card (http://www.u-hid.com/home/overview_board.php) It's small enough to fit inside the UFC and seems to have all the capabilities I need. I can configure the buttons as either key presses or game pad buttons, and I can drive the LED in the Master Caution switch with it. You could really use any of the solutions out there I think but this particular card fits inside so I can make it a self-contained solution with just a USB cable coming out the back. I still have to work out how I want to interface with the game and I'll probably need help with some code in export.lua for the LED. It's been a fun project so far though! Lot's of different skills exercised.

Here's an update on my build This is the back of my pcboard with my connectors attached. I have a photo of the front of the bare board, but it was blurry and I put my camera away and I'm tired, so I'll upload it later. This is the front of my pcboard with the buttons soldered in. The one without the cap is the Enter button. I still have to fabricate the final button. Here's the insides of the UFC with the panel mounted. You'll notice I haven't soldered the wires to the rockers or Master Caution yet. I also haven't mounted the interface card. That I will do last of all when making the final connections. And here's the UFC buttoned up for the night. I labeled all the buttons and put in a temp cap for the Enter button. This is what the finished project looks like... pretty much. Final Enter button needed obviously, and I'll paint the screws for the rockers flat black. Still to do: Put together a build/cost list and whatever info is useful.

Wow. Nice and clean looking. Looks great!

Thanks! Yeah, I agree it's a bit pricey but it's one of the most useful panels to have a "real" version of, and it looked like a fun project to do (which it is!). I already had the P-Touch so the labeling thing was a no-brainer. If I hadn't already spent enough money on this thing I'd think about getting the DecalPro system. It lets you use your laser printer if you have one to create dry transfer decals. Since it can create white decals it'd also work for labeling the buttons. It's actually a very cool system that I may get sometime later for a bunch of other stuff but you need a few extra accessories like a laminator and a heat gun which all together would cost about $250 or so. Don't need all that right now... although the heat gun would be handy to have to be able to use shrink-tube.

Should be something more to see early next week.

I labeled it already. I used a Black on Clear tape with my P-Touch labeler and inverted the text so it printed Master Caution in clear with a black background. I cut the tape to size and applied it to the plastic lens inside the push button. There's a picture of it in the USB UFC thread in Input/Output. I'm using a similar method to label the rockers and other buttons only using White on Clear tape with extra-strength adhesive. My initial tests (I did the rockers and a test button) look fine. Here's the post. Check picture #2 http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1068166&postcount=56

Not 100% sure how you meant this so I'll answer multiple ways. Physically, I have a momentary LED push button on my UFC. It's a UB15NBKG015F-JF-ND I ordered from Digikey. I wanted an amber one but this one is green (amber was out of stock). There's a key command for the master warning button in the keyboard input script (default.lua), so getting the sim to see that it's pushed is relatively trivial. Getting the LED to work in the sim is a bit more involved (for me anyways!) From the poking around I've done in the Lua files my plan of attack is to get the status of the Master Warning light and use that to drive the state of the LED on the push button. I'm using a U-HID card. It seems similar to the OC cards I read about. It's nice and compact and fits inside my UFC box. It has 50 configurable inputs that I can use to read all the buttons and rockers and can drive the LED.

Heheh.. nice. I used Testor's Model Master Aircraft Gray to paint mine. I'm almost done with the UFC. Just waiting on the pcboard, then I have some soldering to do (and testing). Oh, and I still have to fabricate the Enter key. I have a resin casting kit. Just need to make the mold. I'm making the key 9mm x 15mm. I'll have to ask around the forums here for help getting the Master Caution LED to work right as I'm not much of a programmer.

Hi Rocketeer. What paint are you using to paint the Omron keycaps? Looks like you're using a spray. Can or airbrush? I painted mine with a brush for the prototype. They look good but not as smooth as they could be. FYI to anyone who's interested. Omron offers about 6 colors for the keycaps. The only 3 "useful" colors would be black, light gray, and white. I have a sample of the light gray square caps and can tell anyone who wants to know that if you're trying to match a button in the A-10 you're gonna have to paint them yourself. The light gray is too light and nowhere near the right color.

I don't get the impression that membraneusa would be very cost effective unfortunately.

Your sig says you have 8" LCDs for your MFDs. Have you tried unplugging them and seeing if the slowdown problem still happens?

Anyone know how to make a rubber membrane button panel? Currently my UFC project uses a mix of 12mm tact switches and some rocker switches. I have a small pc board designed to mount the tact switches. If I could fabricate a 1-piece rubber part that had all the buttons and rockers on it (minus the Master Caution) then I think it'd be trivial to redo the pc board to add 6mm tact switches in lieu of the current rocker switches. I would also modify the front panel design. I could eliminate the screw holes for the rocker switches and add some additional mounting holes to make the pc board more secure inside. Right now there's the one screw hole in the middle of the front panel that mounts to it with a spacer and I'm adding rubber strips for the top and bottom panels that pc board will rest against to keep it from flexing.

Couple reasons I can think of for going with the 27" (16:9) vs the 30" (16:10). 1. Cost - The 27" is about $400 cheaper than the 30" 2. Desk space - If you just don't have the desk space for the 30" but want as big a monitor as you can fit, the 27" might fit the bill. 3. The 27" has slightly smaller pixels and is slightly faster than the 30" but these are very minor overall. 4. The 30" Ultrasharp might not have been out/available when he got the 27" monitor. The 30" is listed as "New" Pretty much all photos are still 4:3 when taken, so aspect ratio doesn't have much to do with this. I would agree that for non-gaming and non-movie watching you'd want as much screen real estate as possible. If the first two reasons I cited above come into play, then the 27" is a fantastic compromise. You get the same amount of pixels horizontally and slightly less vertically so you still have plenty for room to work with. I like the specs on Dell's new Ultrasharp monitors. If I couldn't get the 30" for what ever reason, I'd be happy with the 27" too.

Don't forget that I did say in an earlier post that I'd be more than happy to share all the info I used to put this thing together, and I'm sticking by that. Once I get it all put together I'll post all the files used and a complete list of materials used along with pictures detailing the assembly. :thumbup:

I have a pcboard designed that the switches will fit into. I'm waiting on some parts before I order the board produced though so it'll be a few more days till I get to that. The whole assembly bolts together with 8 M5 machine screws. Basically there are 6 different panels for each side. There are 4 extruded corner pieces that the top, bottom and sides slide into. The front and back panels screw into the extrusions with the screws. It all fits together pretty easily.