DracuOrc

Reality is rudder pedals but I'm still on a desk and trying to avoid having pedals under ... But you are not the only one working with me - so one day I get convinced . I may keep this design and fine tune it as it is - and just add a set of rudder pedals ... Thanks

Hi there, As per the title, I am (re)searching, building and testing a solution to make a strain gauge sensor Pitch/Roll/Yaw that can fit to a Winwing Viper Grip. In real life, F-16 stick does not move like a normal stick, it only measures pressure applied by pilot hand. OK, there's a Netherlands F-16 variant where the stick moves +/-3 deg if I am not mistaken. I started some time ago with these tests. Two beams 10x2mm ( Alu 6063 T6 alloy ) that are narrowed at the strain gauge position. They are assembled using 3D printed parts: a central part that keeps the cross and fixes on the grip and another 2 Rings that are fixing the crosses ends then on a base (table). Below my test variants ( in a picture). They all supposed to have advantages and one should have stand ahead with the most. In above picture no. 5 is actually simplified no. 2 or no. 3 where I removed Yaw so only the cross beams are used. No. 5 before the Viper grip is assembled. Inside there are visible - the two cross beams and strain gauges installed. null As electronics I use a STM32F411 MCU running at 100MHz and that has libraries for USB HID devices, so it can make a Joystick with 3 axes and 64 buttons for Windows on it's onboard USB. Also a half-duplex serial UART connection is used to read all buttons of the the Viper grip then sent to Windows by the same HID USB. For each axis 2 strain gauges are connected in a half Wheatstone bridge in pairs ( 2x for Pitch and 2x for Roll ) then connected to a HX711 board that converts and sends values to MCU. The sensor as it is now is really sensitive, it reads from the HX711 ( calibration on MCU startup ) +/- 4.000.000 ( max range of HX711 is +/- 8mills ) with an offset up to 50.000 . Below values during tests - pulled the grip by hand ... And some graphs with values on Pitch (Trace-1) and Roll (Trace-2) ... I also done some bending simulation in a 3D CAD and results are quite consistent with the measurements. Actually the simulation helped to determine the best location on the beams for the strain gauges. I have a question - if did anyone build/tested recently something similar ? My only issue now is that I still could not find a solution to embed the Yaw sensor using simple tools and materials ( or without complicating the solution too much ... ) If there's any one interested, I can share more information or code ...