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Hey Bazooka, you get pay here yearly to access the P51 drawings amongst others. http://aircorpslibrary.com/

Raceguy, yes, definitely interested in your mustang build! I'm building a few gauges and might attempt a USB HOTAS but otherwise have put a pit on hold. Cripple, missed your link earlier, looks cool, thanks! Raceguy, another way to paint something like that without getting paint into the cracks is to put wax or another similar removable substance into the voids. Then as long as you can wipe the top parts clean you can spray, then remove the wax later with warm water. Just a thought, haven't tried it. Part looks epic!

If you use the wrong font, how will you know what button to push?

Thanks Warthog, great info. I've got some P-51 gauges going with some X27s but obviously want to get an altimeter sorted, even though it's technically 3 rotating elements. I'm still at the b&w print stuck to MDF stage :) Couldn't quite work out which motors were duals on aliexpress so thanks for confirming. The X40 is stacked through the back so much more compact than the VID28 you've pointed me to. Got a photo of that in situ per chance? I'm keen to give it a crack. Gardoc, I used the driver from the gaugette link Warthog has given you. It's not configured for full rotation out of the box but the accel curves work well. You can also buy the VID6066 chips to drive multiple switec clones I believe. I've not tried. Patriot you can access all the data in DCS-BIOS direct via the custom method access which is listed here In the drodown select the A10 and then select whichever value you're after. onDcsBiosWrite is where you're looking to access those values. If you've got the master caution example going, you should be good to go on customising what you need.

Where did you get these from? I've been trying to track them down. The X40 seems to be special order only. Amazing work BTW.

Awesome, thanks guys. I'd stripped some radios in the 90s which had them and so when I was thinking about building the radio box for the P-51 they were a logical choice but I couldn't find them.

Hey draken152, where did you get these from and what are they called? I'm assuming they're single select switches?

This is so cool! Have subscribed, keep up the good work!

This should ensure my measurements are accurate :)

Great update Cripple! Totally agree re the order. I'm looking at going from a desk to P-51 pit and there's no intermediate option :)

Slowly getting my head around @bucic's points I think. You're obviously coming from an area of significant expertise over where I'm at. I think what VO101_MMaister has written and what his video shows is more the effect I'm after. I wouldn't be flying sims if I could afford to fly real planes so my experience is limited to a few hours in a 172 and gliders. I'm not looking to replicate the feedback from the control surfaces, I'm trying to stop spring bouncing and add some slight resistance as would exist in a cable system (I'm a huge P-51 fan). I did spend some time thinking about this topic yesterday and was thinking how cool it would be you could have a damper hooked up with an adjustable valve connected to the airspeed so that resistance did increase in reaction to pressure on the control surfaces :) Great to see Slaw post, love your work, translated your post and understood what you were saying.

Come on guys, if you were in a pub together, you'd be having an awesome time sharing ideas about your passion. People misinterpret each other all the time online, I'm sure no one was intending to offend any one. @Bucic I don't follow your point. You're saying that a simple spring is the best we can get in terms of replicating resistance in simulators? I find myself agreeing with @some1's position. In race car simulators, they often use hydraulics to simulate pedal feel as springs are quite realistic. Hydraulics dampers add consistent resistance to a movement, this is certainly an aspect of the real world when things appear to have a "weight". I know more about cars than planes but I'd expect it's not as easy as my crappy joystick to move real flight surfaces. I also appreciate that the response from this is non-linear with air pressure on those surfaces which also varies over time. As such, I would've thought the combination of a spring and some fluid damping would feel better than a spring alone. @some1 thanks for the link.

Not sure if you're referring to me Bucic but I'm talking about dampers, as anything which dampens an input as a form of resistance that's more consistent (I want to say linear) than a spring.

Thanks for the update, it looks like an amazing piece of kit and was really well reviewed by Ars Technica too. Damper improvement looks like the go, got a link to ebay for that per chance? I think there needs to be more dampers, less springs in most simpits so keen to see the options.

socat is outlined in the dcs-bios github page. Basically you run the .cmd file https://github.com/dcs-bios/dcs-bios/blob/master/connect-serial-port.cmd The only thing you need to do is change the cmd file to point to the right usb port. socat is very clever software that converts incoming traffic to outgoing traffic of whatever you like (laymens interpretation, I'd not heard of it before this). In this case, we're using it to take DCS's feed which is broadcast to a local IP address and pass it on to serial over USB. Socat is the IP end point and the serial broadcaster. It's also bi-directional. Quite stunning really. Shoulders of giants and all that.

I used the landing gear light on the p51 when I was doing it. That's the whole point of the A10C master switch example. Simplest proof that your connection from DCS -> Arduino is working. What planes do you have? If A10C then make the master switch work. If you're using socat to forward over USB then serial writes will appear in the socat output. You can't attach arduino's serial monitor to the USB as socat is already connected. Break it down: 1) Get DCS-> arduino working. Flashing a light in reaction to the sim is your goal 2) Get your output working how you want. Completely unrelated to DCS, get it so you can send a value to your screen or whatever you're wanting to make work. 3) Extend commondata.lua to send your info to your arduino with a way of verifying you're getting it. 4) Merge the results with a away of rolling back to any of your previous states (github or smart file saving strategy a prerequisite here) I had a bit of frustration in getting my P51 stuff sorted because even though I did each step, I'd forget to restart socat, or not save the file in the editor, or change a pin, or bump a switch. Get a beer, take your time, have a strategy. Worst case, you drink a beer.

Heh, oops. Brain fade I was reading airspeed but seeing altitude.... So you'd need to modify commondata as per [FSF]ian's comments. You can find some more of what's exported by LoGetSelfData on this site https://simmeters.com/wiki/index.php?title=DCS_World_Wrapper A cursory scan reveals table.insert(flightData,"XXX="..LoGetTrueAirSpeed() * 1.94) -- TRUE AIRSPEED (M/S TO KNOTS) table.insert(flightData,"ASI00="..LoGetIndicatedAirSpeed() * 1.94) -- INDICATED AIRSPEED (M/S TO KNOTS) So I'd guess something like local as_t = selfData.LoGetTrueAirSpeed() local as_i = selfData.LoGetIndicatedAirSpeed() and then defineIntegerFromGetter("ASPD_TRUE", function() return math.floor(as_t) end, 65535, "Airspeed", "Airspeed true (m/s)") defineIntegerFromGetter("ASPD_IND", function() return math.floor(as_t) end, 65535, "Airspeed", "Airspeed ind (m/s)") Obviously I've not tested this and to get knots you'd need to do the conversion as per the linked site (1.94) looks like the ratio. Hopefully that's enough to get you started. I'd make sure you have an example of something else working before you play with commondata. You need prove your existing system is working before adding to it or you'll be chasing gremlins more than being productive.

Having just bought a junker with no driver from China it's great to finally have an official (and affordable) and sizeable(!) option. The team behind Rpi are simply amazing.

Hannibal you need to look here: http://dcs-bios.a10c.de/docs/v0.3.0/control-reference.html Select 'common data' from the drop down and you'll see DcsBios::ServoOutput altMslFt(0x0408, PIN, 544, 2400); That will send the altitude in feet to a service configured on pin at var PIN (ie change PIN to the actual pin you've connected the PWM output of your arduino too). Of course if you want to get really funky, you can get the raw value by putting the following in the dcsbioswrite method: if (address == 0x0408) { unsigned int altMslFtValue = (value & 0xffff) >> 0; /* your code here */ } Where the commented line "your code here" is is where you can write your own code to interface to any arduino functionality at all. The value you seek will be available as altMslFtValue. So if you want to send it to an led, stepper or laser pointer you just need that code from any arduino source. It might not be obvious but you're in the update loop here so you don't want to do anything too taxing... In terms of USB vs ethernet, well it's really up to you. I'm just playing with the USB functionality at the moment so there's some added complexity in setting up socat to forward the IP stuff to serial. However if you have to pay for and setup an ethernet extension board on your arduino, that's probably as much work. So basically 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

First thing you're going to need to think of is how is your PC going to talk to your arduino. USB or ethernet? If ethernet, you'll need a expansion board. Which DCS module are you going to use? Only a few of them are supported at the moment. If using the A10, get the master caution light example working to prove your DCS->Arduino comms work. Then you can start on the airspeed portion of it. You'll need to decide on using a servo or stepper motor.

You too @Cripple? I've got the first parts of DCS-BIOS working for the P-51 too, so will release those once I'm done.

Yeah, that's awesome mate, thanks. Your first measurements were just what I needed. I've extracted a flat image from DCS of the dash, so can scale that now. Look forwarding to hearing more about your build!

Wow, they built that from that little info?? Incredible! Thanks for that info, that is really handy. Are you writing a thread on your build on this forum? I think I favourited your other build thread at some point... No idea on copyright. I would've thought that this would come under fair use. I can never work out who the people are on eBay and what rights they have to sell the designs? Considering the design is in the open and there are thousands of RC models and static models that use the design (I assume royalty free) I can't work out what the ramifications are... it's not like anyone is building P-51s in competition with the copyright holders! :)

Wow Raceguy! That's awesome!! I think I found some of your work posted somewhere else on the net, you're using a local (to me) supplier? I'm after the dash (main panel) measurements at the moment, so if you had those, I'd be very grateful.

Hi all, my google-fu has failed me and normally I'm the goto-guy for googling. Can anyone point me in the direction of some accurate measurements for gauge spacing (and gauge sizes) for the P-51? I've found complete blueprints for the P-51 on eBay but that seems a little overkill for the info I'm looking for.