GSS Rain

Yeah. Hans. Time to spill the beans. LoL. Excellent work by the way.

Nice work. I think it was your Cockpit pictures from a few years ago that inspired me to start building a cockpit of my own.

Well done. This is looking awesome Hans. Glad your making it.

Well done Tekkx. Thanks.

I see. Thanks.

Not sure if electroluminescent sheets would work for you. These are kind of expensive but they do have the Chinese copies that sell for less than $10.00. They run on 12VDC. I think they can be hole punched and cut to match the panel in question. Not sure if this would be easier though. Also durability in how long they last. https://www.adafruit.com/product/414?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI3fqh1rut1wIVAxppCh0OOwDEEAQYAyABEgKmL_D_BwE

Woot ! ! ! Woot ! ! !

A stepper motor receives pulses to rotate left or right by a set amount. The more pulses it gets, the more it moves before it stops. The needle doesn’t know it’s initial position, only that it was told to move. You can place a proximity switch at the 12 o’clock position so that every time the needle passes by, the switch signal tells the simulation that the needle is now at 12 o’clock. The software uses that feedback to sync and now know the exact position from that time forward. If your at 12:00 and you tell the needle to move to 3:00 and then stop it will. However, the simulation is assuming it’s at 3:00 provided that there were no mechanical drag or something stopping the needle from moving. If your at 3:00 and you tell the needle to rotate 360 degrees to come back to 3:00 again, the needle will know when it passes the 12:00 position and re-sync it’s position at that time. So with a stepper motor you need a separate digital input to read the needle when it passes by so you can report the exact location of the stepper motor’s position. The key with stepper motor is not to have mechanical friction or heavy load that will prevent it from moving it’s normal amount when told to move. So to answer your question, yes the software usually initialized at start-up and drives the needle past the proximity switch, or to a hard stop if it’s a 270 degree motor, so that the simulation now knows the exact needle position. The next step would be to read the value of the game gauge position and then drive the motor needle to that exact location and then start tracking the game gauge from that point forward.

Thanks Ian. I’m glad you developed DCS-BIOS.

Good to have you back Ian. Congratulations on your career.

Well done Hans. Well done.

Well done. I like attention to the details.

That’s the Tower Pro SG90 micro Servo motor which is 180 degree rotation. http://www.towerpro.com.tw/product/sg90-7/ If you like that form fit function of that Servo motor type but want 360 degree rotation then you could go with the FS90R. I’m not sure if you need a separate zero crossing. I wouldn’t think so. I actually have this one but hadn’t gotten around to trying it out. https://www.pololu.com/product/2820 I’ve seen some on the forums use the VID60 series stepper motors for the altimeter though. It has a built in zero crossing which you will need to sync the position of the needle with the simulation. I tried to order some twice from China but they never came. So I don’t have any first hand experience with their operation. http://www.vid.wellgain.com/product.aspx?sortid=31

Your a smart man. The keypad matrix will save you on the I/O count. I think the latest arduino comes with the keypad.h library. Thanks Warhog. That is really cool. I’d like to see your ADI when your done. But getting that to work got to be very difficult. That must take some mad skills.

Yeah, that’s why I went with PCflights.com for the face plates. You’ll have to come up with a method to hold the LCD, I see that one doesnt have any mounting holes. I have the UFC as well. It’s mostly wired. It’s counter intuitive but the vector board should have been slightly larger than the face plate. I made mine slightly smaller and when I screwed it together, the panel bows because of it. You can’t drill the vector board hole right on the edge. For the Master Caution button, I’m going to order the anuunciator that says Master Caution from PCflights.com ($3.25) and use a hack saw to cut the top part off right at the ridge. Then use the 3D printer and translucent filament to print a new bottom that’s 1mm thick. Then super glue that on top of my yellow lighted tactile push buttons. (Got to be careful not to let overflow run down the sides and ruin the button. Done that before.) It will slip right through the opening. Actually there would be a small gap around the button as the opening is slightly larger than the annunciator but I may just 3D print a black shroud to close it out. That’s the easiest way for me to make a Master Caution push button indicator. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4xdTr8IidWTellFRDRheGpUaE0 http://pcflights.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=46_50&products_id=245

Your my hero too ! ! !

The next best choice if you wanted to stay with that model would be if they made a white LCD with a black background. Then you could have used a green plastic filter to place on top of it but a filter only works if the color is white. If you place a green filter on top of the orange then you’d just get a different shade of orange color. But I like the Adafruit 3.5” TFT. The CDU only shows green text so I haven’t knoticed any off angle viewing issues with it. The other thing I liked was the size. You don’t want to use a LCD that’s bigger than 3.5” because then you wouldn’t have room to place your line select keys that are on the sides. Also total width of the CDU should be no larger than 5.75” or it would be too large to fit in right console. The only complaint I have with the Adafruit LCD is the resolution. It’s 320 x 480. Means the font characters are a little blocky looking and not very sharp as compared to a modern computer monitor. But it’s not too bad. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Neewer-Photographic-12-Piece-Set-Universal-Flash-Speedlite-Color-Filter-Kit-for-Canon-Nikon-Sony-Pentax-Olympus-Panasonic-Camera-Flash/721455979?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=12355&adid=22222222227093273249&wmlspartner=wmtlabs&wl0=&wl1=s&wl2=t&wl3=207568380400&wl4=pla-338136951823&wl5=9028743&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=117437230&wl11=online&wl12=721455979&wl13=&veh=sem

Driving a real ADI sounds like fun. How do you buy a used real one but at the same time know that it still works? I tried buying an HSI on ebay but got out bid. I didn’t want to go more than $400 on something I wasn’t sure it still worked. Are you using MIL-I-27193 data sheet to find the pin-out or were you lucking enough to get the install manual?

The shifters are super fast because it’s just a single transistor gate making the shift. I don’t know of any other LCDs but if they make an orange one I would think maybe they make a green one as well. Well good luck with your Cockpit.

The Adafruit LCD is 3.3V compatible but you would have to power it from a 3.3V power supply. But to be on the safe side I would recommend a level shifter with this LCD as well. This data sheet isn’t as clear as the T6963C as it doesn’t state the voltage level of the I/O pins. It only states that Vcc can be between 3 and 5 volts. https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-3-5-color-320x480-tft-touchscreen-breakout/overview

Good catch. If you powered it with 4.5V then the lowest possible Voutput is 4.5-0.3 = 4.2V. The worst possible Voutput would be just 4.5V. So looks like you would need a 3.3V to 5.0V bi-directional Level shifter. This one below would handle only 4 I/O pins. Maybe you could find one that handles more. You would need about 11 pins possibly. 8 data and CE, WR, and maybe C/D. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12009

Thank you Ian. Glad you are back. :-) I used the LCD in the 8-bit mode instead of SPI in order to drive it a little bit faster. I could still see the display flicker as it updated each line though. I actually have two ARM arduino boards. I haven’t had a chance yet though to use them with DCS-Bios but that’s my goal. https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-due-without-headers Yes I think that is what Ian was saying was to use the Due or Zero. It’s faster but as you know it’s a 3.3V system instead of 5V. So double check that the LCD is compatible with 3.3 V logic. Another goal I had was to use DCS-Bios on my desktop to drive a graphics ADI and HSI on a laptop computer using processing.org software. I hooked up an arduino mega and used a CP2104 to connect to laptop usb. I could see the latitude and longitude data on the laptop sent by DCS-Bios. Just need to write some processing code to have the data move the graphics for the ADI and HSI.

Adafruit 3.5” TFT LCD is a closer match. I’d recommend lighted push buttons or a taller non lighted one so you could insert a lighting strip underneath.

Cool deal.

That’s professional top notch work. Well done.