Gadroc

All great adivce that I agree with already. I will advise caution on the open source or Mach 3/Linux cnc path for a laser. My general advice is I go that way if your interested in teaking the machine or writing your own laser control code. But if you just want to engrave and make panels get a light object dsp. It works perfect every time and you'll focus on tweaking your part design instead of your machine. Marco has put together a great little guide to make a K40 a serviceable machine. Read it and if you don't feel up to that level of DIY then save up and get the next level up of machine which includes a DSP type controller. That will put you into the $3000 plus range. Up converting a K40 will be a total of $1500 to $2000 range depending on your luck with the quality of the power supplies that come with the K40 you get.

I knew why, I just don't have the space to do it now. Will have to come up with a plan so the wife will let me take over the rest of the basement.

You SUCK! That looks awesome, much better than the first video you sent me. Wow do my 46" TVs look small now!

Looks like you printed the buttons and wheels but not the panel itself correct?

Do you still have an amp meter on it? If not get one on it and then just make sure you don't go over 15ma.

Looking very good! I really like the switch add on's for the MFDs. I took an easier way out and I'm mounting them a little further away.

Very nice!

Of course this thread made me tear up my setup and rearrange again. It says something that I keep trying to make it work. Looks like I found a setup that gives me 140 view with 3 46" screens and I'm getting 60 fps in the instant action mission. I'll do more testing after I fix the height of the mounts with the new pit tomorrow.

It's just not going to happen with 3 view ports right now. I have a 2600k over-clocked to 4.3ghz running with a 7970 3GB card and the best I can do with three 1920x1080 external views and two 800x600 mfd viewports is 30 fps. And that is on the basic instant mission which is not intensive. I was just trying out this setup out again because of Cowboy10k's what's 3 vs 1 display thread.

To be honest I go back and forth. I love it when I'm flying in it (I have 3x 46" TVs), but when ever there is an update/upgrade to DCS it's a pain in the butt. There are just lots and lots of odd bugs to work through getting a DCS tripple screen setup dialed in. menus don't work correctly some UI screens are un readable some UI elements scale improperly frame rate/joystick position indicators are poorly positioned getting zoom/fov/head position with a readable HUD is a PITA frame rate takes a hit All of those require lua edits which potentially get overwritten or complicate updates. Lastly these are compounded for my pit because I need 5 extra screens to run the pit (2x MFD, RWR, HSI and CDU). This can take a toll on frame rate and I'd like to have a nice steady 30+ frame rate at all times. I'm debating on how to setup visuals on a go forward basis for my pit. I'd like to try a portrait / landscape / portrait setup, but I'm fearful of the future compatibility of softth with newer updates to DX11, windows 8 and other things.

You should be able to ignore that warning. It's just letting you know that the value don't match types. You can use Lua to format them if necessary, but if memory serves me correctly those values don't need formatting.

Very nice looking setup.

Analog pins can be used as digital inputs as well. No need to do an analog read on them.

I have had problem in the past when you send commands "out of the expected sequence" to the sim. For example if you repeatedly send the click command with out sending the release command for a switch. Helios early on had problems with this type of issue and the OSB buttons getting stuck. I imagine this is "non expected" behavior based on normal sim usage and could trigger untested scenarios inside the code that runs those parts of the simulation. My recommendation is to always send a release command for switches that expect them.

You have to uncheck fullscreen mode if you're going to span across multiple monitors. If you set a resolution higher than your primary monitor and leave full screen checked the game will crash launching.

It looks like you have Helios filling in a gray background on your 19" monitor. Uncheck the Fill box on the monitor properties for screen number 2. As Dropship said for the MFCDs and other things get them working with out Helios running first.

Can you verify this? I just tried on mine and reseting monitors did not remove bindings.

I've been thinking on this and for certain situations it could be possible but not full-proof. In DCS interfacing with the cockpit is essentially emulating mouse clicks. Each clickable item is given a click action and optionally a release action. For magnetic switches you have to fire both events or the magnetic portion doesn't work. Essentially if you just fire the click event DCS never thinks you've released the finger pressure on the switch. Think of it like the key in your car. It will stay in the start position as long as you hold pressure, but revert to on after you release pressure. The click event tells the sim you have moved it to the start position and the release event is telling the sim you released the pressure. If you never send the release event it will never revert to the on position as the sim thinks your hand is still turning the key. You can see this in action with the anti-collision switch using Helios. Send a set position command and the game will leave the switch where you tell it to. If you then send the release command it will "do the right thing". In order to get magnetic switches to work in the real pit you need to intercept moving into the magnet position. You'll need to send a "click command" and then after a pre defined wait period send a "release command" when the SAS switch is moved to the on position. Second you make the magnet trigger with in game switch position. If the switch is on make the magnet on. This will work as long as the user holds the switch into the on position for longer than the wait period, and it has the side effect of the magnet always switching on even for a short period of time. Which may be different than real behavior of the switch. I haven't tested this so it might have some additional side effects. As a side note that sometimes you can supply more information than a mouse click via lua as you can pass a value in. Some rotaries that you can specify the increment size (aka in game it defaults to incrementing by 5 but using lua you can increment by any number instead of just 1). Which makes a well interfaced rotary potentially more accurate than using direct bindings in game, although you have to be careful about speed of execution via lua.

Have you tried it yet? I may order sheet but need to verify I can cut it with the laser.

Yea. The flat top levers (Honeywell 11TW* or 12TW* series) are hard to find. I have yet to find one at less than MSRP for the locking lever versions. I have not found another manufacturer of those particular switches either.

The white acrylic spray painting black can potentially be very scratch prone. Do a test run before you commit. Second I would mount my leds in the backplate. This gives them a little more distance for dispersion and you can change them with out disassembling the entire panel. Unless you are embedding wiring and SMD leds in the light plate you will need holes in the backplate for the led leads / wires to go through anyways. A couple things to keep in mind. The real panel and most of the layouts you see here are all for 15/32" bushing switches. The C&K 7000 series while cheaper are all 1/4" bushings and much smaller switches. The locking lever on the 7000 series are about a half inch (or more) shorter than the real mil-spec switches and about half as wide around as the real thing. You may want to get a couple to try out before committing. You may need to tweak layout and mounting strategy if you are trying to use 1/4" switches with real dimensioned light plates. They may not stick out far enough from the light plate. For reference I have attached a picture of a couple real switches including a 1/4" bushing switch on the right. Note how dramatic the size difference is. The 7000 locking lever switch bat is about 1/4" taller than the small switch I've shown and about double the size around.

I usually order from Delvie's Plastics. They are the cheapest source of acrylic I've found.

The LaserMax material is only 1/16th of an inch thick and can have a tendency to bow if you don't affix it to a more substantial substrate. I normally glue it to a 1/8th to 3/16th inch piece of acrylic. My current methodology is glueing the LaserMax on top of a 3/16th clear acrylic light plate and then spray painting the back and sides of this assembly white then black. This creates a very nice light box which gives some pretty good and even backlighting through the LaserMax engraving. The LaserMax backlights quite well actually (see my build thread for examples). The beauty of the LaserMax material is the very good contrast between black and white, as well as it's very good scratch resistance. This makes the panels very readable in all lighting conditions (aside from total dark) even with the backlight off. The more transmissive the white the less the contrast will be when the lights behind the panel are dark. It will be easier to backlight taking less LED's or lamps but will probably look a little dingy when not lit. I have not tried the Gravpoly so it may work fine, I would recommend trying both translucent and solid whites before committing though.

The update is annoying replacing user customizable files namely Export.lua. You can find steps to resolve it here.

Helios and Hawgtouch do have a few advantages over Greg's setup in my opinion. 1) TrackIR makes it difficult enough to hold your head still and click on the screen with the mouse, couple that with the more exaggerated gesture of moving your whole arm to click / touch a button and it's nearly impossible. This forces you to a carefully pan to the panel, pause TrackIR and then reach out to flip the switch. This can break the immersion and feel quirky to some. 2) With Greg's setup your gauges and switches are limited to the size determined by the in game zoom, head position and angle. This can make some pretty small targets for clicking which exacerbates issue #1. It can also render gauges at hard to read angles. This puts you in a battle between external visuals control and switch / gauge interaction. In a real pit you can glance just with your eyes and not get lost, but TrackIR & joystick pan control requires movement. 3) With a real cockpit a particular switch is always physically located at the same position. This makes it easy to have some muscle memory on how to flip that switch. It can be disorienting when all switches essentially occupy the same space. You move your head to determine which panel you're going to interact with instead of your arm. This again is an immersion breaker. Helios and Hawgtouch fix all three of these problems very well, but you have to deal with setting up another program and that can be fiddly. The advantage is that fiddly is outside flight time instead of in it which is where the TrackIR and panel interactions are. My recommendation is to try both types setups and see which one works better for you. Both Hawgtouch and Helios are free to setup and use. You only have to invest the time to try them.