EDTracker built! :)

[Inrideo]

After waiting two weeks to find a local supplier that sells soldering stations (trying to keep money in the local economy for a change) I tracked down a TrakPower TK-950 solder station and put my EDTracker kit together.

 

At first I couldn't get it to talk to the software but then realized the USB ports on the front of my computer are USB3. These give some weird results with the Arduino Pro Micros (not sure about the others). Once I plugged it in to the expansion USB2 ports in my monitor it interfaced with the config fine.

 

Now to test it out in game.

 

If anyone is building the kit instead of buying a pre-fab and need some assistance, just give a shout.

 

PS. If you're looking for a good way to line up where the button hole should be drilled in the plastic housing, take a kneadable eraser, maptac, or playdoh and put a thin layer in the housing. Then press the completed kit into the soft surface. It will give you a template for drilling. :) Get the housing from the EDTracker shop here: http://edtracker.org.uk/index.php/shop/edtracker-diy-pcb-enclosure

 

Also, a shout out to Hobby Components who sells the kit here: http://hobbycomponents.com/electronics/440-diy-head-tracker-bundle

The pricing of their components and the shipping to Canada were *way* cheaper than you would find buying the parts from Sparkfun. Would definitely get kit there again :)

 

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Edited April 29, 2015 by Inrideo
adding to post

[WR269]

It is a good idea. I put mine together at Christmas time, and I use a spare slider in my joystick for zoom in and out, works perfectly well.

[Inrideo]

Nice idea! Hackers of the world unite :)

 

I may remove the existing USB jack from the Micro and solder my old xbox controller cable directly to the board. It's long, flexible, and has that nice breakaway feature.

[Inrideo]

I practically wet myself laughing just now. I logged in to the game to set up the tracker with the Huey, didn't notice my joystick throttle was maxed. When I left the config I slapped it back down just as the Huey was leaving the tarmac. There was a thump. And then the rotors when flying off across the airport without me :)

[Viersbovsky]

How did you connect the tracker with DCS world?

 

I have severe jittering in all axis, to the point it makes me physically ill. I use it as a simulated Joystick that uses the view-axis controls, but it seems unusable to me that way. Some software to smooth the reaction would be nice.

[Inrideo]

The auto-centering is driving me bonkers and I don't seem to have an option to disable that in the configuration, but other than that's it's performing very smoothly by setting the response scaling to 1.00 for yaw and pitch, and then letting OpenTrack take over.

 

If I can just kill the centering it should be fine.

 

[Inrideo]

Aha! I had to go into the Magnetometer settings and move the device all over to create point cloud data. Everything is looking great now.

 

After you shuffle the device around until you hit 500 points just go back to the main screen and run your gyro bias and it will compensate for the two point clouds and everything will smooth out considerably.