1 year later

[Nightdare]

Some may remember a year ago, I was whining about the price of button boxes, which naturally followed in making my own, which resulted in this:

 

 

Past year, I've been playing with Winwing Orion 2 and Virpil Mongoost v1, screwed down inline on an old speaker cabinet, not the best setup, having to reach almost behind me operating the Virpil throttles when flying the Mosquito, also no good platform to expand on (the cabinet was too small and actually had the Virpil hanging off the back), so that needed to change when the chance arrived

Well, chance arrived when my company dumped some old modular displays, consisting of square steel pipes and connecting pieces

 

This gave me a roughly 54x37 cm 'table' which could put the 2 throttles side by side, it was a little too high, but instead of the chore of sawing through steel 4 times, I opted to 'drop' the plateau on which it all was screwed, which lowered my throttles level with the edges, of course this left 2 'cavities' forward and back and I, for the time being, filled them flush with 1mm plastic sheet

Using a front plate designer on the PC and the plastic sheet as template, began working on designing  and adding a button board, at work found an old +/- 4mm 'address board' that used to be screwed to the gate, which was plastic reinforced with laminated aluminum foil, perfect for my plan

 

When I had some drafts, I got (another) Bodnar BBI-64, went shopping in China for various switches and buttons, started puzzling the RL layout and found I had way more space than I had connections on the BBI, but I still had a TM MFD lying around and figured I could add its functionality and fill space with it

So far, this is the result:

 

Though still mostly built by hand like my first try, this time, I put in a bit more effort/precision in the actual drilling of the holes (still won't win any beauty contests up close )

 

Modeled some configs from the F-14, like the top left plate has engine L/R start and inlets (since it would be above the Virpil and furthest to reach, figured I wasn't gonna populate it too much), the AFCS toggle layout, a 4-way hat as Target Designate Switch, and the rudder trim (unused in DCS) on the bottom right panel

For fun also put in an emergency stop button (probably will be using it as ejection seat arming)

 

Still need to work on the bottom left panel, the encoders need to be soldered and connected (that 'area' combined with the Virpil rotaries and axes will function for radio's and volumes), after which I'm gonna ponder what I'm gonna put in the space inside the MFD as I will still have some 10 terminals free on the Bodnar

 

Now I also need some solution to power the led-equipped buttons, the Bodnar apparently can only do 1 led

 

[agrasyuk]

Remember  1 year ago..  whaaa? I can barely remember 1 week ago.

How about a picture of your entire sim workstation?

[Nightdare]

On 11/15/2024 at 4:19 AM, agrasyuk said:

How about a picture of your entire sim workstation?

I'll see what I can do

[sirrah]

Looking good @Nightdare 

So, I'm curious:

With the knowledge you have now, building all this stuff (time and costs invested), do you still consider button boxes available on the market, to be too expensive?

 

Again, not judging, just honestly curious

[Nightdare]

@sirrah

The basic ones? Most certainly

What I alluded to in the other thread, paying towards $90 for a basic square box with 12 buttons? Sorry, no, If I were to take an assembly line approach, I can do that myself at half price including labor

[Nightdare]

On 11/15/2024 at 4:19 AM, agrasyuk said:

Remember  1 year ago..  whaaa? I can barely remember 1 week ago.

How about a picture of your entire sim workstation?

 

Welcome to the broomcloset

 

There's also a Logitech switch panel hidden under the desk