LED interface

[brydling]

Hi,

 

I am going to develop a pair of LED driver boards and are wondering what functionality I will need for the A-10C and the possibly upcoming F-16/F-15/F/A-18. How can the cockpit lights in these aircraft be adjusted? Is it necessary to be able to control the intensity of caution and indicator lights, or is it only the backlighting that can be adjusted? Can the backlighting intensity be adjusted individually for different parts of the cockpit or is it only necessary to have one intensity control channel for all of the backlighting?

 

My goal is to have as large number of channels as possible just as with my joystick board. Simple, cheap and with a lot of outputs. Therefore I do not want to have more complexity than necessary. If every output should be able to be individually adjusted, it will dramatically increase the cost of the IC's needed. Of course no aircraft can adjust the caution lights individually, so that would never be necessary, but if there are a lot of separately adjustable indicator groups it could be cheaper to develop a board with individually adjustable outputs than to develop some odd custom-made solution where the first ten outputs have one intensity channel, the next ten have one intensity channel and so on..

 

In the cases where intensity control is needed, is it high resolution adjustment or is it only a few levels like half-/full?

 

I will develop two separate boards. One for indicators with alot of output channels where you can put 1-2 or maybe 3 LED's on each channel and one for backlighting where you only have one channel (or as many as in the real thing) that can handle alot of voltage and current for putting a large number of LED's in series/parallell.

 

Please share the info you have on cockpit lighting in these aircraft and I will try to figure out the requirements of the boards to be able to handle all of them.

 

Regards,

Niclas

Edited August 15, 2011 by brydling

[TigersharkBAS]

I think this needs to be in the Home Cockpits forum no? Either way I think you'll get a better response there.

 

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to achieve with your LEDs. You just want cockpit lighting? You want to display warning lights?

 

You might want to check out the thread on potentiometers and hooking them up to A-10 for further info on controlling lighting from inside A-10.

[brydling]

Okay. Moderator can the thread please be moved to the Home Cockpits forum?

 

I will use the LED boards for all the LED's in the cockpit. Panel backlighting, instrument backlighting and warning lights/indicators. What I am wondering is what knobs/switches are available in each aircraft for adjusting the intensity of these lights.

 

Edit:

I'll give a fictional example answer to my own question to better clarify what I am asking for:

 

You tell me there is one stepless knob for adjusting panel backlighting/instrument lighting in the A-10. In the F-16 you tell me there is a switch for setting the panel backlighting/instrument lighting to full-/half-light, and one stepless knob for adjusting the intensity of all the warning lights. Then I know that my board for warning lights only needs one intensity channel that affects all outputs equally, and the board for panel lights/instrument lights need one intensity channel that affects all those LED's equally. The stepless adjustment for panel backlighting is not needed for the F-16, but I must include it to be able to simulate the A-10 with the same board.

Edited August 15, 2011 by brydling

[brydling]

From the DCS: WH manual I found out that six outputs will be needed for panel- and instrument lighting. Engine instruments, Flight instruments, Auxiliary instruments, Accelerometer and compass, Floodlights, and Console lights. Every output needs to have individually stepless adjustable brightness except for the Accelerometer and compass lights which only needs on/off.

 

For the warning- and indicator lights two intensity groups will be needed, one for Refueling and Indexer lights and the other for the rest of the indicators. Only the first group needs to have intensity adjustment, the other group only have two levels which can be done more nicely in hardware (the switch can be used to switch between 5V and 12V).

Edited August 15, 2011 by brydling

[Thick8]

Hiya Brydling,

Are these boards still in the works? I'm lovin' the switch board. I've only hooked up two switches to test it. i sat there for about an hour just interfacing them with different ingame switches through Helios. I can't wait to start cutting my panels next week. :D

John

[[FD]Ripper]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkzhvrDckDY

 

is it?