Gentle Readers,
I have been derailed a bit in my project. My wife has started a business in our home teaching piano lessons. So my sim is dismantled until summer 2013. It is not that big a problem, as my 2004 era computer no longer has the chops to run fsx at anything resembling reasonable frame rates.
The whole thing is in our storage unit right now awaiting better days. Meanwhile I have made a little progress on sub systems but wanted to give a shout out to an excellent new GA sim part manufacturer. Louie at http://diyrealism.webs.com/ has been a wiz at making all kinds of parts that offer incredible realism, are not made by anyone else and are very reasonably priced.
I got one of his electrical/circuit breaker panel sets. They are amazing. He has built them out of acrylic which is painted black and engraved with legends. They look beautiful and are ready to backlight if you want.
The fit and finish are very professional and well worth the money.
The experience of purchasing was great too. He had fast shipping and the panels were very well packed.
Not sure what else I can say, except that. I will be buying many more parts from Louie, as I put N58243 back together again ( and it will be much better with diyrealism parts!)
Wishing all your flights be CAVU.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Arduino gauges in sight!
The good folks at mycockpit have an outstanding forum going about arduino driven servo gauges. Jim has set up a great program called Link2fs_inOut (freeware available here ) that sends plain language values to arduino sketches which use them to drive servos. There are currently sketches available for driving a Vertical Speed Indicator and an Attitude Indicator. This stuff is pretty close to plug and play!
I have figured out how to upload sketches, and am trying to get a handle on how to modify the sketches that are available to build more instruments! Just need to figure out how to get the pins connected between the servo and arduino. I am thinking about a breakout board that will allow a common ground and +5v. Unfortunately there is no place in my town to purchase the header pins. Sigh, will have to go to mail order again.
The good folks at mycockpit have an outstanding forum going about arduino driven servo gauges. Jim has set up a great program called Link2fs_inOut (freeware available here ) that sends plain language values to arduino sketches which use them to drive servos. There are currently sketches available for driving a Vertical Speed Indicator and an Attitude Indicator. This stuff is pretty close to plug and play!
I have figured out how to upload sketches, and am trying to get a handle on how to modify the sketches that are available to build more instruments! Just need to figure out how to get the pins connected between the servo and arduino. I am thinking about a breakout board that will allow a common ground and +5v. Unfortunately there is no place in my town to purchase the header pins. Sigh, will have to go to mail order again.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Learning another new interface system
Dear Reader..(if anyone ever reads this thing),
It has been a while since I posted anything about the sim. Progress has been normal, which is to say very slow.
Since my last post I have successfully created a 172 style warning panel out of hacked real parts, lots of wires, many sticks of hot glue, and more than a few burned fingers from clumsy soldering iron use.
It is interfaced with a phidgets led64 card and fs2phidget 5.0.21 (freeware available at mycockpit.org )
I have now jumped into trying and making my first servo run real instrument. This is going to be interfaced with am arduino uno card. This card which is about $20 US will apparently run up to 12 servos which should be enough to get me in big trouble!
So far I have made these leaps:
1. Acquired an Arduino Uno card
2. Learned that you need to download some arduino software from the official arduino website. This software allows you to create something called a sketch or (pde). The pde is basically firmware that you can create and upload into the arduino card that tells it what to do. These are created by people who could probably solve a Rubik's cube in the dark...who then say it is "easy".
3. Downloaded a piece of software from a really cool guy named Jim in New Zealand. It takes data from Simconnect (think the internal language of FSX), and sends it through some thingamajiggie that transmogrifies these variables into an alphanumeric string that you can send through some usb serial port emulator voodoo into a form that arduino can read and send to servos. If you did the sketch correctly or something... Thanks Jim!
My first instrument is a vertical speed indicator. Should be pretty simple. One needle. it will have about a 315 degree arc, so I will get some gearing happening, as most servos are 180 degrees.
I am stuck right now on how to draw up the sketch to read the alphanumeric value that Jim's program is sending, and set a servo to a value that calibrates the needle with the proper marking on the instrument face. I am sure it would be easy, if I only knew what I was doing. But I am VERY excited to see how this goes!
Cross your fingers!
Mongo
It has been a while since I posted anything about the sim. Progress has been normal, which is to say very slow.
Since my last post I have successfully created a 172 style warning panel out of hacked real parts, lots of wires, many sticks of hot glue, and more than a few burned fingers from clumsy soldering iron use.
It is interfaced with a phidgets led64 card and fs2phidget 5.0.21 (freeware available at mycockpit.org )
I have now jumped into trying and making my first servo run real instrument. This is going to be interfaced with am arduino uno card. This card which is about $20 US will apparently run up to 12 servos which should be enough to get me in big trouble!
So far I have made these leaps:
1. Acquired an Arduino Uno card
2. Learned that you need to download some arduino software from the official arduino website. This software allows you to create something called a sketch or (pde). The pde is basically firmware that you can create and upload into the arduino card that tells it what to do. These are created by people who could probably solve a Rubik's cube in the dark...who then say it is "easy".
3. Downloaded a piece of software from a really cool guy named Jim in New Zealand. It takes data from Simconnect (think the internal language of FSX), and sends it through some thingamajiggie that transmogrifies these variables into an alphanumeric string that you can send through some usb serial port emulator voodoo into a form that arduino can read and send to servos. If you did the sketch correctly or something... Thanks Jim!
My first instrument is a vertical speed indicator. Should be pretty simple. One needle. it will have about a 315 degree arc, so I will get some gearing happening, as most servos are 180 degrees.
I am stuck right now on how to draw up the sketch to read the alphanumeric value that Jim's program is sending, and set a servo to a value that calibrates the needle with the proper marking on the instrument face. I am sure it would be easy, if I only knew what I was doing. But I am VERY excited to see how this goes!
Cross your fingers!
Mongo
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