Quote from Hangar45 Admin on December 8, 2017, 2:57 pm

(Original thread started on 06-20-16 by Dirk)

It's official now: We purchased the plans L45-031 from Ron and therefore its time to introduce our project here in the hangar.

 

Let me begin with our location:

The build is going forth in a small town near Cologne in Germany, so our start airport for some "just for fun" flights is EDDK.

 

And if anyone finds some mistakes in my German weisswurst postings, he is allowed to keep them!  But probably there are none, which is a good indicator for the fact that my co-builder James did the writing.

 

James:

He made his license in the early 80's in a flying school near Boston, but missed the chance to make a rating for the "real big ones". Nevertheless he is a good pilot, a better friend and a great co-builder. His part will be the hull (inside and outside) and I can't wait to see it rising!

 

Dirk:

Programmer, technical and mechanical engineer, CNC babysitter, a.s.o.  My part is to build all the panels, wire up the monitors, build columns, rudder, throttle etc. etc....

 

The project:

At the start we decided to have only two cables running to the Sim: A power cord and a network cable, so I build this project around three mini-ITX computers and sixteen Arduinos.

 

There is one computer for the pilot side, one for the copilot side and one for the line of TQ/rudder/yokes and center pedestal.

 

To the pilot and copilot side computers I attached some old 15 inch monitors, on which I run a standalone version of PFD and MFD. These were created from the original FSX bitmaps using C++ and the tutorial from Dave Ault "How to program a cockpit instrument" (Thanks for that Dave!!)

 

For the CP-computer I bought a 7 inch vga-monitor and let it show the twin RMUs programmed by Dave, until I made my own ones - but there are other things with higher priority on my list.

 

Reading all this posts about all of your builds I saw the most of you using interface cards from Leo Bodnar, pokeys a.s.o. and lots of miles of wiring cable. So I sat back and gave this method a thought or two and decided that I want it more simple, in a more modular way.

 

And I came up with the Arduino idea: Building groups of panels (e.g. pilot side: AHRS, electrical, lights + hydraulics) attached to one Arduino Nano. While the Nano communicates with the FSX via the mini-ITX WideFS - FSUIPC chain. This works fine for me.

 

The current point of research is the analog-to-digital converting of TQ, rudder and yokes....

Stay tuned......

 

(Posted by Ron Rollo on 06-20-16)

Hi Dirk, I read right over "sixteen Arduino" until I saw later in your post that every panel will have it's own interface card. Our friend DonnyRay Jones is doing something very similar to that. Everything is modular.

 

Looking forward to some photos in the future. By the way, posting photos in this forum requires using a third party photo storage website like Photobucket. Let us know if you have trouble with it.

 

(Posted by Dave Simmons on 08-24-16)

Hello Dirk, I am also taking the same tact as you, only I am using Pokeys cards. I find they are less expensive and more controllable thru Lua than the Arduino cards (scripts are more difficult to track than Lua). The Pokeys input looks like joystick buttons, so I am using LINDA with its ability to create Lua code which talks with FSUIPC. One can then modify the code on the input to tailor it to anything one wants for the Lear.

 

So I am using the Pokeys for input switches (both MOM and toggle) and output to light LEDs. The Output I handle through Lua code for each Pokeys card and it is simple and easy to do so. Just interrogate the FSUIPC Offset or Control and turn the pin on or off. With 55 pins, a card handles a lot of switches and LEDs because it has a common ground for all pins regardless of input or output.

 

I am grouping the cards according to panel location and number of pins needed. The MIP only needs 1 card. I have another card for the Lower MIP (I don't use the switches on the Crew Lights panel and one right now for the pedestal for the APU and Start/Fuel panels.

 

The only problem I am having it displaying the Amps on the APU panel. I just found a free product that interfaces Pokeys Ethernet cards to FSUIPC. It is called FSSymphony. As I already have 3 Pokeys USB cards (Pokeys56U), I'll stay with Lua but purchase a Pokeys Ethernet card (Pokeys57E) for the pedestal and use it for other panels as well.

 

If I could figure out ho to post photos here from Photobucket, I would put some photos on the site. I tried in another post but ended up displaying the URL to the photos.

Best regards and Good Luck.

Dave Simmons