Quote from Roel on February 9, 2025, 4:46 am

Hi guys

I still had to fix my flight plan issue which was not being able to plot lines between the waypoints.
Well , I managed to do so!

Here for my MFD LUA code in Air manager needed to be changed from a native method using built in maps, to a vector map coding.  This wasn't that hard after all, with help of chatgpt, but showing navaids and airports was.

This was more due to how Airmanager works; LUA is a script language this means all code is sequential.
I made AM crash or navaids didn't show.  Also transferring the flight plan from FMS to the MFD caused me some headache.

But... in the end I solved all issues and MFD is operational.

Here a short  video

https://youtube.com/shorts/Jmm3lkvbK8c?feature=share

One thing I deviate from actual MFD is that my range is not from determined steps but continuously adjusts
This is just because I like that .:)

Quote from Ron Rollo on February 10, 2025, 11:31 am

Nice work Roel!  I know this has been one of your biggest hangups and you have now found a solution to the problem.  Looks smooth and responsive.  Great work!

What do you have planned next on your "to do list"?

Quote from Roel on February 10, 2025, 1:29 pm

Thanks Ron

Still have to finish the FO chair , and add some functionallity in my FMS, like holding patterns.
And i want to start expirimenting with mixed reality VR soon

Quote from Shane Barnes on February 12, 2025, 6:52 pm

Nice work Roel!  I enjoy seeing the updates to your build.

Quote from Roel on June 24, 2025, 1:44 pm

 

Hi all

I have been working on mechanical standby instruments.
My first prototype is the HSI .
I am still not sure how i will mount it in my actual MIP, but that will be for later.
All is 3D printed and uses 2 stepper (8BYJ-48 stepper with ULN2003 driver)
For interfacing i use the Airmanager again.

This is my prototype as designed in Fusion 360:

And here is a short video of it in action:

https://youtu.be/qsRnuDaa4eg

But there are issues.
All works ok, but sometimes the HSI is not showing the actual situation.
Espescially after a roll or looping or so.
You can see this in the video.

I still haven't solved this.
It seems to be related to the speed when doing manouvres like rolls etc.
I see there is a lot of data received from the sim which should result in movement of the steppers.
Maybe the driver board gets overloaded or something.

But never the less i wanted to share this work in progress...

Quote from Ron Rollo on June 24, 2025, 2:16 pm

Hey Roel,

I know this is still a work in progress but it's very impressive what you have so far!  Thank you for taking this project on.  Several of us would love to have mechanical gauges working in our sims at some point in the future.

Do you have any kind of feedback sensors that can reset the gauge back to straight and level flight?  If you are only seeing these issues after doing rolls and loops, it would not be a bad idea to include feedback sensors.

The good news is we are not modeling a fighter jet.  In other words, 99.999% of our flight time will be spent in a flight envelope, no more than 50 degrees roll left or right and 40 degrees of pitch up or down.  If what you have working can maintain proper attitude within this box, I would say you are very close.

Please keep up posted on this progress!

Quote from Roel on June 25, 2025, 2:30 pm

Hi Ron

well, in fact that was also my idea!
i have a “reset” switch in place, it does a new calibration when in flight.

that would be an option if all fails.
but it should not be nessecary…

to be continued….

Quote from Roel on July 14, 2025, 5:14 am

 

There seem to be issues with steppers and Airmanager.
I have tried to fix the issue after doing some aerobatics with the Lear45 🙂 and the HSI getting offset , but no luck so far.
This does work just fine when testing the movement setting the stepper to certain angles hardcoded in AM.
But it gets disturbed when getting data from the Sim.
My thinking is it gets flooded when doing a loop for instance.

So i returned to Mobiflight.
This seems to be much better for use with steppers.
For instance ;

• no zero switches needed, so removing the pitch switch , my hardware can be even smaller.
• calibration and adjusting is much better; can be done from Mobiflight console.
• after some fiddeling , runs much smoother.

See the result

https://youtu.be/xPwvKTBRaeM

After weird manouvres the HSI still is accurate to its position.

I am going to contact the AM friends for this, but is seems for this Mobiflight is a better choice.

 

Quote from Ron Rollo on July 15, 2025, 11:03 am

Hey Roel,

Great work!  This is really impressive seeing your prototype attitude gauge working properly.  Looks really cool!

Strange that this is not able to work in AM for you.  I bet if you show them your video of it working using Mobiflight, they will want to address this and either fix it or show you what you are doing wrong.

Things like this are frustrating because sometimes the reason why you can't get something to work properly might be because the software is flawed in some sort of way and unfortunately, you have no idea it's the software until you put countless hours of time and effort into trouble shooting the issues especially when you might be the only one out there trying something new and or different.  Thankfully you have a knowledge base using Mobiflight and you were able to get the gauge working properly proving there is nothing wrong with your prototype hardware.

Hopefully the guys over at AM will take a look at this and at the very least make it easier for users to interface with if not correcting the issues with it.

Again, great work Roel and thank you for spearheading the mechanical standbys!