Interface hardware list
Here’s a list of currently available hardware devices that will allow you to interface your flight controls of choice to the host computer.
- EPIC – http://www.mindspring.com/~rrelect/
- BU0836 and variants: http://www.leobodnar.com/
- UnoJoy (Arduino based) http://arduino.cc/blog/2012/05/14/unojoy-a-usb-joystick-for-mac-pc-linux-or-ps3/
- GenericHID (Teensy++ 2.0 based) http://generichid.sourceforge.net/
- PoKeys USB – http://www.poscope.com/pokeys56u
- Hagstrom KE-USB108 http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_usb108.html
- more?
Important software for simpit builders..
Here’s one of the best kept secrets of the software side of cockpit building:
Lightning’s Tools [Link updated to reflect new location!]
This guy has developed a number of fantastic tools including things specific to the F-16 air combat simulator, Falcon.
The best part is that the source code is available for all the tools – this is a huge contribution to the hobby and he’s done a fantastic job with them all!
Building Recreational Flight Simulators is complete!
Mike Powell’s new book, “Building Recreational Flight Simulators” has been sent off to the publisher! This book is the much anticipated sequel to “Building Simulated Aircraft Instrumentation”.
Keep an eye on Mike’s Flight Deck website for price and availability. The completed books are due to arrive some time in August.
Way to go Mike!
Making printed circuit boards without chemicals.
In doing research for making wiring boards for the EPIC (used in my F-15C project) I discovered a technique for making printed circuit boards (PCBs) that doesn’t involve any etching chemicals.
The process is called PCB Isolation Routing and is done by using a CNC router with a VERY small “V” bit in it. The bit used has a tip diameter of about 0.007″.
The key to the whole process is being able to generate code to create the PCB. This can be accomplished with the free version of Eagle PCB in combination with a free program called PCB-GCODE
PCB-GCODE is a plug-in for Eagle that will take your board layout and generate the needed code to drive any standard CNC router that understands G-code.
If you head over to this site, you can get a pretty good overview of the process itself.
In order to use this process with my ShopBot, I needed to come up with a way to hold down the PCB material while the machine was working on it. Below is the jig I created.
PCB hold down jig
When you add two more hold downs, this jig can hold down a pretty good sized board. The jig itself is 11-3/4″ high and about 13″ wide.
The grooves you can see cut in the right corner are for alignment blocks. They consist of two 6″x3/4″ .125″ thick aluminum bars that are used to locate the PCB material in the lower right hand corner of the jig, where the X & Y “home” is. By leaving the bars in place, you have a repeatable point for locating your material when you flip it if you’re doing double sided boards.
When my double sided PCB stock arrives next week, I’ll put together a video showing how it works using my new EPIC input boards as an example.
Simpits server replaced…
Today I was _finally_ able to replace the 7 year old server that simpits.org and it’s services ran on.
With the addition of WordPress, the poor machine just couldn’t keep up. The original server was an early Athalon 1400+ with 512MB of RAM. The new server is a Dual Core AMD system with 2GB of RAM and a 400GB SATA drive. I really hope this improves the site response time for the main Simpits site as well as the other WordPress blogs hosted here.
I appreciate your patience during the time things were insanely slow around here. 🙂
LED resources…
As a result of creating a new indicator for the F-15C IFF panel, I’ve come across two really good LED resources.
The first is a source of good 180 degree FOV LEDS – http://myworld.ebay.com/cece718
This is an eBay seller that has a HUGE variety of LEDs and related electronics for sale.
The second is a LED resistor calculator. This handy web site calculates the optimal resistor value based on a given input voltage, LED forward voltage (how many volts it needs to light) and LED power consumption in mA – http://www.ledcalculator.net/
Series One DIY Cockpit is now completed.
The Series One DIY Cockpit Project is finally completed and available for sale.
Please head over to http://www.geneb.org/pitkit for more information.
New PHCC interfacing kits…
Kim over at Viperpits.org is starting a new run of PHCC interfacing board kits.
Check it out here: ViperPits PHCC Thread
For those that haven’t heard about PHCC, you can learn more here
Board mystery….
One of the Simpits list members has a few circuit boards that he’s trying to identify:
If you can identify any of these boards, please post a message to the simpits-tech list, the forum or just leave a comment here.
Thanks all!
[Update]
Here’s the answer! Many thanks to Mr. Boldt for this.
The first one is a USB to general purpose digital I/O bridge, for
interfacing to switches, LEDs, and other hardware.
Here: http://www.devasys.com/usbi2cio.htm
The 2nd pic is a Photon GPS add-on board. IFS is now defunct and without
the main Photon board to connect it to, you may be out of luck. They
were interfaces made for (and about the time of) FS2004, using
FSCockpit.
X-Plane steps up to the plate…
Austin Meyer, creator of the X-Plane flight simulator made an announcement recently on his website regarding the closure of the ACES studio by Microsoft:
http://www.x-plane.com/ms_to_xp/ms_to_xp.html
X-Plane has become a real world-class flight simulation platform and with the SDK it is a great choice for cockpit builders. I’m a user of X-Plane and I’ve written plug-ins for it. I would highly recommend this if you’re looking for a commercial alternative to Microsoft Flight Simulator. For those that are interested in an Open Source flight simulator, you cannot beat FlightGear
I should also mention that X-Plane is cross-platform. It’s available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh.