What have you done for your simulator today?

[Bob Reed]

Hey Mike KA 350i Blackhawk with the Avidyne/Garmin glass. 

[blueskydriver]

Cooooolll!

[sagrada737]

Hi Bob,

Here's a photo of what I think you might be building...  This Blackhawk configuration has I believe a Garmin NXi layout.  I assume that you are deciding between Avidyne and Garmin, or maybe a combination.

Mike

[Bob Reed]

You hit the nail on the head! And yes, a mixture of Garmin and Avidyne. I want the Avidyne Primary avionics with like a Garmin 530/430 or something close.

[FSAddon_boss]

Just made a little test fight over Ketchikan to test my landing gear lights via the Arduino and Mobiflight

[RayS]

Spent this past week troubleshooting a fairly nasty bug in the sim. I added a functioning lower annunciator panel last weekend and it worked great...

...right up until landing. Upon landing the panel would go dark, and curiously, the [Right Gen Fail] would briefly turn on as well.

Gutted the code, re-wired it to a different power supply, still the same result.

The culprit ended up being the landing gear lock relay turning off during landing. A classic case of not using a flyback diode to shunt the power generated when the relay magnetic field collapses after being turned off.

It's a 28Vdc relay, so there was plenty of flyback voltage to contend with.

Once that was figured out, it all worked.

[Bob Reed]

That was a nasty one to work out. It's no wonder some of us have no hair left!

[Bob Reed]

My sim is coming along slow but sure. Thanks to Ray's great patience I am getting back into the programing of my choice of interfacing. So I have made a few flights, scrapped and aircraft and said a few choice words. I am now working with the Carenado King Air B200 and yes, I am using XPlane 11. In the next couple weeks I hope to do some actual building. We will see how things go.

[blueskydriver]

Hey Francois,

Glad too see your back at building your sim....

John

[FSAddon_boss]

Hey Francois,

Glad too see your back at building your sim....

John

Thanks John !!! Glad to be able to !!!

[Bob Reed]

Here is what you asked for!      It is a start now I am going to rip it apart!

[bernard S]

more stuff

[Bob Reed]

Well  change of plans.. I was going to build the KA 350i in the Black Hawk configuration using XPlane. Bought the model and started working with it and ran into several issues with trying to interface with it. Then I took a look at the forward view with no panel and there was artifacts  That I could not get rid of. Sop I scraped that plane and as there is no other 350i for XPlane available I did the next best thing. I bought a King Air B200 and will make this work. I am still going to go with the Black Hawk look but I lost some performance and the a little physical size. All in all I think it will work fine... More to come!

[bernard S]

main gear doors will be working :-) and why not

[blueskydriver]

Thanks for the pics guys, keep it them coming.

-Bob, how about a pic of the whole attic room area. Curious too see how much more space you have compared to the basement of the last house.

John

[RayS]

...for those really rough landings.... Installed this a few days ago. (There's actually a "BUTTER" light just to the left of "Not Butter")

Cutoff logic is -250FPM on landing.

[ame]

...for those really rough landings.... Installed this a few days ago. (There's actually a "BUTTER" light just to the left of "Not Butter")

Cutoff logic is -250FPM on landing.

I can't believe it!

[RayS]

Over the years I've been collecting real Beechcraft engine gauges for the 1900.

Most of the major projects for the sim are finally complete. The next project will involve interfacing these beauties to X-Plane.

[Mike.Powell]

Are these synchro style? If so, and if you don't have the interface nailed down, I may have something of interest. There's a digital to synchro interface that requires external 400Hz power that I have working. And there's a version that should generate its own power. This one isn't finished. The low level signals are there, but the power amps are not. The intention is to use class D audio amps and isolation transformers to transition for the class D bridge outputs to the delta synchro inputs. I've got the pieces. I just haven't had the time.

[RayS]

Mike,

Only the "Prop RPM" gauges are synchro-driven. There's a synchro on each engine shaft, which sends the rotation signals to the RPM gauges.

In the interest of simplicity, I'm probably going to drive the needle with a stepper motor instead. (That goes for pretty much all the other gauges that I won't be able to figure out.)







 

[blueskydriver]

Ahhhh, the glare of gauges in the morning! Nothing beats chasing the needles and not the ones for your arms...LOL!

John

[Bob Reed]

Not much progress but a little. The interface has turned out a little more interesting than Ray and I thought it would     

[RayS]

Been working with Bob to build out an I/O interface so he can use it for switches/lights in his new Beechcraft project.

Starting with a Master/Slave concept, we tried pairing a Teensy 3.2 as the Master, to an Arduino Mega256 using the serial protocol. We had less than mixed results. When it did work, events passed to the master were delayed by 6-10 seconds. When it didn't work.... well... it didn't work.

On a whim we tried the I2C protocol and viola! It all works. (With the added benefit of assigning addresses to slaves and masters)

We'll never saturate the I2C protocol, since it's capable of a 3.4Mbps throughput.

Onward!

[Bob Reed]

As Ray has stated we have finally had a break through in the interface setup. I can now program switches with my Arduino and pass that data to my Teensy and then to XPlane 11. Why do that you ask? 2 reasons, first I can keep the number of USB connections down second, I do not need to use Lua thanks to the XPlane plug in library for Teensy. Want to give a huge shout out to Ray for all his help! Without him I would have less hair and not be where I am in this project right now! 

[blueskydriver]

Are you guys doing this in person together? If yes, it's good too hear that you are doing this again....

John