Home » Simpit Discussion » simpits-tech » [simpits-tech] Working turn coordinator and other coolness
| [simpits-tech] Working turn coordinator and other coolness [message #1988] |
Tue, 07 December 2010 23:18  |
 dabigboy
Messages: 208
Registered: September 2010 |
Senior Member |
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I have been quietly making big progress on the sim stuff! Tonight I finally more or less figured out my audio panel....seems a hangar fell on a Navion not long ago, and I've got the AMR-350 audio panel out of it. It's kind of old school, but the price was right. Tonight I made the pleasant discovery that it has the auto-silence function. For instance: if you have COMM1 enabled and also NAV1 audio, NAV1 sounds loud and clear until there is audio coming through COMM1, then NAV1 goes to a lower volume. Cool! I had initially thought I might have to gut the AMR350 and just wire directly into the switches, but it looks like I'll be just fine actually running my various audio sources through the stock unit. This means the audio panel itself has zero modifications: it will be literally a direct swap of a real audio panel from the real plane into my sim. I still can't figure out how to get sound over the SPK (speaker) leads, nothing seems to work. Not a huge issue anyway, headphones are working correctly.
I've also managed to convert a real turn coordinator to my sim. I gutted the internals and used two servos with a Phidget servo board, and some fun code in the X-Plane SDK. From the bezel/support structure forward, there are no more mods to the TC, meaning it appears in my setup exactly as it did in the real plane. Here's a video of the action during testing:
http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/tc.mov
(You can also see my custom instrument display software running on a separate PC here.)
I also managed to get the computer installed into my sim that will run the instrument display, analog instruments, and some of the inputs and instrument audio. It's an old socket A board with 512m RAM on a tiny 13g HD, running Linux. It will be configured to boot directly to my instrument system, in fact the graphical interface isn't even being loaded (I love Linux).
Here's the motherboard tray mounted in the sim initially (old HP computers are AWESOME for cannibalizing these very nicely machined mini-ATX trays from):
http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/back_early.jpg
The sim with the motherboard, HD, and PSU installed:
http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/pc_installed.jpg
I am having a BLAST! There's so much cool stuff to stick in a sim....and this isn't even a full sim enclosure, it's just a desktop unit that mostly just holds the main instruments, radio stack, and controls. I still have a $700+ GPS annunciation unit (which I acquired for $25....ebay rocks) to interface into X-Plane's limited GPS somehow. :)
Matt
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| Re: [simpits-tech] Working turn coordinator and other coolness [message #1989 is a reply to message #1988 ] |
Wed, 08 December 2010 00:45  |
phoenixcomm
Messages: 164
Registered: January 2009
Location: Fort Worth, Tx |
Senior Member |
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On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 1:18 AM, <dabigboy@cox.net> wrote:
> I have been quietly making big progress on the sim stuff! Tonight I finally
> more or less figured out my audio panel....seems a hangar fell on a Navion
> not long ago, and I've got the AMR-350 audio panel out of it. It's kind of
> old school, but the price was right. Tonight I made the pleasant discovery
> that it has the auto-silence function. For instance: if you have COMM1
> enabled and also NAV1 audio, NAV1 sounds loud and clear until there is audio
> coming through COMM1, then NAV1 goes to a lower volume. Cool! I had
> initially thought I might have to gut the AMR350 and just wire directly into
> the switches, but it looks like I'll be just fine actually running my
> various audio sources through the stock unit. This means the audio panel
> itself has zero modifications: it will be literally a direct swap of a real
> audio panel from the real plane into my sim. I still can't figure out how to
> get sound over the SPK (speaker) leads, nothing seems to work. Not a huge
> issue anyway, headphones a
> re working correctly.
>
> I've also managed to convert a real turn coordinator to my sim. I gutted
> the internals and used two servos with a Phidget servo board, and some fun
> code in the X-Plane SDK. From the bezel/support structure forward, there are
> no more mods to the TC, meaning it appears in my setup exactly as it did in
> the real plane. Here's a video of the action during testing:
>
> http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/tc.mov
> (You can also see my custom instrument display software running on a
> separate PC here.)
>
> I also managed to get the computer installed into my sim that will run the
> instrument display, analog instruments, and some of the inputs and
> instrument audio. It's an old socket A board with 512m RAM on a tiny 13g HD,
> running Linux. It will be configured to boot directly to my instrument
> system, in fact the graphical interface isn't even being loaded (I love
> Linux).
>
> Here's the motherboard tray mounted in the sim initially (old HP computers
> are AWESOME for cannibalizing these very nicely machined mini-ATX trays
> from):
> http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/back_early.jpg
>
> The sim with the motherboard, HD, and PSU installed:
> http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/pc_installed.jpg
>
> I am having a BLAST! There's so much cool stuff to stick in a sim....and
> this isn't even a full sim enclosure, it's just a desktop unit that mostly
> just holds the main instruments, radio stack, and controls. I still have a
> $700+ GPS annunciation unit (which I acquired for $25....ebay rocks) to
> interface into X-Plane's limited GPS somehow. :)
>
> Matt
> _______________________________________________
> Simpits-tech mailing list
> Simpits-tech@simpits.org
> http://www.simpits.org/mailman/listinfo/simpits-tech
> To unsubscribe, please see the instructions at the bottom of the above
> page. Thanks!
>
do you have any more pics? or info on the converted turn coordinator??? I
have a real Colins ADI but have not have had the guts to gut it..Congrats
Cris Harrison
www.phoenixcomm.net/~phnx2000/sim<http://www.phoenixcomm.net/%7Ephnx2000/sim>
www.phoenixaerospace.us
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| Re: [simpits-tech] Working turn coordinator and other coolness [message #1990 is a reply to message #1989 ] |
Wed, 08 December 2010 21:57 |
dabigboy
Messages: 208
Registered: September 2010 |
Senior Member |
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---- Cris Harrison <phoenixcomm@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> do you have any more pics? or info on the converted turn coordinator??? I
> have a real Colins ADI but have not have had the guts to gut it..Congrats
>
> Cris Harrison
> www.phoenixcomm.net/~phnx2000/sim<http://www.phoenixcomm.net/%7Ephnx2000/sim>
> www.phoenixaerospace.us
Here ya go:
http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/tc_side.jpg
http://68.12.225.136:81/pics/sim/tc_back.jpg
This worked out really well....I ebay'd this part and just happened to get one that did NOT have the ball floating inside the glass water-filled tube, but instead the "ball" is simply a white-painted raised dot on a metal arm that swings from the top of the instrument. I didn't even realize this when I bought it, I thought I would have to break the glass and rig up some sort of metal arm to hook to the ball.
Basically, two micro servos (of HS-55 dimensions, in this case) are mounted to a lite ply surface with holes drilled for the servo arms to attach to the mounting shafts of the "wings" and "ball". I epoxied the mounting shafts of these two parts onto the plastic surface of each servo's arm. The only lingering issue is that the ball's metal arm doesn't grasp its smooth mounting shaft very well (it was only designed to hang and swing, not to be actuated by anything, after all), which leads to it slipping on its shaft. I think the solution is to Dremel some grooves into the mounting shaft to give the ball's arm something to lock into (it's a friction fit with about 3 or 4 little notches cut into the arm so that they compress a little bit onto the shaft).
Cris, I had a look at your page. Very interesting stuff there! I don't know how difficult it would be to convert your ADI to servo use, depending on the design of it internally. It seems like I just happened to get the grand king of all turn coordinators for converting to sim use! I am interested to see how well other instruments will convert. What have you worked up for interfacing instruments to your computer? Like I said, I'm using a Phidget servo board. A lot of folks are also going to the PHCC board ( http://phcc.varxec.net ) although it requires a lot more build-up and programming. I seriously considered PHCC, but honestly I just don't have the time to track down all the parts, build/test the thing, and then write the extra C/C++ etc for it. I may still give it a shot some time out of intense interest in the project, but right now I just want to get on with my simming efforts. Phidgets allows me to write in my favorite language (Python) which is incredibly quick and intuitive, and lets me get down to the "fun" stuff....that is, building the actual logic behind the instruments, without worrying about all the low-level USB stuff. Besides, I'm plenty busy with my instrument display app and tweaking my UDP server/client architecture for that program.
Are you still planning to make your own flight simulator software, as your page indicates? The Phidgets API is pretty good, I think it would not be difficult to implement into custom sim software. Whatever route you take, I'd be happy to share my Phidgets code with you. It's pretty simple though...there's really not much to the turn coordinator, once you extract slip data out of your simulator software.
Matt
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