[simpits-tech] Working turn coordinator and other coolness

[dabigboy at cox.net]

---- Cris Harrison <phoenixcomm at 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