#Real instrument to mobiflight

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

shell agate
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Here is a real altimeter I completely emptied beside needles gaertrain. Added one stepper to drive it all.

nova flint
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Coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

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man I gotta do something with steppers sometime

shell agate
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This one is really easy! More easy is a speed indicator, only one needle, direct drive it from the stepper.

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I plan to do it too and I also hope to find a cheap real artificial horizon. That’ll give me the 3 standby instruments I need

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(Ho and QNH setting is working easily as it is entirely mechanical!)

lofty pecan
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I'm interfacing to real instruments. For less than 360 degrees I'm using servos instead of stepper motors.

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Which aircraft are you simulating?

shell agate
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I don’t like servos because of noise (this is my memory from RC cars but I didn’t try in MF)

shell agate
lofty pecan
shell agate
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I’m not familiar with this plane, based on my quick Googling I understand it’s a contender to the Baron?

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It looks really nice anyway! Lot of work to build the analog version.

river girder
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Reminded me of this

shell agate
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Next challenge accepted!

IMG_4057.jpg
lofty pecan
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I'm still putting off doing mine.

shell agate
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So I’ll try to pave the way then!

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For anyone interested here is what it looks like inside :

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I will try with servos this time instead of steppers

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Pitch looks easy, roll will need more tinkering. AT least as my king air is not a fighter jet I will not need endless rotation! I think 90 to 180 degrees each side will be more than enough.

lofty pecan
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Some of my engine instruments use a spring to hold the needle in one position. I've then used nylon thread to attach the other end to the arm of a servo.

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Could you use a spring to pull it down and then the servo to pull it up. Then a spring to pull it hard left and the servo to pull it right?

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When the servo arm is midway, the instrument position is half way.

shell agate
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This idea is easy with needles I think, not much with this kind of instrument requiring more movement.

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Here is my first take:

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It is working but I’m not satisfied by the noise the servos make and the choppiness of the movements. It’s not smooth at all.

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Especially on roll because of the gear drive

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I may give it another try with some kind of belt on roll.

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If not better I may finally go for steppers. At least in this it will be easy to put a zeroing contact somewhere.

zenith brook
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If for example, you are using airplane yaw in degrees from -45 to +45, that only gives you 90 steps. Multiplying degrees times 10 will give you 900 steps.

shell agate
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I’ve just tried it with the test function inside MF I’ve not linked it to msfs yet

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Mechanicaly the servos are installed in a way to use there whole range of movement.

zenith brook
lofty pecan
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These servo problems are why I used the PCA9685 driver board and wrote my own code for MobiFlight.

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@shell agate That looks really good, given me some confidence in doing mine. Did you 3D print the servo mountings?

lofty pecan
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I also did better with MG90S servos which have metal gears inside.

shell agate
shell agate
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Alternatively I found these mini stepper, virtually silent and available in different gear ratio

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Can we interface this with mobiflight?

lofty pecan
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Yes it should work, but you will need a driver board because an Arduino won't have enough power to drive the motor on its own.