Once more time for a POC. Well, a lot of people have proven it works… but I just want to see it working with my own eyes: controlling a servo via Arduino. Final goal: use the servo to move parts of analog cockpit gauges (e.g. attitude indicator). A servo typically has three wires: red: power …
Category: King Air 350i
DIY home cockpit project.
Button matrix
For the past weekends I started thinking about how to implement the FMS. There are two things to solve: MilViz its KA350i does not provide any external interface with the FMS. The only thing that is there is the FMS panel as part of the VC, and the FMS as 2D panel. The PL21 FMS …
Happy birthday
It took a few weeks (as each item is built on demand), but finally it has arrived: the MFG Crosswind!! Again one step closer to elevated FS realism! More information about this beauty can be found on http://mfg.simundza.com/products. First impression? Wow! Arguably the best value in rudder pedals currently available to flight sim enthusiasts outside …
Bytes become bits
While in one of my previous posts, I used a byte per LED, a better solution is to use a bit per LED. That could go 8 times faster… Speaking of performance: apparently there is a method of controlling pins that is about 30 times faster compared with the digitalWrite() function. Keep you posted. Find …
Reading 12-byte number to control LEDs
Today I tried to send a 12-bit number to my Arduino board, in which each bit controls a digital output connected to a LED. Test completed. Mission accomplished! Once I have my MAX7219 IC, I will try to control 64 LEDs… which will be useful for my annunciator panel later on. /* Test reading 12-character input from serial port. Reads 12 characters from the serial port to control a series of leds that represent annunciator status fields of the KA350i. The final implementation will use a MAX7219ENG (DIP) serially interfaced 8-digit LED display driver to control a 8×8 LED matrix, but the idea will be more or less the same. …
First panel using LED multiplexing
Now that I’m able to read values from P3D and send them to my Arduino Uno board, I want to prototype a simpit panel: the main annunciator panel. It consists of 20 LED notifications, organized in a matrix of 5 columns and 4 rows. The module needs to support: lighting up individual LEDs lighting up …
Sending data from a Java application to Arduino Uno
Following my previous post, I made a test if I’m able to send data from a Java program to an Arduino board. The main thing to remember from this exercise: Ensure the Java application doesn’t send its data faster than the Arduino board can handle. String comparison on Arduino was a lot slower than comparing …
Arduino led wiring options
Today I wanted to do a basic test: Send a value (0 or 1) via a Java application to my Arduino board. If the value 1 is received, a led should light up, in all other cases the led should be off. Quite simple, I thought. In reality it wasn’t… Main problem was the wiring …
SLF4J
Up till now I outputted all required logging information via the most basic command: System.out.println(“Normal logging information”); System.err.println(“… when things go wrong information”); This is OK, but gives me little control. Therefore I took a look at the different Java libraries available and came to the conclusion that SLF4J is the one I need. Added …
Long live ‘FSInterrogate’
Follow-up post on previous topic (16384!=16383) Long live ‘FSInterrogate‘ (a tool that can read FSUIPC offsets): when launching P3D in virgin modus (i.e. just start a new flight without sending any further commands), FSUIPC always returns ‘16383’ when the wheels are down. Probably FSUIPC is indeed not so strict for what concerns the values being …