weyes blog

Bought the FMC

2012-02-01T12:40:00.002+01:00

It is a long time that I want to have a FMC for flying the 767 because the device is essential and one of the most used device during the simulation.

There are several items on sold from a pletora of producers. I started surveying the products long time ago and ended with 2 devices. One is the B747 FMC from FlyEngravity. It is quite expansive, at the present it costs aroubnd 1200€. It is fully compatible with the 767LD and easy to connect as it uses only one USB cable and a power connector.
The second interesting product is the OpenCockpits FMC that costs around 350€ plus taxes. It requires a USB connectr, a video out and the power. The problem is that I already have 2 monitors connected to me PC.

After a long time I decided for OpenCockpits FMC especially because I am afraid that the FlyEngravity one is too tight to the 767LD and FSX.
The market is in a transition phase right now. Flight seems not to be good enough for simmers. XPlane 10 seems quite interesting but sttill not supported by the software houses. Prepare3D is very interesting and expansive but I am afraid that LevelD will never port there the 767 or will do but only in a very far future. Sad to say but LevelD is very slow releasing products. They promised the 757 years ago and still nothing is moving. I asked the official forum about P3D and they replied that they are aware of this simulator. Difficult to say what it means exactly.

So, for the first time since long time, I am not anymore 100% sure to stay with the 767LD and FSX. This is the main reason I preferred the Opencockpits FMC. To be free of using it with other planes simply changing the SIOC script.
If I will switch to another plane, it will be a 737 because it is much more easier to find cockpit's stuff for that model. PMDG 737 seems very promising so it is worth to wait for its SDK. It will be compatible with my CPFlight modules that are designed for the 737 and I will customize my hardware for that plane.
In this moment, I believe that it is better to stay quiet and see what the software houses will do.

Having bought the OpenCockpits FMC, I need a video out connector. I am thinking to add a new graphic card to my PC. It could as well be USB. But I prefer to have the device at home and think better about the connector. I bought also the VGA to video converter sold by OpenCockpit. I believe that I can found a cheapest one on the market but I do not want to have problem for a connector if possible.

Given that the FMC was cheaper then the other (that I was very close to buy to be honest), I bought some other interesting stuff. Especially the flaps indicator. This is again for the 737 but I will customize for the 767. The number of flaps positions differs between the two planes.

I received the MCP from CPflight. They changed the knobs and returned the item in a very short time. I will never get tired to repeat that CPFlight support is quite good.
The MCP works well and I connected also the TOGA button but it seems useless unfortunately.
I upgraded the firmware to the last 3.05 version but I have a problem now. I have an out of memory when launching the connection to FSX. I have to restart the connection and seems ok apart that it does not iconize. Ok not a big deal! I warned the support just in case it is the symptom of an underlying problem that could arise while flying.

Unfortunately the power supply I built for the electronics stopped working yesterday. I discover that I can avoid a power supply if I take the power out of the USB expansion card. I will use that as a temporary solution but I believe that a separate power supply is better. And I will probably need it for the backlit of the FMC and maybe for the bar of leds of the landing gear.
On the other hand, if it works well then it is not the case to add the complexity of another power supply to the system...

Logitech G940 review

2012-01-22T11:55:00.003+01:00

The device is very well packed and all the items have their envelope to protect from water and humidity. The box contains the pedals, the throttle, the joystick and the power supply.

Cabling is quite easy. The main device is the joystick that has the USB cable to connect to a free port of the PC. It has also 2 DSUB9 ports where the throttles and the pedals have to be connected. Cables are long enough at least for my setup. Close to these connectors there is also the connector for the power supply. Neither the DSUB9 not the power supply connectors have screws to lock the cable. I think that a device so expansive should have better connectors especially the DSUB should be different between pedals and throttles to avoid to connect a device to a wrong socket. The missing of the screws is also a lack for me. At least in my setup I will have to connect and disconnect the devices every time I flight so I am afraid the the connectors could brake with the time.

All the devices are plastic made but they lock very solid and heavy. The joy and the throttle device have holes that allow to screw them to the table. However they have gum below and never move even without locking. Pedals have gum below and some locking when used with carpet. They also never moved but I wonder why they do not have any locking mechanism that I find more useful for this device then for the others.

Installation proceed as usual: launch the setup of the CD and connect the device when requested. When the G940 is powered the buttons in the throttles lit up first in red then in green then off. The joystick wake up and the lever goes to the center. The software loads up a profile manager from which it is possible to select a specific profile for the flight simulator. Note that at the present there is no support to light the buttons of the throttle. It is a pity as it would be nice to have them working. I think for example to have red/green color for the landing gear and so on.

The profile manager resembles other profile manager like for example that of the saytek joystick. It is possible to select the device, a button of the device and then associate a key or a macro (i.e. a sequence of key to press). In the case of the Flight Simulator, the profiler shows a list of commands. Thrusting the default profile for flight simulator I started the sim and tested the device. I had to configure the axis from the controls tab of the simulator. Some of them has to be inverted, like the rudder, but it has been quite easy. I used one of the saved situation of the 767LD for that purpose so my sim started with the pane powered at the parking.

In my case this simple configuration did not work, The plane had the brakes always on and crashed during the taxi or was impossible to take off. I never understood the reason as there was nothing assigned to the brakes. I configured the pedals with the differential brakes and no assignation for the brakes (the dot of the keyboard) and nothing for the parking brakes. When I released/set the parking brakes everything seemed to work well but as soon as I touched and released the pedals the brakes engaged and was not possible to release. I spent quite some time with this issue but no solution. Another problem I noticed was related to the spoilers:: the lever moved constantly from released to around middle range.
After spending some hour, I gave up and get rid of the profiler by selecting an new, empty profile. I deleted all the assignation to the devices in the flight sim. and start from scratch. What is annoying in this phase is that in order to save the settings in the flight simulator you have to exit the program. It seems that FSX only saves the settings during shut down. Note that to get rid of all the assignation, I had to select the right device in the settings tab. SO the same operation had to be repeated for all the three devices. FSX assigned to each devices some command/axes by default. But this assignation is not clever enough so that there were more device controls assigned to the same axis or keyboard command. I guess this, together with the profiler settings, could have been the reason of the problems.
I resasigned all the axes and commands to the buttons as I liked and after that everything works well. However this operation has been very time consuming and for awhile a thought to have a problem in the G940 too.
The profiler has now an empty profile. I tried to assign some commands from the profiler but it does not work anymore. First when I select a button it does not offer the list of FSK commands as it was doing before. And even if I assign a command, nothing happens in the simulator. So I guess that now the link between the simulator and the profiler is broken. I also guess that there is a way to fix but I am not really interested as I think that the profiler is useless unless it allows me to do something I can't achieve with the setting of the simulator that is not the case.

G940 is plenty of joysticks and buttons, hats and sliders and all of them easily configurable with FSX. In my case I used only controls for the landing gear, flaps, trim, one to engage the spoilers for landing and a hat for the view in 3D cockpit. So in my case there are more controls then what I need. What I would like to have is the possibility to invert the axis of the throttle to simulate the reverse. It should work in this way: when landing move the throttle back to idle; press a button (or better switch the configuration button from position 1 to 3, this button is in the throttle lever) this button inverts the axis so when I accelerate the throttles the reverse is applied. When finished with the revers, move back the throttle, press the button and the axis return normal for taxiing. Not sure if it can be done with the profiler. That would be a good reason to resuscitate the profiler.

The pedals are quite solid. Even if they are plastic made, I am not afraid to put my heavy shoes on it and move them. Instinctively I do not apply big forces on them but there is no need as they react immediately and smoothly. I found taxing and landing a new experience. The pedals add a lot of realism. Differential brakes together with the 2 throttle levers greatly improves maneuvering. Differential brakes are progressive so it is not a process all/nothing but it is easy to modulate the amount of brake to apply to the left and side side.

The throttles are easy to control with he 2 levers. Very useful during taxi and maneuvering and to experiment single engine fly without turning off one of the engines. The levers do not move smoothly along all the range. There are 2 points where they offer some resistance. For me it is not disturbing but for a three-hundred-euro device they should be better IMO. The throttle has to be put on the left side while I hoped to use them on the right side because this is the position of the throttle in respect to the captain seat. The levers have an inclination and the button in one side of the lever so that their position is the right side.
For my way of control the throttles, the button in the pad are disturbing. I am used to lie my left arm on the pad and in this way it presses the buttons in the pad. This is my fault of course. I solved by setting buttons that I do not press by mistake with the arm. Fortunately the device is full of buttons...

The joystick is really great to control the plane. It is very smooth, really nice to move. The hand fits quite well. This device must be controlled by the right hand. Same consideration I did for the throttle...
The lever is quite big and to press some button or use the topmost hat I have to release the lever, move the hand and operate the control. This is again not a big deal because there are buttons and a hat I can control without releasing the lever. There are so many controls that it is very easy to customize.
I almost can't feel the force feedback. It has been activated in the simulator and I also increased from 100% to 110% but up to now almost can't feel it. I should feel some vibration during taxi, landing and moving up and down the gear but nothing. I would also expect the force to be applied when the plane needs trim. But nothing or very little force. I have to investigate more. What I can say is that I had an old microsoft side winder years ago and when the plane needed trim it was quite hard to handle the lever of the joystick. I have to experiment more probably.

To close this long review, just few words about the centering of the devices. It has to be done with the standard windows controls, the same we are used to use for the other joysticks. This is easy and familiar but surprising for the throttle as the 2 throttles are seen by the system as a 2 axis joystick so both the levers must be moved while centering.

The following picture shows my little home cockpit as it appears today (pedals at the bottom are not visible).

G940 is just in front. Behind almost invisible the keyboard and the mouse in the right side. The lighted instruments are CPFlight (MCP, EFIS, XPNDR, NAV, ADF, COM). On the right side of the MCP, the master caution button I built starting from two pieces of aluminium. In the top right side the light panel.

I took this picture flying on IVAO with the 767LD. The right monitors shows the FMC and IVAE.

Below the monitor on the right side, there is the wooden frame for the next panel. I am planning to put there the landing gear and other controls, not sure yet which ones.

And I am also planning to put on top of the monitor in the left side, a set of annunciators. Probably the ones in the overhead and maybe those in the glare shield.

Last saturday I sent the MCP to CPFlight for maintenance. The knobs for the heading and the altitude do not work (consumed). But talking with CPFlight support, I found that there is wire connector in the back side of the MCP for the TOGA button and it works with the 767LD. I will probably add a button close to the master caution for engaging the TOGA. In this way I save one input line of the master device and the cabling should be very easy.

Logitech G940

2012-01-09T20:43:00.000+01:00

One of the thing I mostly missed while simulating is the throttle for a twin jet engine like the 767 I always fly. There are several alternatives in the shops and I believe that the most used throttle comes from the saitek. Saitek in fact sells the Pro flight throttle quadrant that can be customized for a twin jet, for the flaps. IMO these lever are so ugly that nobody should really buy them. But I know this is my opinion and someone could prefer a ugly device if it works well.

Walking in a shop I found the Logitech G940, a gaming device composed of a 2-axis force feedback joystick, throttle for a twin engine plane and the pedals. I looked for info on the net and found a very interesting review that convinced me to buy the device.

I am well aware that such a device does not match with a 767 home cockpit. So why I decided to buy it?

The reason is that my home cockpit is not intended to be a replica of a 767 cockpit because I do not have enough room at home. My goal is instead to fly without the keyboard and this device gives a lot in this sense: 2 throttles, a set of configurable buttons. And i gain much more realism with the pedals.

Is the force feedback joy adding something to the realism? I don' t really believe as I have already had the Microsoft Sidewinder. If it does not add any realism, it adds a good feeling while flying because it transfer to the hand some of the forces that act to the plane surfaces. I could feel the bumping of the plane in the asphalt, the force in the wings to counter act with the trims and so one.

The logitech G940 is meant for a twin engine jet fighter. It is not the only one alternative on the market. Saitek is also offering something very similar at an higher price, the X-65F. This last product can or cannot be better, I don't know. And the price play a role in my choice because I don't really know, at the present, if I will build the pedestal at a certain point. But the pedestal is a very complex piece of hardware and even if I will build (or buy) it, it will require long time before being ready. The G940 will help from the time being.

I will write my own review after installing and testing G940.

Designing new panels

2012-01-06T12:23:00.003+01:00

Finally I setup FSX and connected all the hardware and could fly online at IVAO.
The good news is that FSX never blocked and it is running at an average speed od 25fps, good enough for flying smoothly.
I have an error from time to time in the 3D view that make all the instruments unreadable but does not compromise the fly.

Unfortunately I have lost all the setup of the hardware and a lot of things changed in the last 2 years. SIOC is at version 4 with support for multiple files and lekseecon has also been largely improved. The good news is that it was so easy to use Niko's library and I wrote again the SIOC script in less then one hour.
The following is the script to control the lights in my panel:

/////////
/// Master Switch (MS)
/////////

// HW variables definition

// Master switch push button
Var 266 Static Link IOCARD_SW Input 41 Type P

// Lekseecon var to check the state of the lights of
// the Master switch button
Var 739 Static
{
&O_MSWarning = TESTBIT v739 0
&O_MSCaution = TESTBIT v739 1
}

// SIOC - MS Red led - Warning
Var 9001 name O_MSWarning Link IOCARD_OUT Output 11

// SIOC -MS Yellow led - Caution
Var 9002 name O_MSCaution Link IOCARD_OUT Output 12

/////////
/// Panel flood lights
/////////

// Panel & MCP Flood
Var 246 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 29 Type I

// SIOC - Overhead light led out
var 9008 name O_OvdLT Link IOCARD_OUT Output 49

// Overhead lighting -- NOT SIMULATED!!!
Var 247 name PanelFlood Static Link IOCARD_SW input 27 Type P

// Glare shields

/////////
/// Taxiing lights
/////////

// Taxi
Var 260 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 28 Type I

// Left runway turnoff
Var 261 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 34 Type I

// Right runway turnoff
Var 262 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 26 Type I

/////////
/// Landing lights
/////////

// Left wing landing
Var 263 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 25 Type I

// Right wing landing
Var 264 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 21 Type I

// Mose landing
Var 265 Static Link IOCARD_SW input 23 Type I

/////////
/// Extern lights
/////////

// Pos. Lights
Var 255 name PosLight Static Link IOCARD_SW input 22 Type P

// SIOC - POS led out
Var 9003 name O_Pos Link IOCARD_OUT Output 51

// Anti collision RED
Var 256 name Red Static Link IOCARD_SW input 24 Type P

// SIOC - Anti collision red led out
Var 9004 name O_Red Link IOCARD_OUT Output 50

// Anti collision White
Var 257 name White Static Link IOCARD_SW input 20 Type P

// SIOC - Anti collision white led out
Var 9005 name O_White Link IOCARD_OUT Output 54

// Wing lights
Var 258 name Wing Static Link IOCARD_SW input 18 Type P

// SIOC - Wing led out
Var 9006 name O_Wing Link IOCARD_OUT Output 53

// Logo lights
Var 259 name Logo Static Link IOCARD_SW input 19 Type P

// SIOC - Log led out
Var 9007 name O_Logo Link IOCARD_OUT Output 52

// Lekseecon var to check the state of the lights of
// the lights panel
Var 737 Static
{
&O_OvdLT = TESTBIT v737 0
&O_Pos = TESTBIT v737 1
&O_Red = TESTBIT v737 2
&O_White = TESTBIT v737 3
&O_Wing = TESTBIT v737 4
&O_Logo = TESTBIT v737 5
}

One of the botton in the light panel is not implemented in 767LD/FSX so I could in principle reuse it for something else. It is a ON/OFF switch. Times ago I used it for the parking brakes.

I am already designing my next panel but I have not yet decided what to put there. For sure the gear lever but together with other controls.

I have to decide if I still want to copy the glare shield or if it is time to put there the most used commands for enjoying the flight.The problem is that now with the situation of flight simulation I do not yet know what to do. I can stil fly with FSX and the 767LD of course but there is also a chance to switch to Flight or XPlane with a 737 and in that case all the panels for the 767 will be mostly unusable.

I have already built the woodden frame and start thinking on the electronic componets. I will add more comments as soon as I take the final decision.

I will also build a the annunciators for the overhead panel and those in the glare shield. The former will be with a white led because I don't want to have them signaling errors. I double checked that those are implemented in lekseecon.

The annunciators in the glare shield will have a orange high performant LED. These are not implemented in lekseecon and the logic has to be retrieved from FSUIPC.

i am also planning to put something close to the master switch button. Probably other annunciators not prenset in any oter place like for example a stall warning. There could also be one or two buttons. i am still in the design phase...

I have been elected as a Flight beta tester from Microsoft. For being correct, I will never write any comments on the flight simulators until my role terminates.

Back in Germany

2011-11-14T12:13:00.001+01:00

I definitely left Chile the 31st of October and I am back in Garching since last saturday the 5th and back at work since monday the 7th.

Now that I am back in Garching it is time to set up the system to flight.

My old PC is really too old... it was already very old and slow a couple of years ago but now I found almost impossible to work with it. It is a P4 Fujitzu Siemens and I have to say that it never stopped working. The only failure in so many years has been an hard disk! I am now evaluating if it is the case to use the PC for some background not expansive task or to definitely retires it.

After a survey in the internet and in the shops in Munich, I bought a new machine from csl-computer. It has the components that I would have chosen by myself. In short: Intel Core i7 3.4Mhz, 16Gb RAM, 2Tb HD, NVIDIA GeForce® GTX 550 Ti with 4096 MB, Motherboard ASUS P8H67 Pro, USB 3.0,...

I am a little bit concerned about the graphic card. In principle it is a good one with its 4Gb RAM but I need to see it in action with the flight simulator. However, in my opinion, the graphic card is the only one component that is worst to upgrade in a couple of years to increase the performance of the whole machine. After it is usually better to change the computer itself.

The network is also on the way. I choose a DSL with 6.000 kbit/s. It was enough in the past so it will hopefully be now again.

Knowing germany, I will probably have the PC and the network during this week or the first days of next week.

Back to Europe

2011-10-19T15:31:00.002+02:00

At the end of October I will come back to Europe after a wonderful period I spent in Chile.

Chile is a wonderful place that I suggest everybody to visit. The country offers a lot of special places for hiking, exploring, walking and whatever you like. The climate ranges from the cold south and its glaciers to the warm and dry desert of the northern part.

Talking about Chile is not in the scope of this blog of course but if you're curious take a look to some of the pictures I took in this 2 years looking at my albums.

From a personal point of view the time I spent here is invaluable. The experiences I did working at the observatory, the places I visited and especially the persons I meet here will be part of my life forever.

XPlane first tests

2010-11-06T00:53:00.004+01:00

The first challenge is to find good liners for XPlane. For good liners I mean liners complex enough to be close (or, better, that I believe are close) to the real plane, with a good FMC for flying online and a good flight model.

After some browsing on the net, it seems that there are basically only 2 good liners: a 737 and A320. Unfortunately both of them come with no FMC even if it is possible to add but both of them are for free.

I have tested the 737 that seems quite interesting even if it is not comparable to FSX version of 737. But it is 100% free and as far as I recall there are no such good products available for FSX for free.

The flight model for this plane seems quite good. It was initially very nervous but after setting up my joystick it responds quite well.

The biggest problem is the lack of an FMC. It is possible to buy an FMC from the same site that delivers the plane but until now I tested only a freely available FMC: X-FMC.

X-FMC is generic in the sense that it is customizable for a lot of planes like the 737 or the FMC. It is quite complete with initialization pages, performances pages, routes, SIDs and STARs.

However the route is quite unrealistic, not smoothed at all and the plane does not follow it 100%. In the 737 this FMC is not well integrated in the sense that it works by setting the HDG and the appropriate vertical mode instead of VNAV and LNAV. This is enough for me to say that it is not acceptable as it is quite far from a good simulation of the systems.

But I kindly suggest this FMC as a chep solution and for flying offline.

Next step will to buy and test the x737FMC that claims to be 100% integrated in the x737. With the incoming version of X-Plane, I prefer to wait before buying.

XPlane 9 arrived

2010-09-25T15:00:00.003+02:00

I bought XPlane 9.xx from the Laminar Reserach web site and arrived a few days ago.

I was surprised to receive the software in a so short time.

I was expecting a box but it was an envelope with the DVDs inside. I have to say that one of the DVD, the number 4, was missing. I contacted the support and they provide for sending me the DVD (not yet arrived).

The installation procedure is quite easy on windows. What I liked is that it is clean in the sense that does not write tons of things in the registry: it creates only a folder with all the software, libraries and so on inside.

I could not install all the sceneries for Europe as they are right in the 4th DVD. :-(

There are a lot of planes ready to fly. The Piaggio P180 seems to be one of the best but it is very nervous and difficult to fly. i have to say that a new version of this plane has been published a few days ago.

Looking for a serious plane to fly I downloaded a B737 and an A320. They comes with a lot of liveries.

The plane did not work and I discovered that the my XP was quite old, something like v9.22 instead of the last one (9.60 at this moment). It was quite surprising but after installing the planes worked and I liked it considering that they are freely available, especially the 737.

I am looking for a plane to fly on IVAO and to use for my home cockpit too.

Return date postponed again

2010-07-30T04:20:00.005+02:00

It seems that my temporary transfer in Chile lasts longer then expected: at the present the return date has been postponed to may 2011.
I have no chance to bring the simulator and the cockpit in Chile because there is no point in organizing a removal for a few months only.

In the mean time I am thinking about the future of the simulation because Microsoft flight simulator seems stuck since long time and there are no rumours of any future development.
I am planning to buy and test X-Plane that seems the only valid alternative. Since september 2009, CPFlight supports X-Plane and there are libraries to interface SIOC to this simulator too.
I will report after the testing.

Temporary stop

2010-01-19T23:22:00.001+01:00

Due to a temporary transfer in Chile, my home cockpit is not progressing.

I will resume the work as soon as I come back in Germany (forseen date is May the 1st).

AeroPlayer53 follow up on my blue light

2009-05-14T09:30:00.003+02:00

This period I do not have so much time for the cockpit: a new digital camera, the Nikon D300, the sunny weather and a lot of work keep me well far away from the simulator.

Riccardo just added a thread in the italian forum I follow describing the progresses of his home cockpit. As he said, the work started from the description of blue light of my home cockpit in the Cockpit light post of this blog. I found his proposal very interesting: he used strips of blue LEDs to lighten the instruments instead of the whole cockpit. He fixed the LEDs below aluminium arms fixed on top of the instruments.

For my taste, the arms are too far over the instruments and can interfere with the movements during the flight. But having the LEDs almost in contact with the panel could lead to a very good result. The reflexions, especially against a plexiglas cover, should be taken into account.

I wish to thank Riccardo, AeroPlayer53, for reading my blog and sharing his experience in the forum.

In the mean time I have received the landing gear and a new master card from opencockpits. The landing gear seems to be good and smooth even if not as smooth as I expected.

Master caution button complete!

2009-03-17T21:55:00.009+01:00

It took me something around four months for designing and building but the button is now complete. It seems a lot of time but you have to think that:

I don't have a CNC machine (and I don't want to buy one because is very expansive)
I wanted to spend as few as possible (what I have found on the net was around 30EUR)
I wanted to use only COTS

I spent most of the time finding the right components to use and made a design. The initial design was published in a post in december. When the project was ready, I bought the two aluminum squared pipes and started building the button with my dremel. A picture was shown in another post in february.

The button at this stage looked very ugly with the 2 big springs and it was also very hard to press because the springs were very hard. But it did its wok. You have to keep in mind that the only visible part is the upper side.
However, at the moment I had to put the leds I discover that there were not enough room in the upper side. Initially I wanted to put the LEDs in the little pipe while the moving pipe is only the big one. This solution was not suitable because the light would have passed from the holes between the pipe making a very noisy reflection. I had no other choice then rework the bigger pipe leaving more room for the LEDs:

As you can see the upper side is now longer. I have also mounted the switch: when the user presses the button, the bigger pipe shift down and presses the switch closing the contact. At this point I made an extraordinary discover: the switch is enough to move the biggest pipe in the original position when I don't press over the big pipe so the two springs are not needed anymore. The movement of the big pipe is very smoot and when the switched is cliked it emits a very nice sound. Unbelievable but is much better then I expected.
I have put screws in the upper side to hold the support for the LEDs. The support is composed of a shape piece of wood divided in 2 horizonthal lines each of which contains an array of 2 LEDs. The red line is at the top and the red at the bottom. After some investigation I have discovered that an output line of the master card can feed 2 LEDs connected in serial without resistance:

The handles in the upper side will hold the button against the frame in the cockpit.
For covering the LEDs, I have bought some white slides to print with my inkjet printer. I have printed the label in dark black leaving the written to appear in negative :

The written has been covered by a piece of plexiglas that protects the label agains my fingers.

I have finally connected the electronics to the master card and made some test to be sure that everything is working. At this point I have mounted the button in the cockpit. This is the view from the rear (internal) side of the cockpit:

And this is how the button appear in my cockpit:
In my opinion the final result is quite good. The movement is very smooth and the sound when I click the button is wonderful. The yellow LEDs are perfect but I would prefer the red ones to be stronger. However the final result is much better then expected.

Finally the cost. I think it cost a total of 12EUR more or less. I still have along piece of the sqaured pipes that I can use for other button. For example the 767 annunciator as a very similar button for the G/S Inhibit button. The same strategy could be used for korry switches but this implementation nedds a lot of space in the back side of the cockpit so it could be difficult to put two of this button enough close one to the other.

There are a lot of technical issues that I did not talk about in this post of course. If you are interested in the project, want the exact measurement or any other clarification feel free to send me an email or post a comment in the blog.

A picture of the Master Caution

2009-02-22T19:08:00.004+01:00

As I promised a few days ago, this is a picture of the MC.

You can see the two squared pipes, one inside the other. The upper handles will be fixed to the cockpit frame. The two springs at the bottom keep the two pipes in the right position and allow to press the button. A switch at the bottom left side catches the pressure of the button.

Now the difficult part is to fit the leds in the upper side. I have already shaped a little holes card to fit in the big pipe. The card will be hold by a set of screws in order to keep the leds upon the hole and avoiding the lights to pass through the holes of the pipes.
At the present I plan to put 4 red and 4 yellow leds in the holes. Over the card of leds, I put the plexi and over it a little piece of white paper with the written.

I hope the final result will not be so bad. As I said, at the present I have the impression that the movement of the button is not as smooth as I hoped at least compared to an electronic switch. I will go ahead building that button but I am still not 100% that this tool will never be part of my cockpit.

in fact last week I went to conrad and bought a squared button where it is possible to fit one led. I am investigating if it is possible to fit two colored leds inside the button and if I succeed I will probably choose this second solution even if the button is not as big as I wish.

Master caution again

2009-02-16T09:33:00.003+01:00

The master cation frame is finally ready, I will post a few pictures one of these days.

The final version is slightly different from the original design, in fact the two springs had to be put between the two lower brackets. It means that the two springs push the brackets away one from the other instead of pulling. I have tested the movement of the button and it works even if it is not as smooth as I wish. I guesst I have to put some oil between the two pieces of aluminium but it can never be as smooth as an electronic switch.

There is also another problem due to the windows made in the outer windows to let the upper brackets pass outside of the pipe to fix the button to the cockpit frame. The windows will be a problem when the leds are on because the light will pass also throught the windows creating an undesired game of lights. I have thought to two possible solutions and I will probably adopt both of them:

mount the button in such a way the window will always be below the frame (in this way I guess the light will be much less because the wood will naturally stop it; I should probably add a fisical protection like a piece of dark gumi)
try to mount the led in the upper most side of the outer pipe with a dark gumi in the back (for this implementation I should investigate the usage of special very little leds like those used to light handy phones; the light will probably be inserted into the plexi; particular caution must be applied while cabling the leds because they move together with the outer pipe whenever the button is pressed or released)

In the mean time I think it is time to start designing the right side of the cockpit. I have to put there more commands usually found in the upper side of the real cockpit like fior example the trust control, the gear lever and so on. I have submitted yesterady an order to opencockpits getting a new master card a few switches and the gear lever of the 737 (I had found a 767 model too but was really too expansive).

Master caution button project

2008-12-26T21:01:00.003+01:00

Here below you can see a picture of the master caution button project.

The green box is the bigger squared pipe. The litle pipe, inside the green box, is represented by a black box.
The big green box moves up and down around the blue supports (there are 2 holes in the big pipe and the supports, screwed in the little pipe, will pass through such holes).
Two springs kee the button in the upper position. When the user presses the button, a switch is closed activating a line in the SIOC software.

The blue supports in the upper side are screwd to the panel and fix the button in the right position. The other 4 supports, at the bottom of the 2 pipes are needed to blck the switch and the screws. You can imagine a hole in a pipe whenever a support is fixed in the other squared pipe.

Plexi has to be fixed very carefully because it needs to support user pressures that could be quite strong. The plexi will have a written but the caution/warning message will be distinguished by the color of the leds (yellow for warning and red for alert).

The picture has no sizes but if someone is interested I could write down a better project with measures. However, the little squared pipe is 7cm long and the biggest is 6cm. I have bought such pipes in a workshop for around 3EUR each.

At the present I have cutted the two pipes and made the holes in the biggest one. The holse still needs to be refined. and I ma still thinking which is the best way to do that.

The design is quite clear for me. But there are a lt of techinical issues that i don´t know yet how to address. For example how to fix the springs and the switch. And even which type of switch to mount.
Another point is the plexi that should have the same level of the surface of the pipe but fixed somehow to allow the user to press it without bracking or moving.
Finally, until the whole button will be ready I don´t know if the bissgets pipe will move smoothly enough inside the little one.

As usual, I will post some picture in the blog.

Master caution button design

2008-12-26T19:28:00.005+01:00

After browsing the web I have found that master caution buttons ready to use are quite expansive (something like 50EUR or more). I found that price so unbeliavable for a single button that Ideide to try to build one from scratch.

I bought two squared pipes with a very similar size in such a way the biggest one surround the little one leaving a very little space. I will put the leds into the little one while the bigger one moves forward and backward. When in backward position it will press a switch in order to clear the warning.

I kno that what I said is not clear enough. If I have enough time I will draw the project and put here an image.
I still have some concern about this idea but I found it a very interesting challenge.

That´s it for now. Merry Christmas and happy new year to everybody!

Cockpit light

2008-11-20T10:04:00.004+01:00

If you fly by night you know that it is very dificult to see the landscape outside of the windows. You can trick the monitor but the result is always bad looking. To enhance the situation you can think of turning off all the light and fly in a dark room. This strategy works of course but it is very difficult to find the keys of the keyboard or, even worst, you can't write down notes while flying online. Well, I don't know you but I have to write down al least metars, radio frequencies and take off clearances.

I agree that the problem of the lighting is temporary because when all the controls will be implemented at hardware it will not be needed anymore to find the keys of the keyboard. But what until then?

I thought about this problem for a long time and arrived to the following conclusion. I need a light that can be turned on and off independently of the simulator and maybe later on integrated with the 767 light switch. The light should be strong enough to allow writing notes and reading the keyboard but not too strong to reduce the visibility of landscape details flying by night.

I bought a couple of blue led strips and positioned in the upper right and left side of the closet. They are turned on and off by an apposite switch positioned below the table.

The following picture shows the environment while flying:

You might easily find it kitsch but for me the final effect is quite good: no artificial light reflected in the two screens, lightning is soft and relaxing but strong enough to read the keyboard or write down notes.

A possible next step could be that of integrating the lighting to the 767 cockpit. The two 24 leds strips needs 12V power that I already have in the power supply. The SIOC software already catch the events of the cabin light switch but up to now it only sends the command to the simulator. It would be possible to close a 5V output line that in turn powers on the leds with the help of a raleigh or something like that. It is something I will think about...

Last but not least the price. I payed the two strips of 24 blueleds, a 12V dedicated power supply, cables and the switch around 50 EUR. Half an afternon was the time to mount the hardware in the closet.

New radio and MCP panel

2008-11-13T10:02:00.006+01:00

The refactoring the radio and MCP panelsis finally completed. You can see a snapshot of the previous situation in this post. The radios were in the left side in two white wodden frames. The MCP and the EFIS were below the two monitors in a very big wodden box bought from Ikea a lot of time ago.

The idea was to have a new box with the EFIS and the MCP in the upper side and the radios at the bottom.The new panel is shown by the following picture.

As you can see the new panel is much more compact. The little screwed panel in the upper left side is intended to contain some buttons controlled via opencockpit. That panel is not as wide as I hoped so I think I will put there not more then 4 buttons. For sure it will contain the master switch and the toga.

Just behind the webcam there is the power switch and another switch to close the contacts of the dip switches of the CPFlight MCP for upgrading the firmware.

The wood is painted with a water paint and the color is RAL7043. The new CPFlight radios have almost the same color of the panel while the old ones, the MCP and the EFIS, are quite different. However the final result is not bad and for sure much better then the original situation.

Yesterday night I made my first flight with the new panel, from EHAM to LIMC. I took this photo while climbing to final FL310 under Brussel CTR:

You can see the panel back lighted. In the left screen the VC and in the rigth monitor IVAP, the FMC and the radio panel. Most of the time, I use the left monitor to browse the charts.

Just upon the rigth screen you can see the three leds of the cabin light, the read and white beacons from the opencockpits light panel.

Work in progress with MCP and radios

2008-10-27T10:21:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I began the building of the new panel with MCP, EFIS and radios I bought from CPFlight.

The panel is composed of a box of 64x17 cm to be positioned below the left monitor. In the upper side of the box there will be the EFIS then the MCP. At the bottom, from left to righ, XPNDR, COM, ADF VOR.

At the present the scheleton of box is completed and the elictrical components are in place. There will be one button for turning ON/OFF the electronics and a two poles switch button for upgarding the firmaware without insering the 2 dip switches in the rear side of the MCP by hand. In this way the firmaware can be upgraded without moving the panel.

At the right upper side of the front panel there is less space then I initially supposed: only a 8x6 cm little panel. I will put there the master switch, the GA and the button to switch between auto and manual setting of the VOR for the capitain.

In the first step this panel will be empty but ready for the replacement with the panel with the buttons.

For the GA button I have found at conrad a little squared button that can be reasonably used. It has no led on board and so it can't be back lighted.

The master switch is the most complex button because it has more then one led, at least a red and a yellow one for caution and warning. Till now I have found no button like that on the market. Of course it is sold by specialised web sites but it is very expansive.

The button to switch between manual and automatic VOR tuning can be one of the button (with a green led) I have already used for the light panel.

I am currently investigating the way to build the master switch and korry buttons. I subscribed to mycockpit forum and ther I have found some interesting solution. I will create a new post later with some good solution.

Refactoring of the MCP/EFIS/RADIOS panels

2008-10-21T10:29:00.002+02:00

It seems that next week I have to put all my stuff out of the shelf :(

I'll take the chance to fix the not working button of the light panel. At the same time I want to change the setup of the MCP, EFIS and radios. Current setup was in fact a temporary solution that is in place for more then one year.

The idea is to create a wodden frame having the MCP and the EFIS in the upper side and the 4 radio modules at the bottom. If I have enought space, I will insert some controls in the upper side of the panel. I am thinking of the master switch and GA button or the annunciators or something else. The new panel, painted in RAL 7043, will be placed below the 2 monitors, where the MCP and EFIS are at the present. Giving that I already have at home all the wood I need, i guess that this remake will last for some days only.

At the end, I will have the left side free for new panels and space on the left for e new panel that I am designing right now.

My idea for this new panel and for the following is to be modular. I mean that frame of the panel will be fixed and sub-panels will be mounted. In this way it will be possible to unmount a sub panel for upgrading or fixing without the need of open everything. Actually, this is nothing new...

Beside this refactoring, I am thinking of a new panel to put on the right side of the MCP/radios panel. I ahve thought a little bit on what controls I have to put in and I am now focused on the engines startup, the gera lever and myabe the flap. I have brosed the net for componets and I have found a gera for the 767 for 280EUR. It is crazy so I am going to build my gear level from scratch and depending on the result I will build a flap lever too.

I am quite disappointed fro the prices of hardware components on the net. Specialised web sites have crazy prices and I am probably not the best to browse electorinc web sites...

IVAP moved in the laptop

2008-10-07T14:41:00.003+02:00

Excited by having the hardware connected to the laptop, yesterday I moved IVAP from my desktop in the laptop. Just to be a little more clear (and repetitive): I run FSX in the desktop while opencockpit hardware (the light panel for instance) is connected to a Dell laptop.

The installation went quite smoothly apart that I had to install SimConnects in the laptop. But even this step was quite easy and automatic.
Initially I decided to have all the IVAP subprocesses running in the laptop but the connection with IVAO did not respond. I ended up having in the desktop only the GUI and the IVAO connection while all the rest runs in the laptop.

Surprisingly the IVAO traffic was immediately there, all the hardware (OpenCockpit and CPFlight) worked as usual as well as TeamSpeak for voice communications.

I still have to try with a full online flight to double check if the engine weather works well. By turning the encoders of CPFlight MCP it seems that it now reacts much better.
What is not satisfatory is that the online traffic that is not smooth enough: I have to check connecting the laptop through an RJ45 instead of the wireless.

Moens, the author of IVAP, does not warranty about increasing of performances having IVAP running in a separate windows box in connection with FSX. From this point of view my PC is too old and slow to give definite results but if my CPFlight hardware is more responsive than it means that the performances are better then before.

In place

2008-09-22T20:56:00.003+02:00

The panel is in place just on top of the right screen.

These are 2 shots of my flight simulator setup (without the 2 peices of my saitek X45 joy):

Done!

2008-09-19T21:35:00.006+02:00

I did the first flight with the panel over the table and all the cables around me. The panel worked as expected and the simulator behaved very well without slowing down the simulator. Reaction tme was very good also under stress. This is didn´t surprise me because the hardware is connected to the laptop and the software runs there too.

I have discovered that one of the button of the panel is not implemented by 767LD SDK and so now the second button at le left side (the aisle flood) is free. I am thinking to remap this button to something else.. I don´t know yet. It might be the parking brake until I implement another panel. Or the external power supply... Well I don´t know yet...

The pictures below show the panel with the front cover and the second plexy screwed over it. I like it... I have put all these screws thinking that the final looking was better but I am not fully convinced... However it is how it is and I am not going to change it!

Sorry for the red pen... it is there to keep the panel straight in front of the camera. And sorry again for the miserable quality of the pictures...

I don´t need to paint the wodden because it would be invisible in the place where I have decided to install the panel.
And I have decided that this panel will have no backlight because the final result would be very bad in any case.

Panel connected to the simulator

2008-09-14T21:49:00.003+02:00

Today I connected the hardware with FSX.

First of all I would thank Niko Kaan once more: it has been very vey easy.

SIOC runs in the laptop where I connected the OpenCockpits hardware through the USB. leksseecon instead runs in the same PC where the flight simulator runs.
I have a lan where each PC has a fixed IP number so I had to change the lekseecon config file giving the IP address of the laptop.
On the SIOC side instead I had a little problem because I forgot to configure sioc.ini telling which MasterCard is in the system and how it is connected. This problem was not easy to find because everything seemed to work well but it was not possible to read/change hardware values. At the end I found an hidden written in the main SIOC panel saying Stopped and after a short search in the forum I got the solution. What about writing iStopped in red?!?

Programming SIOC was much easier then I though but I have to say that the SIOC editor panel is slow and boring even for a short program like mine is. Next step is to program by writing a text file.

Before finishing and go to have dinner, I have to spend a couple of words on lekseecon. I think it is really wanderful and almost transparent. It connects to the remote SIOC with no need to buy WideClient from Peter Dowson.
Beside that, synchronization with the hardware happens by magic and in this way the SIOC program is shorter, faster to write and to debug. Thank you again Nico.

As I said everything worked Immediatly and I did what I want in just an afternoon playng with the software. I had to say that I am an expert programmer and sytem manager so I would not be surprised if those steps are less easy for someone else. But believe me, it is easy ;-)

Next step is to make the first fly with the panel. It is months that I am waiting this moment...

Successfully tested

2008-09-14T13:04:00.005+02:00

A few minutes ago I succesfully tested all the connections (led sand buttons) with the OpenCockpits Controlador.
Initially nothing worked. I guess the problem was that I connected the MasterCard to the 4th socket of the expansion card instead of the first one.

The picture upon shows the test session where a couple of buttons are in the ON position and a couple of leds in the botton are lighted.

As I said in one of my previous post I decided to put the first masterCard together with the power supply. If you follow the cables of the picture upon you can that thea are connected to the upper right side of the box. The following picture shows the internal of the box.

The muster card is in the upper side. The first ouput socket is connected to a 40 pin flat cable. Tha cable is divided in 2 DB25 sockets. The output is taken from the DB9.

Having all in this box is a great because I can move the master card and the usb and the power supply eveywherewithout caring, for example, if it is upside down.

Sorry for the very poor quality of the attached pictures: my canon PowerShot S60 is almost dead!

Next step is to finish the panel by attaching the printed picture and the protective plexi over it. For the time being I am not going to add the backlight but in principle I have all I need in place (one free output line and 5V line).

It is also time to start connecting the panel to the 767LD. I will use lekseecon from Niko Kan together with SIOC. While testing I took the indexes of buttons and leds.

Wires

2008-09-10T20:55:00.003+02:00

Here you can see a picture of the wiring of the outputs:

At the bottom there is the DB9.
The positive pole goes to directly to the left side of the 40 pins socket. A negative cable goes at the right side to. The LED for the power will be connected to these 2 cabel and installed into one side of the panel.
The negative pole is connected the 7 upper right pins while the seven positve cable goes in the seven bottom pins of the socket with a little resistance.

This wiring allows me to get a pair of cable from the 40 wires flat cable and connect dirctly the negative and the positive to each LED.
In my opinion the connection is very simple and more important I can decouple the panel from the frame olugging or unplugging the flat cable in the socket.

The design for the input lines is more or less the same as you can see in this picture:

The DB25 is below the pin holes card and connects 2 bloks of 20 wires, 2 of which are grounds.
The division resembles the master card architecture but the grounds extends for 9 poles.

The 40 pins socket is divided in 2 areas for the 2 blocks of inputs. The ground extends for 9 pins in the high left side and for other 9 pins in the left upper side. Each of the 9 inputs of the same block are just beow the respective ground.
The 4 pins at the center of the socket (2 at the top and 2 at the bottom) are unused.

Cabling

2008-09-09T22:39:00.002+02:00

I have finally cabled all the leds and buttons in the panel.

I am not going to attach the schema here (please send me an email if you are interested).
The concept driving the wiring is the following:

the box has a DB9 socket for the leds (the same that is in the master card). This means that there is one +5 line and one more out then the panel needs.
the box has a DB25 with 18 input lines (plus 2 ground; it takes one half of one of the 2 output sockets of the master card). In this way ther are 4 spare output lines.
it must be possible to remove the panel from the frame unplugging a socket but without damaging the connections
a LED takes the +5V from the output and shows if the panel is connected to the master card

The idea is that the cables from the DB9 and the DB25 aof the frame re connected to a IDE 40 pins sockets screwed to the frame itself. A 40 pins cable is connected from one side into the socket and to the other side to the buttons (or the leds).
In this way if I want to remove the panel from the box I only have to unplug the 40 pins cable.

I have successfully tested the leds. While for the buttons I need some more work because I do not have a 25 pin cable.

I have decided the put the master card in the power supply box so I am now reshaping the box to fit both the cards.

Wodden frame

2008-08-20T19:42:00.004+02:00

The frame is in place, ready to be painted. I have already cutted the edges and the internal parts touching the buttons.

All the buttons and switches have been locked to the plexi: I made some holes in the plexi to put the hooks of the switches into. The diffiuclt part was to cut the plexi deeply enough to fit the hooks without passing to other side of the sheet.

The 6 buttons with leds have been fixed to the plexi with the help of some screws whose heads goes inside the plexi leaving its surface as flat as we need to put the second sheet of plexi on it later on.

This work needed much more time then expected while working the wood to leave space for buttons internally and while making the holes in the plexi for the hooks of the switches and for the heads of the screws. A lot of time, patience and precision...

Connection test

2008-06-15T18:09:00.003+02:00

I have connected the power supply to the master to check the cabling.
First I had to setup a cable to take 5V power and then I set up a flat 40 pins cable to test J3 and J4 connectors.
Hard disk flat cables have one pin closed, if I recall well it is number 10. However it can be successfully opened with the dremel. I have then grouped the 40 cables 10 by 10 and marked in black the four grounds.

I am now sure that the power supply and the USB cabling is well done and ready to be used.

The buttons are in place

2008-06-07T20:00:00.003+02:00

I put all the buttons, switches and leds in their proper positions into the panel holes.

They are better then I thought: even if the holes are not perfect the items took their place quite smoothly.

I had to figh a little to put the 5 buttons in the right side into the panel with their pins out of the holes card but the final result is pretty good.

This photo shows the plexi panel with all the eletronic stuffs inside:

To complete the job I have to put the mask and cover with a second plexi.
This is the panel with the mask I used to cut just to give me the feeling of the final result.

Much better isn't it?

The panel has a total of 14 buttons and 6 leds to connect to the master. I do not have yet a plan for that. I didn´t find a position for the master neither the way to connect to this panel. I only know that the panel will be placed on top of the monitor and connected somehow to the master that will be in another position.

I think I need to see some results so I will probably leave the master over the table, connect the cables and try to let the system work. Later on I will put all the pieces in their right position.

First panel cutted

2008-05-20T09:31:00.002+02:00

Last sunday I finished cutting the first part of the light panel. and this time was much more easy then before and in fact I did everything in a couple of hours.

The problem I had before was that I painted the area to cut with a black pen over the upper protecting cellophane. The area appeared very clearly but when I start drilling the cellophane got burned and the colored areas disappeared.

This time I removed the cellophane from both sides of the plexi and painted both sides with the black pen. In this way was much easier to identify what to cut and the black part remained untouched while drilling.

Now I have the holes to insert all the buttons and switches. I am not completely satisfied because the surface is not perfect but I am not very good in this kind of things. However, this is the plexi panel where I will fix the switches and it will be covered by the second one and the paper with the written and the lines so it is not very important if it is not perfect... I hope ;-)

Now I am ready to fix buttons and switches and to wire them to have something working with the simulator.

I am still thinking where to put the master card and how to cable everything given that the space for the buttons is very thin, just over the LCDs. I have to connect the master card to the power supply and to the new panel.

I created my first photo album

2008-04-18T18:05:00.004+02:00

I finally had some time to setup my photo album.
it is a long time I decided to put my pictures on Webshots and today I finally create 2 albums.
The first one shows some picture I took flying from Munich to Montreal wher I attended a famous conference on Computer Science: OOPSLA 2007.
You can browser the album by clicking here.

I don't think my digital camera allows me to take better shots :-(

This image shows the engine of the DLH A340. I am over the ocean in this moment:

The engines are so fascinating...

The followings are a couple of landscapes I took approaching Montreal airport:

Nice colors.. Isn't it?

I would like to add two more funny pictures i took at Munich airport. Iwas on a Tuifly 737 ready for departure towards Cagliari, in Italy.
A snow storm finished a couple of minutes before leaving an incredibly blue sky.
Close to the runway the captain stopped for the deicying: I took the change to take a picture of the procedure from inside the cabin:

Impressive: all the passengers had their noses at the left windows!

And when the deicing finished, the surprise; the driver was a spotter!

Do you think it is possible to get a better position for a spotter?

Now, if you wish to look at the 2 albums, with all the pictures available in full resoulution just click on the links below:

flight from Munich to Montreal by beoale
Deicing at EDDM by beoale

New HD installed

2008-03-31T16:05:00.002+02:00

Finally i bought I replacement for my broken hard disk. I have bought a 320Gb Western Digital and reinstalled windows XP with some some software.
I still have no idea what was in that hard disk but for sure I have lost the light panel. I should have a backup in one of my memory stick.
Fortunately my photos are in the second hard disk and are safe (I have already done a new backup on a DVD).

I had a few minutes to continue working on the cutting of the panel. The idea of marking with a black pen the part to remove seems good but still not perfect.
I think I should remove the protection from the surface before coloring otherwise while using the dremel the transparent protection moves and it is difficult to have a clear picture of the border lines to cut out of the plexi.
I have to prepare a new mask and restarting with a new piece of plexi but with the new diamant tool I bought for the dremel the cutting seems much better then before.

Cutting the plexi

2008-03-25T14:32:00.003+01:00

I am currently trying to cut the plexi for the designed light panel but it is not easy as I thought.
The idea is to insert the picture between two sheets of plexiglas, the first one is 3mm and the second 2mm.

I did cut the 2mm sheet with a cutter but it was not easy to maintain the cutter straight enough and I had to repeat the procedure a couple of times; finally I decided that a cutter is not good enough for the 3mm sheet.
In fact, for the bigger sheet I used the dremel but I am still not 100% satisfied of the final result especially while cutting the holes for the electronic components. I have then bought a diamant tool to try again.

During Easter the main hard disk of my pc broke and I need to found a valid replacement: hopefully I didn't loose all my data! In any case I need a new HD and some time to reinstall the operating system and all the rest.

Light panel

2008-03-17T09:13:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I spent some time with the design of the light panel.

I have decided to use openoffice to draw the panel. In fact the suite draw of openoffice allows to draw objects with several interesting features. For example it is possible to define custom objects, their positions, group and ungroup objects and so on. It is basically the free version of Microsoft PowerPoint. Another advantage of this tool is that it is possible to save in a great number of file formats.

The following picture shows the panel:

The panel is divided in 4 parts. From left to right, the first, the panel flood is composed of 3 switches to set the cockpit lights. The second part contains the three switches for the taxi lights; the third panel has the landing lights and the last panel has the switches for the external lights.
The real 767 and the LevelD panels are different from this one, for example taxi lights are below the flood panel. But I need a slim panel to locate over one of my monitor where I have around 5.5cm of available space.
The yellow parts are those that I need to cut to insert the switches.

Round switches will be standard ON/OFF switches of different sizes, for example the landing switches are bigger then the others.
Squared switches have a green LED on board that illuminate when the light is on.

The draw will be printed in a label and attached to a plexiglas panel. White chars and shapes will generate the retro illumination that at the present I plan to create by means of several white leds.

The panel is freely available: send me an email if you want to have your copy.

Power supply gallery

2008-03-13T10:35:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I created a new web album in picasa with some pictures I took building the power supply:

Power supply

I don't think these item is very interesting for people building their own home cockpit. However I like to have an history of what I did and the blog fits very well.
On the other having a gallery of pictures allow me to look how the tools are built without opening their box (even if in this case it is very simple).

The output power line is composed of a 5V and a 12V line as I said in my previous post. The plug dues not allow to connect the 5V with the 12V and vice versa. of course.

Now that the PS is ready I can start thinking to the more exciting part: building the cockpit or... well.. my
version of the cockpit.

Power supply

2008-03-12T14:53:00.006+01:00

These points should all be implemented while building the power supply:

the unit must be positioned into a movable box
the unit can be positioned in any way even upside down
input: one socket powers the PSU
output: one socket with 5V and 12V output power lines
it must be possible to add more output sockets in future
one switch to turn on or off the PSU
each output socket has a 2 LEDs showing if the 2 output lines works (a yellow LED for 12V and green one for 5V)
the USB expansion card is positioned into the PSU
- the box has an USB socket to connect to the PC
- one LED shows if the USB card is powered (the power is takes directly from the USB card)
- one DSUB 25pin socket to connect the master to the USB expansion card
- it must be possible to add more DSUB sockets in future to connect more master cards
the box must have a cooling fan

I have bought a box for the PS from OBI: it is a tool box that costs around 9 euro.
I am going to build the PS into such a box by installing cables, sockets and LEDs as specified by the requirements written upon.

The observatory where I work has a disposal area where they put old PCs and old hardware before throwing away. I went there a couple of times and I have taken an ATX power supply from an old broken PC. This will be the core of my PS because it produces stable 12 and 5V power lines.
The only items I have to buy are the sockets (especially those bringing 5V and 12V lines), the USB connector and the DB25 poles to connect the USB card to the remote master.

The following picture shows a schema of the PS. Red lines are power lines. Blue lines represents computer data flow. As you can see the PS has only one power socket and one DB25 socket but there is enough room to add more in future.
The switch to power on/off the PS is not shown but it is close to 220V input line.

Some pictures will be added soon showing the building process.

The simulator into the closet

2008-03-11T15:06:00.003+01:00

My apartment is not very big and I needed a place to put my windows box and my flight simulator stuff without having cables visible in any place.
I would say that computers are never nice looking but in my case with all the cables running from the box to monitors, joy, MCP and so on my PC looks very ugly. My wife, the boss, decided the computer must be hidden somewhere.

I don't have a free room available so I have decided to put all the stuffs into a mirrored closet in the living room. When I am not flying the closet is closed and the computer invisible. I have to mediate, of course, because the available room into a 1m wide closet is not what we can think of by talking about an home cockpit. However, planning the space very carefully I can demonstrate that the project is feasible.

The first step was to build a wooden armature to reinforce the closet itself in order to be able to hang the monitors or other devices along walls. The armature goes into the closet just upon the table:

The second part of the project was to install all the hardware into the closet: the PC, 2 monitors, the joy, the MCP, the 4 radio modules, headset, webcam, printer, scanner.

The idea was to have the PC and the printer on the floor. The 2 monitors hanged on the wall as well as the radio modules and the MCP.
The keyboard goes below the table so there will be enough room for the joystick, the mouse, papers and charts over the table:

You can see some more shots I took while building the system is in the closet gallery:

The flight simulator into the closet

This introduction is probably enough to explain the situation and the solution I found. I would say that I am quite satisfied and even surprised for the final result. And even more important, my wife is satisfied with this solution.

Flying without keyboard

2008-03-06T12:22:00.004+01:00

My wish is to fly with the simulator without touching the keyboard and the mouse as far as possible.

The idea arose when I bought the MCP and the EFIS and I found out how great was the improvement in realism.
At that time I bought the hardware from CPFlight because I did not have any experience in electronics apart of some concept due to my work.
For the same reason I bought a ready-to-use NAV, VOR,ADF and COM modules.

My apartment is not very big and the PC and all the stuffs to fly have to be installed in the living room but they must be hidden when nobody is flying.

This constraint means that all the equipments must be placed into a mirrored closet.
As you can see in the following picture, the central part of the closet is open and ready.

As a consequence, I can have as much hardware, instruments and panels as I can put inside the closet.
It is also possible to have hardware that I can easily move from one position to another when I fly.

This constraint affects my design in the following ways:

there is no room for the second officer panels and instruments;
the panels can't reproduce the original ones i.e. I have to create my panels putting all the controls I need in a logical way;
all the panels and the hardware must be easy to move from one position to another (inside the closet and tomorrow in another room outside o f the closet).

After a survey on the web, I have decided to adopt Opencockpits cards.

The main reason is that the community of Opencockpit users is quite big and the brand is based in Spain, Europe, so I can order the pieces and have them ta home in a short time.
Opencockpit cards seem clean easy to build even for non expert people like me.
The software seem easy to configure and interface with FSX.

As a starting point, I have bought an USB expansion cards and a Master card.The first one connects to one of the USB sockets of my PC and has 4 sockets to connect up to 4 masters card.

Besides that, the USB expansion card has 4 potentiometer that could be used for driving axes.
The master card has input and output lines as well as a socket to connect displays.
I kindly suggest to browse the Opencockpits website if you need more info about these cards.

I have installed the software and the hardware and tested their functioning with a simple experiment: I wanted to command the landing gear with a switch and have a light (LED) on when the landing gear is down.

I have then connected the USB to the PC, the two cards together, the master card to my power supply, the cables to input and output lines.
I have then installed the Opencockpit software and started FSX with the default 737.
For this experiment I did not use SIOCbut ConfigIOCards that allows to link switches and LEDs (i.e. input and output lines) to FS SDK offset through FSUIPC.
The following picture shows my test suite.

You can see the 2 cards directly connected, the power supply in the left side and a white LED over the keyboard. I needed no more then 2 hours to have the hardware installed, the LED and the landing gear switch working. That is a very good result given that my experience in electronic is almost null.

At this point the project can start!I want to build my hardware to fly the 767LD with the help of the software developed by Niko Kan.

The first step is to build the power supply unit (PSU) then all the the panels that depend on this one..

Flight simulation

2008-03-05T13:39:00.004+01:00

Flying with a simulator is my preferred hobby.
Well not as good as snorkeling but during german winter it is far much better to find some indoor activity!

I bought my first home computer, a Commodore 64, after playing with my cousin's flight simulator in far 1986.

As the time passed I changed several computers and flown almost all the simulators available on the market.
Actually i am flying with the Microsoft flight simulator X.
The main reason driving this choice is that the MS FS is the most supported product for third party hardware and software.

There two kind of flight I love. One is an unruled VFR when I do not want to think about anything: just start the engine, take off, watch out for the landscape and eventually land safely somewhere.

I love to fly in place I know very well, like around Trieste or Cagliari. Sometimes when i have to go somewhere for vacation or for job i like to fly around a little bit to have an idea of the place before arriving.
At the present my preferred plane for VFR is ATR 72-500 from Flight1.
I found the plane and its systems very well done; for me one of the most complete turbo prop plane one the market.

My choice for IFR flights is the 767 LevelD.

I think one on the best planes to fly with a good reproduction of the real systems, frame rate friendly and I know this product since the the PIC version.
I fly Condor because I like the company, the colors and the livery.

My flight are usually quite short because the best parts of a flight are departure and landing.

I find quite boring to stay in front of a PC simulating a long flight between Frankfurt and Los Angeles just monitoring the FMC until is time to start the descent.
It is better to plan a flight like Munich-Rome for example having the time for a little rest after turning off the passengers lights and and before preparing the descent.

I like to fly trying to emulate the reality so I do not use tools like navigators and so on. I only have my plane and possibly other pilots and ATCs around me.

In fact I always fly online, with IVAO.
Given that I am not a real pilot, I admit that my vision of reality is miles far away...
My IVAO id is 108576 and today I have 934 hours logged in the system. A lot of time.. around 39 days.

After years flying online and offline I have decided that having one screen and a 4-axes joystick was not enough and I have decided to have a better setup.

The dream is to fly without touching the keyboard.
I am still far from that but i am actively working on it building my version of an home cockpit.

My PC is Scaleo from Fujitsu-Siemens as follows:

CPU Intel pentium 4HT, 3.2Mhz
RAM 2Gb 400Mhz
2 HD SATA of 150Gb each
Graphic card ATI Radeon X1800XT dual head, 512Mb, PCI Express
LAN Ethernet
WLAN netgear on a PCI card
19" LG monitor running at a resolution of 1280x1024
17" Samsung monitor running at a resolution of 1280x1024

The operating system is Windows XP home, unfortunately in german that makes solving problems very time consuming.

With such a hardware configuration the flight simulator runs at around 15fps not very high but fortunately FSX is smooth enough.

Under certain conditions like bad weather and heavy online traffic it slows down to about 10fps and sometimes I have some short stop of around half second that at the prsent is not big problem.
I am thinking to an upgrade of course.
I foreseen to buy a new PC after next summer: at the present I am a little bit concerned about dual core machines and Windows Vista.

The following picture shows my initial setup for flying.

The picture was taken when I bought the MCP and the EFIS from CPFlight to flight with 767LD.

At that time I was aware that the hardware is not for 767 but for 737 but the 737 buttons are mapped in the 767 ones.
I am quite satisfied but I have to say that CPFlight system is not 100% bugs free; in particular it happens from time to time that the MCP turns black and non responsive during final approach phase and the HDG reset to 0.
This last bug is quite annoying because if in lateral mode, the HDG reset to 0 and the plane starts to run toward 360.

I use the biggest monitor with the main view of FSX.

I still fly with the traditional 2D view but I am trying to get used to the virtual cockpit that is much more useful especially for taxing and flight preparation.
The virtual cockpit is much more useful and realistic but with the 2D I have everyting available at a glance.
When my home cockpit will be ready, I guess I do not need the 2D anamore and I can safely switch to virtual cockpit

The second monitor contains secondary panels like pedestal, overhead, FMC, IVAP together with charts.

I do not use tools like IVAE, QuteScoop, FSNavigator and so on because I think the reduce the realism.

The joy is a Saitek X45.
X45 is not produced any more but is still a good product having the main stick with 2 axes and the throttle handle with an axis to control ailerons and the nose gear.

There are enough buttons to raise and lower the flaps, apply differential brakes, push to talk, main brakes and so on. In this way I can afford approaches and landings without the help of the keyboard.

Just a few words more about the picture upon.
The 767LD is at LIEE, both engines off, and I was testing the hardware from CPFlight. You can see a lot of cables in the left side that connect the MCP to the windows box and to the power, other cables connect the 2 parts of the joy together and the USB socket.

When I installed the MCP and the EFIS I was still stuck to a traditional way of simulating. I was really surprised of the improvements the hardware gave to the realism and I start thinking to build a kind of home cockpit to fly reducing the interaction with the keyboard and the mouse.

This was the start of my dream and a new hobby: build my prsonal version of an home cockpit.
I will talk you more about that in one of my next posts.

This post has been written by copy and paste from my home page.
The original content will be removed from my home page very soon.

VoloVirtuale

2008-02-20T03:23:00.004+01:00

I was quite busy working during the past days.
I am still busy and now I am in Socorro NM on a mission to work even more.

Since a couple weeks I am moderator of a very famous italian forum for air simulation.
I hope you have time to visit the forum: VoloVirtuale It is the most clicked forum for simaviation in italy.

It is hard to believe how many options has a moderator. The forum seems much more complicated to me now. And it requires to me much more time: I have to read a lot of posts and think of each one against the forum policy.
It is a great honor for me to have been appointed to such a position. I have to thank all the VV staff for giving me this opportunity.
I hope to do a good there.

Creation of the blog

2008-02-06T09:39:00.000+01:00

It is a long time I am thinking to create a blog. Today I had the chance to visit one of my friend's blog and decided to start.

In the past I was writing all my stuff into my home page, writing HTML code with the help of eclipse but I think a blog is more appropriate. So, as a starting point, I will move here what actually is in my home page.

My great passion is flying with the flight simulator and I have started building my home cockpit. Well it is not a replica of a real one because I do not have enough room available for that at the moment. The goal is to fly without keyboard and mouse. I am going to write here what I am doing, why and how.

This is the main purpose of this blog but I guess I could occasionally add comments about my free time and my second passion: snorkelling.