On Wed, Dec 10, 2003 at 03:40:54AM -0500, Alan King wrote:
>time. Just show those (mostly ignorant) MSFS crowds what flightgear can >do :-)
Just joined the list myself and this was one of only a few main reasons. I was drawing up homemade control system hardware this afternoon.
Welcome Alan :) You showed up just at the right time. The hardware building thread started just a couple of days ago... :-)
I think I have the rudder pedals down to the bare minimum for correct control, linear rudder and proportional toe brakes but only using 2 drawer slides for minimum cost and only drilled holes for easy assembly, no slots in a bellcrank etc. Yoke is just a sloped cabinet with a drawer slide underneath, two bearings mounted on this with a threaded
drawer slides are pretty interesting for cockpit building. We used them for our XYZ table. http://cockpit.varxec.de/tools/
You can find them in any good home improvement store (or at home if you
wanna get rid of some old funiture ;)
Yep, here is a picture of my CNC/driller. I wanted mostly metal, all cheap hardware store components, and just drill hole assembly, no slotting etc. I have a large electronics inventory, and have about 400 stepper motors on hand and 2K mosfets and my own intelligent 4 and 5 phase stepper motor controller/driver board. Also while you're at it hit the beacon file, it looks good and I've now built much bigger one, note it's a 3 MB mpg..
http://home.nc.rr.com/alan69/FlightGear/CNC.jpg
http://home.nc.rr.com/alan69/Beacon.mpg
rod running through with the yoke. Fixed to the rod is an angle bracket, 2.5" out then several over, with an optical mouse attached. Sectioned 4" pipe fixed concentric to the rod with a pattern attached to the outside. With 2" in and out travel and 120 deg for roll it should
the 120 deg, is that 60 in each direction, or 120 in each dir ? My yoke (747 style) has 180 deg total, so 90 in each dir. I have a several minutes long cockpit video from the net of a LH 747-400 where you can see the flightcontrols check. There the yoke went from -90 to +90 deg.
Well I was just going at least 60 to 60 deg by what a pilot friend had said, actually it will do 180 deg total easily. With a little work, I could use a wireless mouse and even get 360 degrees continuous with the drawer slide going through a complete pipe section.
give about 4" by 4" mouse travel around the pipe, for 1600 points total resolution on each axis, scaled down to reasonable for output. $10 optical mouse is the only part not absolute minimum cost, but with high res and all optical and a wheel to relocate for other use I think it's an ok trade off. Throttle and the rest are no real problem after that.
Do you use that "mouse" as the primary mouse for fgfs for "mouse yoke mode"
(what you get when you right click once in fgfs) or did you write a
joystick driver for it ?
The nice thing about using the mouse is, that the resolution is much
better than with a potentiometer.
It's just being built. But it did hit me looking at it last night that Windows handles 2 mice ok with both moving the pointer, just have it USB and plug it in and leave the normal mouse alone. Must have some scaling though, FlightGear is very touchy with my normal 400 dpi mouse. First dot over from center is a noticable jump, more than it should be.
Will have a port to hook in my RC transmitter and multiple output formats, so I can fly either RC trans or yoke/pedals for Flightgear or FMS. Also since I need a slope cabinet for the yoke anyway, turn it around and the back side will be a dual joystick MAME controller for two players or dual joystick for Robotron 2084 etc. Trying to make it all in one so I only have ONE extra controller to have laying around! :)
Should come in under $50-$60 for just the yoke/pedals part, I do PICs as well so that part's easy. The $200ish for the CH stuff really isn't that bad, but I'm going to make some for a couple friends as well. I'd rather have something that feels rock solid over a plastic game controller for myself anyway. Plus I can put it on the net and then
Do you have any pics of your setup on the web yet ?
I'm just laying things out, but since you're looking and others may have some interest, I put up some drawings/pics. Rudder first:
http://home.nc.rr.com/alan69/FlightGear/rudder.gif
I follow the KISS design philosophy. Note the gif has parts that aren't in right scale to each other, just the basic idea. OK about 1' front to back, 1' 6" wide for baseplate. Rails are easy to see, and excess rail from the minimum lengths will be cut down. On each rail is a flat guide plate, about 1' by 6". These are to take torqe instead of a second rail, and will be very cheap since you just buy a 4' by 6" finished board, and cut in 4 for both the guides and rudder pedals. Guide is flat, small 2" x 4" sections are vertical over the rails for pedals, see side view. Pedal has door hinge and a spring at inside bottom, put a pot at the hinge for proportional brakes. Bellcrank orinially went under to link pedal motions. Rods connection bellcrank to guide plates are slightly offset, and go through vertical halfway through motion. Should be very close to linear for the 4" or so travel, but with only holes, no slot in the bellcrank like other net designs have. Bellcrank has bearing at center, and the little squares are where to put teflon pads from a mouse. The other short piece is cut from the bellcrank board, and is underneath the guide plates with teflon on top. Guide plates are captured and keep torque forces off the single rails.
But, had far better idea. Move bellcrank to under the guide plates. Use the short piece on top, and have the 1/4"-20 bellcrank axle screw into it from the bottom, and not penetrate it. That way all wood showing, crank and rods are hidden. Guide plates only have a 1/4" gap where the axle comes through to support the top bar. Stained, this should look way better than most homemade jobs easily, maybe better than the made ones. Oh yeah extra hole or holes near the end of bellcrank is through it, the guide plate, and partically through bottom plate. Drop in a peg and locks in place to make a less shifty footrest when not in use. These may look so good I'll have to start selling some on Ebay! :)
Two pots one at the crank center and one rod. As one is most linear, the other is least. Sum the correct side of each and you'll get an almost linear changing sum resistance for rudder. Hmm thinking about it that's not right, geometry isn't right to do that from crank to rod. Should be doable though, just needs to attach a different way.
That is simple and good for rudders, but the yoke I like even better. It is an almost zero work solution for the yoke mechanics! I HATE unnecessary work, can you tell? :)
http://home.nc.rr.com/alan69/FlightGear/yoke1.jpg http://home.nc.rr.com/alan69/FlightGear/yoke2.jpg
Note in yoke1, that opening with tab for the clam is already there. Simply clamp the bearing. At the other bearing, see the wider screw slot? Two dremel cuts with a grinding wheel will make it a tab too for the other clamp. Note that you need 2 more dremel cuts to cut the corners of the bracket so it can rotate, corners are what's holding that bracket from falling over. Four cut mechanical solution. Mouse goes on bracket, control goes at end of threaded rod. This is upside down, and note that mouse will be the first thing to hit, so may need a metal bar across the bracket a bit wider than the mouse to hit first. Likely PVC tube heated, bent, and molded slightly to grip shape to make the control. Wrap in tennis grip etc, and hang it on a slope board with sides. Rest of the buttons and controls are easy after this, and relocate mouse wheel for other use like elevator trim.
I really wish someone had this yoke on a webpage 10 years ago, I would have had a yoke way back then if I'd known it was so simple to build the mechanics, even if I'd used pots then. Mouse will be cleaner building though. Bearings I got for $20 for 50 off ebay, precision bearings too. Everything else is local Ace and Lowes for the rails.
Electronics will be easy, but we really need a good simple serial format that FlightGear understands and can map to any controls. 19,200 serial with 16 axes and 4 or 8 bytes should be enough, then let me use XML config to tell which byte maps to which control. Everyone has a serial port, it works in XP, and it's easy to do the hardware. Heck have FG output on the serial too and run gagues etc. Haven't looked at that FG programming side of it too much yet though, but the micro side for the controls is simple..
Alan
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