Hi Alan,
Do you have more pictures of your CNC ? Is the part that the steppers are mounted on some kind of plastic ?
I'd like to see more pics of the details how you built your CNC :)
Not yet, and yes they're 50 cent plastic electrical boxes for mounts.
You can set the mouse resolution down in windows, or alternatively, you could change the scaling of the mouse axes in flightgear. (XML file)
Yep found the scaling last night, the yoke scaling will be easy. Haven't figured out the mouse wheel rolling event name yet though..
Instead of teflon pads, you could use the material that those (usually white) bread cutting boards are made of. That material is relatively good to work with (sharp knife :) and are widely available.
Its something that I've seen from one cockpitbuilder use and now others are using it as well, like me. ...and its not as tiny as the teflon pads from a mouse :-)
Well there is plenty of leverage, so there will be very little force on the guides. The four pads can be gotten from an old dead mouse, I have a hundred mice or so laying around. If the mouse has strips, scissors are all you need since it really only needs a 1/4" piece. Really the wood works fine alone, but the teflon will reduce the wood sliding noise.
Post some pictures of the rudder when you are getting there :-)
Yep will be coming soon as they're made. The yoke is rediculously easy, I've reduced it to where there are no cuts. Well two cuts, but they are optional and just to shorten the unused part of the drawer slide so the whole thing will be smaller, none for bearing mounting. If I'm found dead within the next year or so, suspect a CH Products shareholder.. :) I bet that if I put up a complete webpage with how easy this is and detailed instructions, there will be at least 1000 made in the first year after the word gets around, maybe even 10,000. It is very easy, and has a very precise mechanical feel unlike most $100 bought products. The mouse is also just going to pop into a mouse pocket like holder, so you just pop it back out for normal use when you're not using the yoke. And no 4" pipe, a section of a 2 litre soda bottle or other cheap grocery container works fine since there's no force with the mouse gliding around it.
Do you plan on something like a centering mechanism, so that there is a force that'll push the controls into the center positions ?
Yep had a few minor errors and omissions in that first post, it was late. The bracket/mouse centers the yoke, maybe even extra weight to the bracket. Slide will need some type of springing though. Same for rudder centering. They are easy though after the functional design is optimized.
The protocol and hooking it up to fgfs should be the easiest part compared to coming up and building the hardware.
Yes I think so too now. Yoke is a mouse, and rudders have a controller. Actually I think the rudder controller will sit between the yoke mouse and the PC, and just insert left button down mouse rudder commands when needed. Same controller could do the same and issue mouse throttle and a bunch of other stuff as well.
One problem with FlightGear needs to be changed though. When you hold button to move the rudder/throttle, motion is fine. But when the button goes up the cross hair should center back to where it was when the button was pressed to change the mode. As it is, it re-zeros so the end position is the new position for the previous alierons/elevator, but the cursor and mouse are moved to a way different position. I can live with the mouse being elsewhere although it eventually makes it off the pad. But the cursor ends up over the toolbars etc instead of snapping back to the relative middle of the screen. Maybe there is a setting for it. Also would be nice to just turn the cursor off in control move mode, so it doesn't distract in night flying especially and isn't moving over other items. It would be better with no cursor and only watching the instruments/external visuals. Whether the mouse and cursor rezero etc on mode change should be in the control file. Hmm maybe it is just haven't seen it yet, I need to type up some documentation on use as I get them figured a few things are a bit sparse..
Thanks for the detailed descriptions :)
No problem, thought I'd save you some work laying out the rudders especially since I'd already just laid them out and gotten the functions working well.
Alan
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