A little update...

I have been busy with other projects lately but now I am back to simulator workshop again.
What other projects, you say? Well... Let's say the house is now almost completely remodeled.
Kitchen, bathrooms, backyard... Long project but now it is done.

I have also been experimenting with Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc/) and I have to admit it is easy to use.

Easy or not, I think I will use my own PCB in simulator gauges. But for other smaller tasks...
Took one night to create this with Arduino:

Some may ask "what the heck is that?" so a little explanation may be required.
Contraption you see in picture controls a heated motorcycle jacket liner. The jacket liner uses kanthal wire as a heating element and power is requlated by using MOSFET and pwm-signal.

Got that working in a snap but then imagination took over and... Now I just need to combine those two red boards. Left one has potentiometer and MOSFETS to control the heat, right one has 18B20 temperature sensor, HIH-4030 humidity sensor and uOLED-128-G1 display.
My goal is to combine those two so that system will adjust the heat setting automatically based on ambient temperature and air humidity. Display will display something too.

But now back to simulator project. More to follow soon, stay tuned.

Ah, about those "other projects"... This is one of them too: http://mitaviela.blogspot.com/ (mixed Finnish and English)

Too quiet...

has it been.

I recently found a neat way to control regular servos.
PCB designed to replace the internal electronics of reqular hobby servo, controllable over i2c bus: "Openservo" from SparkFun.

So now the instrument control "chain" looks like this:

It is a mes... I mean a mix of ethernet, CAN-bus and i2c-bus.

Why? Because of mentioned "Openservo" controller.

I found it quite difficult to control several servos at the same time using timers to create PWM signals while CAN-bus was sending/receiving data.

Now CAN is handled by interrupt routines and servos (gauges) are handled with dedicated MCU located in Openservo PCB listening the i2c bus.

Why I am not using i2c to control all the instruments via USB-i2c-adapter? I don't know, perhaps I do not like i2c that much (and I already have couple of other projects designed around CAN nodes...).

Why ethernet

Mechanics....

Slowly but surely project is advancing. Updates here are not very frequent, be patient.

Here is the simplest of all gauge mechanics:



Just one servo, instrument face, some aluminium, plastic pipe and PCB board.
(Of course there is some other parts, glass and frame, but they come from actual scrapped instruments)

Multi pointer gauges are a little bit more challenging but not impossible.
Next I need to find 2mm aluminium sheet and then I can start milling and turning these parts.

Argh!

I spent several days putting together altimeter, based on decommissioned real instrument. I took out the original mechanics (except gears turning 1000ft/10000ft needles), bellows etc. Installed 720 steps/revolution stepper motor to turn the axle.
Everything was ok, stepper motor was turning the needles as expected, just working fine.
Then I noticed some slack in gears, removed glass, needles and front plate.
Installed one spring I forgot to put back when putting instrument together.

And when I was reinstalling needles... the axle snapped! About 0.2mm diameter steel pin acting as axle broke! I am almost ready to buy altimeter from simkits... $400 or so...

I need a beer. Or three. Crap.

Just a quick update.

Winter is coming. That means more time to put to this project...

My cockpit project has not been totally halted, even if it looks like it here.
I have been coding and fine tuning motor controls, designing the mechanics etc. Soon it will be time to start putting things together.

More info here soon.

Soon the sauna will be ready and I will be back in business.
Simulator business, that is.

It is quite refreshing to do something totally different for a while, even if brain is still working on simulator project...

All I need to do is inner walls, ceiling and wait for electrician to connect all wires next week.
I have so many ideas for simulator project that I need to write them down.

And I need to start looking for someone who could write piece of code for extracting gauge values from Micro$oft FSX... People have been asking if this system would support it also.

Stay tuned, something new here in about two weeks.

No progress in simulator front lately.

And the reason is another project: backyard sauna.
One week short of a decade in Texas without sauna. I want to go to sauna but first I need to build it.

Sauna should be ready in two weeks and I can get back to coding the simulator.

It is refreshing to do something totally different for a while.
This it how it looks like as of today.

I have not forgotten X-Plane during this sauna project, of course.
I just installed it one night to my linuxbox and boy it looks good. It is kinda funny feeling to turn graphics options to "Totally insane"-level and see it actually working.

...and then back to actual simulator project.

I realised this project is getting quite big and complicated. I would need some kind of system to keep track on software changes.

Yes. I realised this after some unfortunate mishaps causing me to loose about week worth of coding. Doh!

I recommissioned one old PC I found in my "pile'o'junk" (well... actually there is several old PCs but this was the best of them) to a new career for version controlling and general storage.
Local Fry's electronics had 1TB Seagate disks for $89 so now it has plenty of space.

Took me whole weekend + two nights to get it up and running and now I have fully functioning Git-version control server with nightly backups to file server.
No more lost code here (I hope).

Server specs:
2.4GHz Pentium 4 from years past.
3GB RAM
1TB+80GB() Seagate Sata-disks
Scythe fans (extremely quiet)
Ubuntu 9.10 Linux OS
Git version control system
Samba providing file shares for Windblows-machines.
Webmin web-based system administration.

For those who are installing Git-server: when initialising repository (git --bare init), it does not give write permission to git-group. This causes "insufficient rights"-error message when pushing code to repo.
To fix this: cd to repository directory and do 'chmod -R g+ws *' and 'git repo-config core.sharedRepository true'

One of these days...

I have been fighting with CAN integration for last three days (and nights).
I had perfectly working ethernet connection and perfectly working CAN connection but not at the same time.

The culprit was clock connection from enc28j60-chip to 18f2685 clock input.

I don't understand why (or how) it does not work but if I use enc28j60 clock out to get clock to 18f2685, CAN does not work.

They both use 25MHz clock. I have not measured what is the clock frequency coming out from enc-chip but I suspect it to be something else than 25MHz that goes in.

Anyway... Now it works! I can send UDP packet from PC to ethernet transceiver where it is translated to CAN packet and forwarded to instrument control board which, in turn, sends back a CAN packet (to transceiver) and transceiver forwards it to PC.

In this picture you see the ethernet-can-transceiver and two instrument control boards talking to each other.
I again started believing I will have a working airspeed indicator this weekend.
I still need to activate the servo control part in instrument control software...

Stay tuned, I will go to sleep now.

La-La-Land...

Mailed 27-jan-2010. Next tracking entry: "International arrival 28-Jan-2010".
Then a whole week without any info where those boards were.
Yesterday I went to local post office to ask what the heck is going on.

Lady behind the desk told me to go to pickup point and ask them.

I went to said location, rang bell and after quite a long time someone opened the door.
I explained my problem, he said "I need to ask supervisor here, just a moment."

After a _very_ long moment, supervisor opened the door.
Very tall, old man with white Stetson, jeans, boots... Kind of cowboy outfit.

I explained him why I was there. He said he needs to go and check with computer.

After about 10 minutes he came back and told me my package being in a place what they call "The La-La-Land", that being US customs. When mail goes there, he told me, nobody knows where it is, how long it is there and what they do with it.
Then he gave me phonenumber where to call and ask.

I went home.
I picked up the mail from mailbox.
Hmm... Note from US Postal Services saying they tried to deliver something but I was not at home? Interesting...
Back to post office and just before I rang the bell I noticed note in a note saying: "Available for pick up 06-Feb-2010 8.30am". That was tomorrow. Darn.

Oh well... Home I go waiting for tomorrow...

Tomorrow (today) I went again back to post office, rang the bell and waited...
...
...
After a while door opens and lady says "I thought I heard someone is here. How may I help you?"
I gave her the note and off she went starting to dig piles of mail.
Digging another pile...
And another...
And another...
Finally she said "I am sorry but I can't find this. I need to ask the mailman who left this note."

I said "No hurry, that package has been lost for a week now...".

Indeed it was my order from PCB Pool. Now I have my protoboards:



After gathering required parts, I built one, powered it up and whadda'y'know! It works!


I can already see there is a problem with all the connectors and pin headers (not in place yet).
But with these I can test the whole system and continue to next step (whatever that is).