Circuit Breaker Simulation

[Tom_G_2010]

Hey Tom,

I have sent you a PM I'm unsure if you have received it.

Louie

Very Strange... I have not received any pm's from you since the one a couple weeks ago about monitor sourcing. I sent you a PM about an order I want to place and a handful of questions about some of your products. Did you receive that? Was your PM a response?

We might need to move the conversation over to e-mail if the PM's are not getting through.

[Louie Mendez]

FYI I received both of your PMs and replied twice.
Please go to my contact page and we'll take it from there.

[Tom_G_2010]

FYI I received both of your PMs and replied twice.
Please go to my contact page and we'll take it from there.

I sent a message via the contact page on your web site a few minutes ago. If you could respond back to my e-mail there by doing a cut and paste of your pm replies that would be greatly appreciated.

[Louie Mendez]

....

[cptdjb]

I realise this is an old post but have you considered these?
http://www.ruscool.co.nz/ann_dcb.html#dcbs

[AK Mongo]

Those are pretty cool if you are going for window dressing.

[xplanematt]

I am actually in the middle of pondering this myself on my sim. I have a unique opportunity to do something cool, because my Sabreliner cockpit still has every single original circuit breaker from its service days. This is actually very important, because it also has all the original wiring in the cockpit, driving a bunch of original gear (mostly all the lighting, but also mach warning clacker, GPS, instrument vibrators, even the two remaining inverters). So, my breakers are actually protecting their original circuits! I had the clock die on me when the instrument inverter freaked out and sent some sort of spike (or sag?) through the entire system....after that, the clock's breaker would pop after a few seconds! Very cool to be sitting in the cockpit and hear that little "pop" sound. (Although sourcing and paying for another original Davtron clock was not so cool.....)

Anyways, I've decided to go ahead and remotely pop breakers from an Arduino. I am using a 50amp 27vDC power supply for all the 28v stuff and will soon have a 120 amp PSU for 5v lighting, so all my little breakers will be easy to trip without over-current on the power supplies (in fact, if I tripped every single CB for the 5v lighting at the same time, I would only have to exceed 58 amps). But some of the big stuff like the 60 amp #1/#2 inverter CBs (on the 28vDC circuit) will need to either be replaced with little CBs and re-labeled, or simply left alone.

I will probably manually trip breakers from the instructor console, though I suppose I could write failure profiles that pop breakers at specific intervals to simulate an overheating component, for instance (so resetting the CB would only work for a few seconds before it pops again). But detecting the failure should be fairly simple....use a relay or opto-isolator on the load-side of each CB to figure out if it's getting power or not.

Anyways...if you are starting with no CBs, I would get low amperage surplus CBs (1/2a would be awesome) for the stuff that is software-only. Ebay has aviation CBs fairly cheap, especially if you can find something like a complete sub-panel that happens to have a bunch of CBs on it. Individual CBs can be picked up pretty cheaply if you are patient, I had to buy a 7 amp breaker the other day after breaking one in my Sabreliner. But you might actually consider figuring out your electrical loads and using the CBs to actually protect stuff, especially if you have any real 14vDC aircraft parts in the sim (probably all the stuff on your Cessna is 14v).

Fun stuff!

Matt

[dagoston93]

Hi,
I know it is an old topic, and hope still someone can help me.
I really want the circuit breakers to work in my cockpit as in the real plane.
So I read this whole topic, but still don't fully understand it.
I would control my switches and etc by an Arduino MEGA microcontroller and use X-Plane.
So after I read the topic, I am thinking about to buy such breakers, as mentioned before:

http://www.mouser.co.uk/Search/Produ...7-XJ2A22B10-7M

I wonder if the would pop out if I simply make a sort circuit between the two pins of the breaker.
Because then I could connect one pin to gnd and one to the + and a digital i/o pin. The i/o pin could monitor if the breaker is on or off.
And then I could connect the two pins to each other with a relay between them.
And the relay could connect also to an i/o pin and get power from the controller(or other source, depends on how much power it needs). And when the sim outputs that the breaker should pop out, the relay can activate making a short and the breaker would pop out.

Is my imagination correct?
If not, can someone please tell me, how it should work?
I saw in earlier posts, that people mention these breakers and relays together but didn't understand exactly how, maybe i missed sth out.

Thanks in advance

[Tom_G_2010]

The breaker will not open when shorted as you describe for two reasons:

1. Your circuit as I understand it has no voltage applied to the breaker just a dry conact from a relay.
2. Even if you had voltage available. A short across the breaker would remove it form the circuit and it would see no current at all. Basically the far opposite of what you need to pop a breaker.

If you contruct a circuit that applied enough current to the breaker to pop it and you were to use breakers in the actual values needed in a typical GA aircraft you would be playing with some significant currents that are dangerous to both you and your electronics. I would caution against that!

It would be safer to use the lowest rated breaker available and alter the buttons lable to look as if it is the real value. But even at that unless you have a breaker with a set auxilary of dry contacts you have the problems of letting your software know the condition of your breaker unless you add some current sensing electronics to mmonitor your breaker condition.

I still plan to add breakers to my sim at some future point but, for the reasons stated above, I am looking at the cost of commercially made simulated breakers and comparing that to the cost of fabricating my own simulated breakers. In either case that would allow me to trip them at current and voltage levels much closer to logic level and therefore safer. And, I could add dry contacts to allow my arduino board to sense the condition of the breakers.

[dagoston93]

Thanks.
Then i think, temporarily i will use simple switches and later i will find out, how to replace them.
I am already thinking how i could make my own designed fake-breakers
Thank you for your helpful answer