Advice on interfacing a non-Project Magenta cockpit
My participation in this forum is brand new; please bear with me.
My cockpit project will be based on the Convair 240-580. The question I have relates to interfacing analog instruments and authentic controls from a Convair to my computers. I am gonna try to use a Dell server with two Dell clients in order to make my aircraft "fly". Does anyone have suggestions on the best methods to link the flight controls and instruments? Would Phidgets work? Is Epic the solution? Are Hegstrom components the answer. Any ideas, please?
Gil Lusk
Knoxville, TN
Interfacing flight controls
Hi Gil,
I had great success trialing my flight controls after using parts from a dismantled microsoft sidewinder joystick. The sidewinder obviously has 3 pots, (Pitch, Roll & Yaw). They each have 3 small wires attached. You can cut the 3 wires, remove the pots and mount them to your hardware. You might need to make small lever arms etc. to convert linear motion to the rotary motion of the pots. Use 3 long wires to reattach the pots back to the joystick circuit board where you cut the wires, the PC still recognises the USB sidewinder with ordinary function. I only had one throttle pot when I did this trial and when I redo it I will dismantle a joystick with twin throttles. You also have about 10 programmable buttons on the joystick which can be utilised. Where the buttons are soldered to the circuit board inside the joystick, I soldered pairs of small wires to the back of the circuit board, (in parallel). These are very useful for eg. Speedbrake, reverse thrust, park brake, trim up/dn or any similar command. Reverse thrust requires FSUIPC to function correctly. This is a very cheap and easy solution to your flight control interface, as for your gauges, I can't advise on that one. Hope this helps you.
Regards Gwyn
Interfacing flight controls
Hi again Gil,
I have just bought Sim-Boards from www.flightdecktechnology.com These are great and very easy to set up. I think they will become the number one choice for all builders soon.
Gwyn