NEW - Prototype of 1/4 Scale FS Dynamic Bed
   Over the years I had a design in mind for a full motion FS dynamic bed. I wanted to minimize the parts necessary. Traditional dynamic beds use 6 hydraulic cylinders. I had a concept that on paper seemed like I could build a system that reduced it to 2 actuators of some sort.

Basically a frame within a frame design. As shown below I built a control panel using the MobiFlight interface. With this interface it was possible to integrate the outputs for bank and pitch from the flight simulator to control the dynamic bed without a lot of complicated programming.

Since I already had three 12v linear actuators and a 16 relay board to interface with a 2560 Ardunio board I started with the linear actuators. Programming and wiring was straight forward, however the actuators were too slow. For the design it would also require more height from the floor to the base of the cockpit.
The second option for the prototype were servos. I was able to find some on Amazon with a high torque capacity. For a full scale version servos may be cost prohibitive but for they prototype they would at least confirm that my design would work. I used two servos. One for the pitch and one for the bank.

Here are some videos of the work so far. The servos are a bit choppy. The are designed to work at a recommended 18 volts. I ran them at 12v power supply with at reduction drive of timing pulleys. For a full scale version I switch to a gear drive off of either servos or hydraulic drives.
Video 1    Video 2    Video 3

Fleet Photos   


JRH Flight Simulator
Instrument Panel

Over the past several months I have been working on an interactive instrument panel for FS2004 Microsoft Flight Simulator. My old laptop was starting to have multiple issues. It was almost 8 years old and even with multiple upgrades it started to show its age.

When purchasing a new laptop I decided to get a new one that was rated for gaming. I purchased a ASUS TUF Gaming A15 Gaming Laptop, 15.6" 144Hz FHD IPS-Type, AMD Ryzen 5 4600H, GeForce GTX 1650, 8GB DDR4, 512GB PCIe SSD, Gigabit Wi-Fi 5, Windows 10 Home, FA506IH-AS53. I upgraded it to 32gb memory and added a second 500gb solid state hard drive.

With a faster system I decided to look into an Arduino based instrument panel using the FSUIP interface. Originally I planned to program the interface with a VB6 app however I rean into issues with connecting to the FS using the FSUIPC interface. With some research I found an app called Mobiflight. Mobiflight interfaces directly with the Arduino so no extra programming is required. I am planning on adding extra detail on this at a later date.

Still some wiring to complete and cleanup.



The instrument panel is divided into three segments: Autopilot, Com/Nav and Engine/Accessories. Panel fronts were printied out using my 3D printer.








Autopilot








Com/Nav






Engines and Accessories







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