Airbus A320 Simulator

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi guys, I'm in the process of building an Airbus A320 simulator. The electronics part is making all the switches and getting them to be recognised by the computer. FSUIPC is a program that interrogates FSX (What I'm using) to get various readouts of button states and gauge states etc and it's also the program through which the you're able to communicate through buttons and potentiometers etc with FSX. My question is, how do I create something like this:

Universal 12-Bit Joystick Controller BU0836X

that will enable me to interface with FSX through buttons that I create? This is the circuit board that most people that build their cockpits use. It's basically recognised by the computer as a game controller. Would I need to write my own drivers for something like this? What do the microprocessors most likely do on this board?

The first panel that I'm building is the ENG MASTER panel which can be seen right smack back in the middle of this image:

https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloadimages/Image/npsimpanel-airbus.jpg

Just below the throttle quadrant. Here we have 4 engine switches whereas I'll just be doing 2 but that's besides the point.

Basically I'll be having 2 ON/OFF switches (1 for each engine) and 1 - 3 way switch which selects the mode of the MASTER panel (NORM, IGNITION/START & CRANK). The thing I'm not quite sure about is what sort of switches these are. I'm PRETTY sure the ON/OFF aren't toggle switches but I'm not 100% on that and I'm totally not sure about what sort of switch the 3-way selector switch is. I'm guessing there's a type of switch out there that only basically has 2 settings (+1 and -1) so in other words, if you turn it to the right, it goes +1 and -1 for each notch to the left in which case it would just require 2 selector i.e. on while being pressed and off as soon as released type buttons but it can also quite obviously be just 3 on/off buttons i.e 3, 2-state buttons.

Considering the fact that I am looking for maximum realism when it comes to visual replication, I'll be looking for a 45 degree 3-way switch for the ENG MODE selector knob, don't know if that's a relevant bit of information but I thought I'll throw that in anyway.

Basically, how do I get this first set of switches happening? I'll build a crude mock up first with some basic switches to get the interfacing right and make sure that it's all being recognised by FSX but I'm not quite sure where to begin with this one.

I've been trying to find the engine master switch that I've seen on sale for like 90 bux a pop for the airbus just to find out how many wires it has comming out of it but from memory it was two but I'm not sure on that.

Anyway... just wanted some suggestions on this one.

 

[Dragon Tamer]

Wow this went way over most of our heads, but I'm going to try to help you as best I can.

To start, I think it would be much easier to just buy the joystick controller rather than make one because making one would involve using a micro-controller, ADC, and hours of programing and troubleshooting.

Second, no you don't need to write your own drivers. The board is a plug and play device, it should work as soon as it's plugged into the computer.

I'm not entirely shore what your trying to do with the buttons and switches, but they have switchs that are either double pole or single pole (the number of "switches" inside) and they are a triple throw with center off. You could buy 2 SPST switches to that will work for each engine as the on off switch, and a SPTT switch for your mode. Unless you have 4 modes for your engine, in which case you would need a SPQT switch.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi thanks, I think you're right... probably easier and more time efficient to just buy the board and start building rather than making my own.

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

Hi guys, I'm currently designing the panels for the simulator and it appears that without solving the electronics problem, I can't progress any further so I'm starting it all off with lighting.

Just as a background to what I'm trying to achieve:

Basically the aircraft panels are made from 2 layers, the bottom aluminum layer and the top layer which in real planes I'm not 100% exactly what it's made of, but based on what I've been told, the way simulator guys do it similar and they just use some type of clear Acrylic or plastic piece (you can see how it works in the attachment) and then just paint it to the colours that you see if you look up aircraft cockpit pictures. Then they simply engrave the panels or in other words simply strip back the opaque paint to show the clear plastic in various shapes and letters (refer to the second picture).

Here is where it gets a little tricky. The problem is that you have an aluminium backplate directly behind the clear material, so you can't simply put a light source behind the panels. This whole issue can be simplified by not having an aluminium back plate but what would this world be without a challenge ? So, within a 6mm thick or there abouts of material, you must enclose most of the stuff that you see poking out from the front of the panel (based on what other people do, it appears that they do make cut outs in the aluminum for various accessibility issues but I don't think I'll be placing LED's behind the aluminium panel with cut outs for the light to shine through. I've also attached 2 images of how the real panels are made and as you can see, they essentially have a PCB with BMD LED's on them.

I've chosen to start all this out with the simplest panel I could find which is the lighting panel as you can see in the attachments. Basically, at night, everything white must glow (the knob is opaque but the triangle and the strip are clear, so the knob must glow also as can be seen in the next image). Although the next four images are of the overhead panel, the same thing will happen in the centre console with all its panels. You can see that the knob responsible for the lighting in question is called OVHD INTEG LT in the bottom centre area of the overhead panel. This knobs role is identical to that of the INTEG LT (MAIN PNL & PED) or at least I hope it is. Basically, they are both dimmers and control not only their respective separate panels but are connected to all the other panels as well.

Now unless concentrating on just the lights panel for now is a total waste of time due to the need for consideration of it connecting to all the other panels then please by all means stop me, but I just want to keep things simple aka 9th grade physics levels. The final image is not to scale, but it's what I think the distribution of the BMD LED's should be imo (not to scale), but that's going to be down to testing and the brightness of the LED's and opaqueness of the plastic/acrylic once I start playing around with it.

Now let's get down to the electronics part of it all. Like I said, I'd like to keep it really basic because I've got only rudimentary electronics knowledge. Since I don't know which LED's I'll be using, or how many in total, I don't exactly know what power source I'll be using but I'm sure it's not going to batteries, so essentially it has to be a wall power source. The first thing I'd like to do is design the basic circuit for this panel with outputs that will enable me to connect all the other panels into this one. Since the panels are modular, I don't think it would make much sense to just run wires from all the other panels directly to this one, so I think I'd rather have some sort of hub somewhere else within the centre console to which all the other panels run.

Having said all that, I've quickly created a basic circuit diagram just to see whether I'm on the right track because I've never created any circuits before so I'm not sure about what I'm doing. The power source will as I said be AC and then through a transformer be transformed into DC, then the red square represents the 6 BMD LED's on the panel in question + the potentiometer/knob and then I've connected up other LED's in parallel to represent daisy chaining of LED's on other panels.

More specific questions:
1.) How would I go about selecting the diodes for these purposes? i.e. in terms of voltage?

2.) Same as above, how do I figure out what sort of pots I need?

P.S. I'm planning on using PCB's if that changes anything.

 

[indulis]

Wow… an A320 is pretty ambitious. I went with a simpler aircraft (pre-finished photo attached).

As for your panel back lighting… you could go with some material similar to Lucite. Just paint the frontside, engrave what you want lit-up and at some points (you’ll probably need several), polish the edge of the panel and apply light. Think along the lines of what’s used for “light pipes”.

 

[picbits]

My Uncle designs parts of the Airbus electronic/fuel systems..... we generally have plenty of interesting conversations at family get togethers lmao

 

[Atomic_Sheep]

lol, your uncles a pretty lucky guy!