simpits.orgCockpit Simulator Builders

of the World Famous Simpits International Interface hardware list November 28th, 2012 Here’s a list of currently available hardware devices that will allow you to interface your flight controls of choice to the host computer. EPIC – http://www.mindspring.com/~rrelect/ BU0836 and variants: http://www.leobodnar.com/ UnoJoy (Arduino based) http://arduino.cc/blog/2012/05/14/unojoy-a-usb-joystick-for-mac-pc-linux-or-ps3/ GenericHID (Teensy++ 2.0 based) http://generichid.sourceforge.net/ PoKeys USB – http://www.poscope.com/pokeys56u Hagstrom KE-USB108 http://www.hagstromelectronics.com/products/ke_usb108.html more? Posted in Site News | 1 Comment » Important software for simpit builders.. August 13th, 2010 Here’s one of the best kept secrets of the software side of cockpit building: Lightning’s Tools [Link updated to reflect new location!] This guy has developed a number of fantastic tools including things specific to the F-16 air combat simulator, Falcon. The best part is that the source code is available for all the tools – this is a huge contribution to the hobby and he’s done a fantastic job with them all! Posted in Site News | 2 Comments » Building Recreational Flight Simulators is complete! June 26th, 2009 Mike Powell’s new book, Building Recreational Flight Simulators” has been sent off to the publisher! This book is the much anticipated sequel to Building Simulated Aircraft Instrumentation”. Keep an eye on Mike’s Flight Deck website for price and availability. The completed books are due to arrive some time in August. Way to go Mike! Posted in Site News | 5 Comments » Simple 16 input board for EPIC June 9th, 2009 In reworking the wiring for the F-15 simulator, I’ve decided to neaten it up with some custom circuit boards using the PCB Isolation Routing routine. I’ve developed a simple 16 input board that connects to the EPIC primary interface board and uses screw terminals to make wiring easy. I’ll be uploading the board files when I’ve tested them. Until then, here’s what it looks like: I should have the first board made on Saturday. [Updated 26Jun09] A run-in with the H1N1 flu virus pretty much scrapped that weeks’ work. I hope to get back to it tomorrow. Posted in EPIC Project | 2 Comments » Making printed circuit boards without chemicals. June 7th, 2009 In doing research for making wiring boards for the EPIC (used in my F-15C project) I discovered a technique for making printed circuit boards (PCBs) that doesn’t involve any etching chemicals. The process is called PCB Isolation Routing and is done by using a CNC router with a VERY small V” bit in it. The bit used has a tip diameter of about 0.007″. The key to the whole process is being able to generate code to create the PCB. This can be accomplished with the free version of Eagle PCB in combination with a free program called PCB-GCODE PCB-GCODE is a plug-in for Eagle that will take your board layout and generate the needed code to drive any standard CNC router that understands G-code. If you head over to this site, you can get a pretty good overview of the process itself. In order to use this process with my ShopBot, I needed to come up with a way to hold down the PCB material while the machine was working on it. Below is the jig I created. PCB hold down jig When you add two more hold downs, this jig can hold down a pretty good sized board. The jig itself is 11-3/4″ high and about 13″ wide. The grooves you can see cut in the right corner are for alignment blocks. They consist of two 6″x3/4″ .125″ thick aluminum bars that are used to locate the PCB material in the lower right hand corner of the jig, where the X & Y home” is. By leaving the bars in place, you have a repeatable point for locating your material when you flip it if you’re doing double sided boards. When my double sided PCB stock arrives next week, I’ll put together a video showing how it works using my new EPIC input boards as an example. Posted in Site News | 1 Comment » Simpits server replaced… June 6th, 2009 Today I was _finally_ able to replace the 7 year old server that simpits.org and it’s services ran on. With the addition of WordPress, the poor machine just couldn’t keep up. The original server was an early Athalon 1400+ with 512MB of RAM. The new server is a Dual Core AMD system with 2GB of RAM and a 400GB SATA drive. I really hope this improves the site response time for the main Simpits site as well as the other WordPress blogs hosted here. I appreciate your patience during the time things were insanely slow around here. ? Posted in Site News | No Comments » LED resources… May 29th, 2009 As a result of creating a new indicator for the F-15C IFF panel, I’ve come across two really good LED resources. The first is a source of good 180 degree FOV LEDS – http://myworld.ebay.com/cece718 This is an eBay seller that has a HUGE variety of LEDs and related electronics for sale. The second is a LED resistor calculator. This handy web site calculates the optimal resistor value based on a given input voltage, LED forward voltage (how many volts it needs to light) and LED power consumption in mA – http://www.ledcalculator.net/ Posted in Site News | No Comments » Series One DIY Cockpit is now completed. May 5th, 2009 The Series One DIY Cockpit Project is finally completed and available for sale. Please head over to http://www.geneb.org/pitkit for more information. Posted in Site News | 1 Comment » New PHCC interfacing kits… February 7th, 2009 Kim over at Viperpits.org is starting a new run of PHCC interfacing board kits. Check it out here: ViperPits PHCC Thread For those that haven’t heard about PHCC, you can learn more here Posted in Site News | No Comments » Board mystery…. February 4th, 2009 One of the Simpits list members has a few circuit boards that he’s trying to identify: If you can identify any of these boards, please post a message to the simpits-tech list, the forum or just leave a comment here. Thanks all! [Update] Here’s the answer! Many thanks to Mr. Boldt for this. The first one is a USB to general purpose digital I/O bridge, for interfacing to switches, LEDs, and other hardware. Here: http://www.devasys.com/usbi2cio.htm The 2nd pic is a Photon GPS add-on board. IFS is now defunct and without the main Photon board to connect it to, you may be out of luck. They were interfaces made for (and about the time of) FS2004, using FSCockpit. Posted in Site News | 1 Comment » « Older Entries Search for: Author A little something about you, the author. Nothing lengthy, just an overview.Pages About Simpits Hardware Information, Suppliers & Support Humor Pipe Rules Simpits Project Blogs Archives November 2012 August 2010 June 2009 May 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 Categories EPIC Project (1) Site News (17) Simpits Resources Simpits Article Archive Simpits File Archive Simpits Forum Simpits Mailing Lists Meta Log in Valid XHTML XFN WordPress is proudly powered by WordPress Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS) . WassUp 1.9.4.5 timestamp: 2024-05-14 08:26:11PM UTC (12:26PM) If above timestamp is not current time, this page is...