230 replies to this topic

[Gevurah]

You should sell those switches/panels cough cough

Edited by Gevurah, 01 May 2013 - 12:37 PM.

[Foust]

Gevurah, on 01 May 2013 - 12:37 PM, said:

You should sell those switches/panels cough cough

That would be many, many iterations away for me to even remotely consider selling. Maybe a desktop pit version....

[Propnut]

Foust, are you sure you wouldnt like me to cut those out for you?

Here is the ICP module panel (F-16 Falcon) that I have been making for people:

[Ulric Kell]

Propnut, on 02 May 2013 - 05:21 AM, said:

Foust, are you sure you wouldnt like me to cut those out for you?

Here is the ICP module panel (F-16 Falcon) that I have been making for people:

And if you don't want engraved I can always laser cut for ya. Between Prop and I, we got everything you can imagine covered.

[Foust]

Yes, yes I would. Very much so. That means I would actually have to draw up the plans in something useful, meaning not visio.

I'll see what I can get done.

I went out to that hornet site you linked. I had to replace the keyboard I drooled on. Such quality work Propnut.

[Foust]

"Where does he get all those wonderful toys?"

[Propnut]

hehe, thanks Foust. I think that my efforts are on the low end compared to some of those guys.

Let me know, I have some white acrylic laying around that would make great panels. Just send me the cad drawings (or other vector drawings).

[Ulric Kell]

Foust, on 02 May 2013 - 06:07 AM, said:

Yes, yes I would. Very much so. That means I would actually have to draw up the plans in something useful, meaning not visio.

I'll see what I can get done.

I went out to that hornet site you linked. I had to replace the keyboard I drooled on. Such quality work Propnut.

That's what I love about Simpits. Everyone has a different vision and the path they take to get there is so freaking fun and BA. Now I just need to get motivated and finish this POD. Need to hit up the junkyard and grab a second honda odyssey liftgate motor to finish the doors!

[Source Control]

Propnut, where in Michigan are you located? I'm out in Macomb County. Sweet work, by the way! Would love to own the equipment needed to do this kind of work. Amazing!

[Propnut]

Hi Source,

I am west of you and north of Grand Rapids. If you want a Mechpit, come on over and buy mine. 500.00 takes the structure away, just add electronic hardware

Bring a pickup, lol.

[F lan Ker]

S!

You guys are an inspiration really Seeing all this creative work in this thread is amazing. Keep it up!

[torgian]

Pretty awesome. I've been tossing around the idea of making a fully moveable cockpit.... but I think it would be cost prohibitive. I'm imagining two motors to control the X,Y, and Z axis that are controlled by foot pedals for torso twist and the joystick to control up/down motion. Electrically I don't think it would be a problem... I'm an electrician by trade, so wiring stuff up isn't a problem... just the possible programming involved and the cost. But then, setting up the monitors, buttons and stuff would be more challenging, although fun to do.

Hell, even a fan in the side with a heater to simulate heat would be kinda cool lol, but again, programming issues

[Foust]

I took the Frankenstick apart to fix one of my wiring problems and I think I owed a pic of the inside.



While I was in there I decided to go ahead and get the mounting ears attached to the stick post (for lack of a better word). I bored the inside of the original F22 stick post to 1/2in and then took some sand paper to the inside to get the MS PP post to fit inside, with a bit of "persuasion".

Here is what I ended up with.


And these are the two things that ended up knowing each other in the biblical sense.


And then I forgot to take a picture of them pressed together. I had a moment of terror after I pressed the two together and realized that the ears were not lined up to where they needed to be to orient the stick straight. Thankfully there is that lower hole on the post and I had channel locks in the room....

Also for the curious, a shot of the resembled gimbals bottom, and one of the giant well labeled test pads on the bottom of the board.




I know I said I wanted to put some kind of disconnects on the bottom of that board, but if I cant find something I have on hand I think impatience will win out and It will end up a hardwired solution.

I also think Im going to build some basic box to enclose that base. It needs help.

Edited by Foust, 03 May 2013 - 04:23 PM.

[Loc Nar]

Quote

impatience will win out and It will end up a hardwired solution.

Hmm, what about soldering jumper leads to the board, that way you could breadboard it together, giving you a sort of swappable plug solution. Last time I bought leads, I bought way too many if you want some, I'd be more than happy to throw a handful into an envelope and send them your way in the unlikely event you don't have any already.

[Foust]

Loc Nar, on 06 May 2013 - 06:06 PM, said:

Hmm, what about soldering jumper leads to the board, that way you could breadboard it together, giving you a sort of swappable plug solution. Last time I bought leads, I bought way too many if you want some, I'd be more than happy to throw a handful into an envelope and send them your way in the unlikely event you don't have any already.

I appreciate the offer, but I went all hard wire on it last night. I had to get it closed up before I started tearing down the TM Afterburner 2 FFB stick. Which was really cool to see the internals for that. So I took some pictures for those into the hardware images of questionable morality. (guess which word I tried to put there that the filter took out)

Here are a few of the throttle opened up. Nothing really important in here to note other than the switches in the throttle seem to be put in a matrix once they pass to the stick.



Next some of the joystick split in half. Again, it seems there is some hot matrix action happening.


Now for the cool part, the gimbal and FFB motors. Really slick.


So when I started into this, I had intended on wiring the F22 throttle into this by running the same connections I had out to the teensy into this TM AB2 stick. After breaking it all down I decided that I would just strip the boards out of the TM AB2 and relocate them into the base of the F22 throttle, since that base is pretty cavernous without its default board.

I started stripping out the board that all the switches run into when I noticed that it is receiving power from the board that is driving the FFB motors. That would be the three wires on the right in this picture.


No big deal I thought, the board is labeled well and is showing that it is expecting 5,3.3 and ground. I can get two of those off the USB connection, and a voltage regulator can take care of the 3.3v. Or thats what I thought anyway. So I wire a jumper from the USB 5v and ground and run 3.3v from a variable supply and plug it in. Nothing.

At that point I get a text from my lance mates wanting to drop so I shut down the modding for the night. My current line of thinking is that the board is requiring more current than the USB can provide, so I might try a second USB connection to power that, or just take the 15v 1A side out of the stick as well and run power to it like originally designed. Either way, when Im done the throttle will look like that TM AB2 stick in windows, so 4axis, 8 button 1 hat. Most of that I can assign to that throttle. I am contemplating converting the foot pedals to analog, I need to check and see if I can get Xpadder to treat 2 axis as one. I know I could use UJR to do that, but I would like one application to rule them all....

Edited by Foust, 07 May 2013 - 08:06 AM.

[Loc Nar]

Ya know, those motors/gearing would make for a pretty effective ready-made solution for damping the 2 axis should you hook up the stick without power to them. Much easier than removing a spring and then trying to come up with effective damping solution that withstands the rigors of use without disintegrating yet allows ratchet-free movement. Damn I wish I could remember which emulator I saw recently that is capable of absolute inputs, but it eludes me for the moment. That emulator with a FF stick that has the FF disabled might represent a reasonably achievable middle-ground solution.

Either way, BUMP!! ^_^

[Foust]

Loc Nar, on 16 May 2013 - 04:21 PM, said:

Ya know, those motors/gearing would make for a pretty effective ready-made solution for damping the 2 axis should you hook up the stick without power to them. Much easier than removing a spring and then trying to come up with effective damping solution that withstands the rigors of use without disintegrating yet allows ratchet-free movement. Damn I wish I could remember which emulator I saw recently that is capable of absolute inputs, but it eludes me for the moment. That emulator with a FF stick that has the FF disabled might represent a reasonably achievable middle-ground solution.

Either way, BUMP!!

Well this stick was the one that would not stay centered without the FFB drivers, and even then those drivers liked to die for no reason. When it did work, with FFB disabled, it was rather smooth. Just unusable.

So I have been out of town on business, finally got to sit down to do some wiring on the throttle. Basically the same thing I did with the stick. Wire the throttle switches to the swiches on the FFB stick boards stuff it in the throttle base and call it a night. I decided that I was not going to make the dials work, or retain the thumb stick. So I ended up with the throttle axis, 5 buttons and the HAT.



Just so happened that there were enough wires run through the handle to make that plan work out. Close up the handle and start in on the base.



Switches wired up. The cat 5 block in there is to run out to the foot switches, so in theory, with this and the joystick I should have complete control over the mech, sans mouse and keyboard.

The thing is that theory and practice rarely match up. I plugged in the throttle and windows detected the device. Awesome.
Go to config to check functionality of the axis and switches.

Not awesome. Massive failure. I have one switch that is triggered when it should be dark. I have several switches that only work WHEN that triggered switch is on and the axis is not detected. Oh and the hat is dead to.

It was way to late when I closed it all up last night so I haven't cracked it open again to see what I did wrong. I imagine that I failed identify the signal VCC and Ground wires correctly for the axis. I am guessing that I miswired one of the switches causing the built in matrix to freak out and that I just completely screwed up my identifications on the hat. Thankfully I have photos and written references to fall back on to trouble shoot. Unfortunately I also hot glued this stuff down.

It is supposed to be a rainy weekend so I hope to get the time to work it out.

Edited by Foust, 17 May 2013 - 07:45 AM.

[Foust]

Ok, spent a few hours on the throttle and worked out the failures.

To fix the axis I ended up attaching signal to the rudder signal on the main board. The main board is only giving 2.8ish volts to the pots that were attached. This was not enough to drive the hall sensor, so I attached the hall to the 5v supply from the motor driver board. Test successful.

Next problem was the hat and the toggle switches. After chasing the problem around for awhile I discovered several switches where I had flipped the connections, and a wire that had come loose. One annoying problem I had was that one of the foot switches would not trigger. I had reused a cat 5 cable I had laying around to run down to the switches. The issue was that the cable was wired B and I wired the block A. It just so happened the the pairs I used didnt match across.

Plugged everything in and ran around in the testing grounds. I have some tweaking to do, keys to bind and some adjustment time for using the new controls.

Next up is to get the side panels completed and connected and get a video of it all working made.

[CyBerkut]

Loc Nar, on 16 May 2013 - 04:21 PM, said:

Ya know, those motors/gearing would make for a pretty effective ready-made solution for damping the 2 axis should you hook up the stick without power to them. Much easier than removing a spring and then trying to come up with effective damping solution that withstands the rigors of use without disintegrating yet allows ratchet-free movement. Damn I wish I could remember which emulator I saw recently that is capable of absolute inputs, but it eludes me for the moment. That emulator with a FF stick that has the FF disabled might represent a reasonably achievable middle-ground solution.

Either way, BUMP!!

I think the emulator was joy2mouse. Joy2mouse3.exe, to be more precise.
http://atzitznet.no-ip.org/Joy2Mouse3/
http://atzitznet.no-...ouse3/help.html

There is an "absolute" check box showing in the help pages.

[Loc Nar]

Quote

I think the emulator was joy2mouse. Joy2mouse3.exe, to be more precise.
http://atzitznet.no-ip.org/Joy2Mouse3/
http://atzitznet.no-...ouse3/help.html

There is an "absolute" check box showing in the help pages.

Also worth noting there appear to be independent x and y axis options, and not only that but the ability to swap x-inputs to y-outputs (not needed for MWO, but neat and potentially useful for *other stuff). This looks like a good candidate for non TARGET users to be able to come up with viable settings; good find!

Edited by Loc Nar, 18 May 2013 - 10:05 AM.