Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

After getting it all designed, I measured up the pieces and bought them and cut them to size. That's enough for today, I think. By next weekend I should be able to have the desk portion constructed and make a little more progress on the dials.

I do need to wait on a number of components I ordered before I can hook up the electronics.

Today, I got to work on building the frame for the cockpit itself.

I designed the frame in #Maya and then went out to purchase the lumber. I'm planning to 3D print the dashboard itself, so the lumber part just needed to be the base frame, enough to support the rest without getting in the way. This is what I came up with (along with a representation of the yoke controller).

Next, I needed to figure out the gear faces. I want the designs to be crisp and readable, so free painting is out of the question (too finicky). I considered printing the design into the face as recessions that could be filled with paint, but that's pretty finicky too. Then, I realized I could just print the pattern negative space and put that over a white sheet of paper to show only the design I wanted to see.

Unfortunately, I ran into precision issues on this one too, as you can see in the image below.

Ultimately, I think I'll just be printing the designs onto paper and pasting that on the back of the dial. But it'll have to wait until I get a replacement ink cartridge for my printer.

So, I applied this gear design to a #3DPrint dial with a pressure-fit cap and two 3D printed clips. This allowed the #motor to drive the needle on the other side through the #gears.

The gears are a 3:1 ratio, and they're double-stacked, so that's 3^2 or 3*3 or 27x. That brings our 7.5 degree/100 fps margin of error down to 0.3 degree/3.5 fps, which is perfectly acceptable.

Enter the icon of industrial #engineering: the #gear!

I went through about a dozen iterations trying to get these to work. The one pictured below was the first to work properly!

Originally, I started with the standard gears like you think of in a watch, but I quickly discovered that there were precision issues with the sizes I wanted, and getting the gears aligned when they don't barely weigh anything was tricky.

So, I quickly discovered that thicker gears work a lot better in these situations, but they have issues with lateral slipping. So, I discovered this herringbone design that works way better than all the rest.

Finally, I had an almost working design, but there were issues with precision from my 3D printer. The design was just too small. So, I upsized it to the biggest the 3.25" dial diameter could fit and got the gears pictured below.

If you're interested in learning more about the herringbone design, check out this video I learned it from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqNkHA6-61c

While I waited for all those to arrive, I picked up a stepper motor at a local parts store to start prototyping the gauges. I'm using the vertical speed indicator as my first prototype because it's simple.

However, the stepper motor has a step size of 7.5 degrees, which is a lot (which seems to be common with smaller motors?). Anyway, doing the math, 7.5 degrees on the vertical speed indicator is almost 100 feet per second! That's way too big for a single step, so I either needed to buy better motors, or find another way to increase the resolution.

Finally, I got Logitech G Flight rudder pedals with toe brakes. I like these so far, they're simple and to the point and have the features I need, so I'll likely be using them in the final build.

https://www.newegg.com/black-logitech-945-000024-pedal/p/N82E16826197227

I bought a Cessna-style throttle too, but I can't recommend it for a few reasons:
1) It's 3D-printed parts that are simple sliders; it doesn't have the rotational actuation or button locks of the actual Cessna throttle.
2) The Cessna I plan to simulate does not have a propeller angle control (the middle blue one).
3) I left a middling review for the above reasons, and the seller delisted the item and it popped up under another seller the same day, so something fishy is going on.

There's a pretty good chance I'll be rebuilding this controller myself to match my specs.

I got this Honeycomb Aeronautical Alpha Flight Controls Yoke.

The yoke itself is great, but it has a number of switches that I planned to implement myself (and are in the wrong place for my build). So, I'm probably still going to use it, but I'll mount it with its switches hidden behind a panel.

https://www.newegg.com/honeycomb-sb003011-flight-control-system/p/N82E16826858004?Item=N82E16826858004

So, obviously, the first step would naturally be to start buying stuff in a frenzy before doing any research or planning 🤦‍♂️

First, the goals of the build:
1) Accurate scale
2) Physical dials and switches, not simulated with screens
3) Proper controls (yoke, throttle, rudder pedals)
4) Comprehensive enough to run full checklists for training

I still haven't decided on the viewing mechanism. The default is to use screens as windows, but that is locked to a fixed perspective (and certainly doesn't work as well for someone in a copilot seat). My ideal would be to use AR glasses to fill in greenscreen windows, which would allow the user to have free perspective (like leaning to look out & down the side window), but the downside there is that the glasses would literally cost more than the entire rest of the build combined. So... I'm still thinking that part through. Suggestions welcome.

So, over the last week or two, I've been working on building a physical #Cessna #C172 #skyhawk #simulator

Only now did I think it might be a good idea to start a thread documenting the design and construction, so here we go!

Are there any honest review sites left?

Google Maps & Yelp both seem to be utterly plagued by fake reviews.

Terrible idea. Some of us actually like being able to find a parking space when going out for dinner. Trying to visit urban areas with one parallel spot per ten residents is a nightmare.

There are two things we should be doing instead of this "abolish parking" nonsense:
1) Conceal parking. Move it underground or use the first few floors of your fancy new skyscraper as a garage.
2) Improve public transport. If I could reasonably take a subway for a fair price, I'd drive a lot less anyway.

But removing parking before improving public transport is just a terrible, terrible idea.

Just got dime-sized #hail rained on me in central #Florida. Then wind destroyed my clamshell awning that had previously survived several hurricanes.

Ten minutes before, it was a beautiful day.

Thanks Florida!

#weather