First prototypes

 Hi all

I have had an inconvenience and the assembly of the CNC has come to a stop. Essentially, it seems that the NEMA 23 couplers I had bought are a little bit loose on the leadscrew and thus I could not command the Y axis of my machine. When trying to tighten it, one of the M3 bolts in charge of this loosed grip with the allen key and therefore I can not loosen or tighten it any more. I have ordered different couplers (not that they are not good, they worked for TR8 leadscrew flawlessly, at least so far) to be able to press the bolts directly into the leadscrew instead of loosening or tightening the grip around it.

Coming back to topic, as I have no further news regarding the CNC, I have decided to share with you my first prototypes of the MCP and a FMC app for Android I have built and enjoyed flying for a while:

As you can see in the picture (sorry for the quality), my current setup uses Saitek controls (Yoke + Throttle Quadrant + Rudder Pedals), two tablets (one for FMC and other for charts, OFP and so on), an EFIS panel and the MCP.

The MCP was purchased on www.hispapanels.com, the EFIS is part of Cockpitsimparts catalogue. As interface, I use a couple of Arduino Mega 2560, programmed by myself to interface with a Qt developed application that "speaks" with the sim itself. I chose Qt because I could reuse the same implementations to compile my programs into Android, so the FMC you are seeing is another application using the same libraries but in a different platform.

In the beginning, I started with boost and WAMP on Python for everything, but I missed the capabilities to easily develop a GUI for the interface itself and I didn't have full control of what was happening. Besides this, it was an ad-hoc implementation for the MCP and FMC (then I didn't have anything else) and any evolution made me sweat and bleed, so I decided to base my further developments on anything else more modular and scalable.

I will provide further details on the SW in future posts, I just wanted to share some insights into the evolution of my sim while I overcome the CNC problem. Hope this serves to get your attention so that you can "stay tuned" to the blog in the future and may learn about this fascinating hobby and, why not, even contribute with your comments, your ideas, advices and, hopefully, your own adaptation of the shared techniques or others to make your own version of a home cockpit.

Stay safe!