It doesn’t look like much yet, but this will be an airspeed indicator. I am following the design ideas in Mike Powell’s book.
Here I have colored the motor deck (3.24″ square) with blue Sharpie and laid out the center lines for the holes.
Below are the faceplate and the motor deck, both 0.064″ aluminum. The 1.8° stepper motor was salvaged from an old HP Scanjet 5100.
Next up will be the acrylic faceplate and light diffuser.
This weekend I etched a board for the excellent MJoy16-C1 controller board that I have mentioned in the past. This board is a USB joystick on steroids, supporting up to 8 axis, 64 push buttons, 16 toggle switches and a POV hat. The creator (Mindaugas Milasauskas) seems to have dropped from the net and the old domain is now a search farm. There is one website selling these online for the tidy sum of 199EUR. I found a good mirror of the old project page and downloaded the docs and hex file there. Update: This mirror is now gone as well. ðŸ™
I have had good luck using the toner transfer method of etching PCBs. Google it for a lot of sites with step by step details on the method. This etch wasn’t the cleanest I have done (I forgot to use photo paper and used regular printer paper), but was functional. I didn’t bother populating the parts for the ISP port, hence the blank area beside the USB connector. The jumpers on the white headers prevent false readings from unconnected axis. I had all the parts on hand with the exception of a 40-pin header for the digital inputs. Now I am one step closer to a functional panel.
I constructed a bracket from 1/16″ aluminum stock to hold the rotary switch and key assembly. It would make a machinist cry, but not too bad for basic hand tools and a bench vise.
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This was a fun installation…
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Clear prop!
I got some more work done on my cockpit panel. The paint is not good at all, it is flaking off very easily. I am considering this panel a rough draft and will likely replace it someday. The 1/8″ hardboard is OK but metal would be much nicer.
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Here is the frame I built to hold the panel and eventually electronics.
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There is no wiring yet but I test fitted some switches. I really need some instruments to fill all those holes!
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