ARC-210 Digital Radio! - A-10C Home Flight Simulator

hi guys welcome back to the channel uh in today's video we're going to be upgrading the radio stack to bring this whole cockpit in line with dcs a10 c2 so [Music] so the new a10 has an upgraded arc 210 radio head the old radio stack that i've got here needs to be basically removed hacked up the top of it cut off and the new radio goes in i'm also going to use this opportunity to fix up some of the things that aren't working on it so this ky 58 is just for looks only none of these are actually wired up only because i haven't connected them i'll do that now so the r210 right now is not actually in the game it might be by the time this video comes out so all i'm going to be doing is putting an r210 in there but the knobs and buttons on it are just going to be replicating what this vhf does at the moment anyway so let's pull that thing out and i'll meet you in the workshop here we are in the workbench and this is the old radio setup that i was using um from the old dcs a10 so it's a vhf sorry a uhf in the middle and two vhfs very early on in the design process i decided to make this as one solid unit rather than three separate panels i did that because all of it is shared off the arduino max in there and i could also share the backlight circuit the other reason is because this one goes flush up against the thrust warthog i needed a lot of clearance here if i hadn't made these separate panels i would have had another piece with a card down here and it would have blocked it and i would have had to put a spacer between the thrustmaster warthog throttle and the top of the radio which i didn't want so this radio has 3d printed knobs these are not my knobs they are um i didn't design them i bought them off shapeways of a10 all the knobs on this panel this section here is just for looks i actually had a static cover on that because i don't use it it's obviously not a real radio i'm not loading fills in there it's not secure i'm going to use these for other things in the game like pause reset view that sort of thing um i've also got a 3d printed one of them i'm going to replace this with a hit with a proper hinge on it i'm not going to be making the arc 210 a solid piece with this because it won't fit in my laser bed like that if i want to cut a piece that long my bed's not big enough so what i'm going to be doing is basically removing the top section here and i'm just going to cut it you can see that i've scored a line in there already to make it look like it was two panel so i should just be able to unscrew everything bend it and it'll come off i'll pull it apart and i'll show you how i did the displays they're actually seven segment displays in there that are if you're looking here you'll see there's a cut there's a pcb in there that's got the eight segment displays in it you get them really cheap off um ebay i've used them and just designed my panel so it covers the center ones um so you get two digits in each window so there's one of those displays there there's one behind there and there's one behind there now these ones are a little bit different because i couldn't put a large display in there because it would fail on these buttons and rotaries i had to split them apart so that's what this card here is that's actually just one of those display cards and all i've done is add extensions onto some individual pcbs that i've done up myself with prototype just to extend the displays away from that card and then there's two there two there and two there i don't think i should really need to change any programming all i have to do is remove that one and remove those indicators and it should all still work i'm going to try and leave this as complete as i possibly can so i'm just going to remove this top section okay so i'm just pulling apart this radio now i just wanted to show you that when you take the face plate off all i've done is undo those four screws and i've disconnected that tone switch um you can see the basic layout of the older vhf that was in there so that film in there is just like a window tint sample that makes it much easier to read the digits if you don't put a film over this sort of led it's really hard to read what number's on there okay so you can see here there's that max 7219 breakout board that i had in there one of them and you can see that that is just two single segments which is wired up to that other board in there now one other thing i wanted to show you is you can see that this one here is a pot it was the volume knob on the vhf those are connected to an analog axis that are on a leo bodner card in there most of the analog inputs i use leo modern cards for because i've had nothing but dramas trying to get arduinos to do analog access whereas these layout bodner cards are just plug and play it's literally the three connections on that pot to the analog input on that card and it will work perfectly every time which is why i use those okay so you can see that i've basically stripped the whole top radio now um all i've done is unscrew everything and it's all hanging down there and all that's going to get transferred into the new radio all i need to do now is just run a knife along that line that i've engraved until i get it deep enough that i can just break that off sand it and then i'm going to just weather this whole radio up and attach the new one so the new one is not going to be an extension of this um because this middle plate on the new radio is clear not black so i can't have a black one up there otherwise the back line and this new radio won't work [Music] [Music] so okay so here's the panel fresh out of the laser um first one's the top plate it is two millimeter thick white acrylic first it gets glued to this one this one is the translucent white spacer for the backlight so these two get glued together like that and then i'll sand it and hit it with black you can see that the holes in that side are larger so it hides the nuts of all the components and it retains the switches it also retains this which is a green transparent cover which will protect the lcd i've done it green i've got a clear one as well i'm just going to try it with green and see what it looks like that gets retained by the screen itself which will make sense when i put it all together next one is this one here so this is the panel that is retaining obviously the rotary encoders it also retains the motherboard standoffs that hold the pcbs for the tactile switches that the buttons hit so this one here will get bolted on together like that just with those four m4 bolts through there the screen cover will go in here here's the screen i'm using just a little 3.5 inch tft that slots into the larger panel like that and just gets pressed fit and the only thing that holds that in place is a bit of foam so this foam will just sit there and then this panel which holds the led strip will get bolted onto those motherboard standoff buttons the same method i've done all the other buttons in the cockpit with just these small little squares i've cut will be glued like that and retained in the front there i've got a whole bunch of these the key i've learned very early on is to make a lot of buttons don't just cut the amount you need i usually double it because some of them will fail some of them might be glued straight if i paint them all in one go they'll all be identical i've found that if i have to replace one button just differences in the paint means i can always tell most people looking at it can't but i can tell one of them is a little bit different than the others and it does my hitting so i end up replacing them all anyway so what i'm gonna do now is just glue these together glue all the buttons together and get a coat of paint on them okay here's the old vhf cover it was just a static piece and here's the new one i've just designed in 3d printed you can see it's a hinge it just goes in like that and then i'll just put a brass rod down the center there and it will be able to hinge up i can put a spring on it if i want to keep it sprung down but i don't think i will and then once i sand it and paint it up i'll put another one of these stickers on there and then that gets bolted onto the top here it goes through the hinge section just goes through that hole and that hole and then the hinge should sit on there perfectly and it should um look pretty good and hinge up like the real one so these are the main two layers of the panel cut and engraved uh that's the rear one and that goes on the front obviously you can see that one's been engraved and it's got the pockets in it for the nuts and the buttons so this one here is a bit different being that it is clear you can see that i have laser cut a mask before i pulled the paper off so if i just pull this up you'll see that i can pull that mask off and it's clear but it's black on the outside so when this gets bolted through you'll get no light blade okay so i quickly just wanted to raise another issue so this was the original one i was working on this is a new panel i've just quickly cut for it because i made a mistake so i realized that um i've designed this to run a 10 position rotary and this one here is a 12 position rotary you can see how the angles are a little bit different this one here is realistic it's actually a 10 position rotary so there's a 36 degree throw in each knob and this one here is the one i'm going to be running with which is a 12 position rotary so it's only a 30 degree throw i use these rotary switches throughout basically the whole cockpit they're really really super cheap and they do the job 12 position i think it's 30 degrees a throw and you can set how many points you want on it just by moving that washer another good reason to use these ones is this little thing right here so this comes from leo bodner it is a bbi rotary switch you can see it's a little pcb that you solder directly onto the back of one of these the benefit of that is so if i was doing it the old-fashioned way i'd have to bolt it in there and then i'd have one two three four five six seven i'd have to solve the seven cables and i'd use seven inputs on the card this thing here you basically solder it onto this switch it's just those two pads that go to the leo bodner and that's all you need is the two cables go into that so i'm not using seven inputs on the card i'm only using i'm only attaching two but this chip here adds extra inputs onto the leo bodner card so i'll put this onto a bbi 64. it actually turns into a bbi 128 so it adds 12 extra positions to that card so i'm not losing i'm actually gaining so it's a good way to go rather than losing seven inputs on each card for each rotary because there's so many rotaries in this panel i can use these and i can gain extras and still have enough inputs to do all the buttons whereas if i use the 10 position one they don't make one of these that would fit a 10 position okay so here's the two front most panels of the r210 you can see this one here is the faceplate you can see that there is leds around the rotary switches and then there's going to be led strip behind it which is why it's clear to light up all this section and all the buttons and the top section um the reason i did that is because i originally did the whole thing clear and had led strip and the light just wasn't very well spread around that that's because of these large rotary switches um so if you back light this whole panel with just led strip at a distance the light won't get in behind these here which is why there's a dark shadow around the outside of it and it just doesn't look right all of these letters were sort of half illuminated and there was a big dark patch so where i really needed the light i didn't have any so which is why i did this hybrid setup so there is some individual leds tucked in underneath and around those to light that up really well but the rest of it is all just done with led strip and then this is the backlighting circuit uh piggybacks off the next piece which goes on there so what i'll do now is i'll just quickly put the buttons in this and get this bit bolted together and i'll show you what the next bit is okay so the screen that i'm using is one of these here it's just a cheap little one off ebay um it's not a touch screen doesn't need to be unless i've missed something massively be at the r210 so it's very inexpensive and it just is designed to press fit into an arduino uno this won't be press fit because if i can't mount the arduino so close to it because it will fail on all these buttons and everything else so there'll be cables coming out of it to the arduino which will be mounted remotely the viewing area of this is not in the center because that would make life too easy they don't design it like this so you can see how i've designed this panel here how it's offset to hide all that um so it drops in there sort of perfectly it's a perfect fit to put the screen in you just need to put this in which is the protective cover so it doesn't get scratched peel the protective layer off which i'll do when i'm happy that i'm about to put it together for the last time i've designed it so it only goes in one way that way just there and now that's not retained with glue or anything the way i retain that is using the next panel which is the backlight circuit uh this was actually an early prototype you can see i've hacked the bottom bit up so this is going and sitting off these motherboard standoffs in there you can see it does that and i'll just sandwich them in between the two by using a bit of just foam so basically i'll just put that foam in the center there and then i put this on here and when it gets bolted on it sandwiches it in nice and tight and that foam means that if i do drop something on this it just actually has a bit of flex in it and won't break the screen firm it doesn't move around a lot at all because of that nice laser cut in there that it's the perfect size for it and you can see how i've made the pass through so the cables fit in so that's that way you know that you've got it in the right way there's nothing worse than putting this thing together and then realizing you put the screen in and upside down this goes together the same way as the ufc does in that ufc video if you go and watch that it goes into a bit more detail but basically the pcbs again same as in the ufc video nothing special just prototype board with a whole bunch of tactile switches on it they will get uh this one goes here does it yeah that one goes there they will get put in there that the switches go through the holes as you can see and then the screws go through those holes through this panel and hold the whole thing together as a sandwich so that's basically all that's involved in this so what i'll do now is just bolt the whole thing together finish off the soldering up of these pcbs and should be good to put in the cockpit okay so here is the sandwich basically complete you can see that the pcbs are all bolted on the only thing i haven't done yet is soldered on the cables i'm just waiting to do that it's pretty simple it's only a single cable from each switch that will go to a the bbi 32 i'm just i haven't done that yet because i'm waiting to mount the bbi 32 so i can see how long those runs need to be but um it's basically complete you can see that the sandwich is pretty good and the it gives you a nice tactile feedback and positive click on the buttons which i like so four knobs i'm just using these ones here these are 3d printed replicas that i did i designed these myself so that they're not from measurements they're not um scans of the real thing thing or anything they're just i guess them by looking at photos that i've got and i found online so the stls for all of these knobs are in the description down below and they simply press fit so you can see that all you need to do is find where you want it and then push it on and there is a grub screw in there which will lock it on so the ones on the encoders don't actually have grub screws i just made them sort of the right side so you just sort of push them on and you can see that it will work um i didn't allow for the push buttons because i don't need the push buttons i'm not wiring them up for anything i'm just using the encoders so that's basically it the knobs i just painted and then i used some sticker paper to just cut some lines and stick them on there so it works well all right so that's basically this panel complete once i get it on and wired up it should work fine okay so this is the new panel that is the lower section that holds all my control cards you can see it sort of goes that way there so the r210 sits on the top up here somewhere the uhf the vhf and the ky 58 i decided to move all the cards from the individual panels onto the one big unit um so the bbi 32 is running the arc 210 and the ky 58 and every other rotary switch that is in the left hand console this little uh leo bodner cards are buo836 that one's in there because it has analog inputs so that's basically running a whole bunch of buttons in the in the uhf as well as every single analog input in the left hand console so all the volume knobs the your sorry the rudder trim next one along is a arduino mega that's running so that's running all the displays in the uhf the seven segment displays as well as all the indicator lights in the left-hand console so i think it's the landing gear lever light all the emergency flight control lots and this arduino here is the new one that is only running the display in the r210 that's the only reason that's there and the only reason i did a uno is because the screen that i purchased is designed to run on a nuno and it was just easier so all up one two three four usb inputs for this panel that's for the radios and realistically most almost every button that's in the left-hand console and it's all one big easy to use unit so all i need to do now is i'll get it all mounted and i'll work out how long i need the cables to be to go from that pcb down to that and i'll get this thing running okay so here i am on the workbench you can see i'm putting this whole thing together this is the vhfn uhf um and then there's the r210 you can see that basically that base plate goes on there this is one of the reasons why i use these breakout cards so i don't have to disconnect everything all the time that sort of comes off as one big piece and then when i put it back together all i need to do is press fit that into that arduino same with this um leo bottom there's a breakout card there and then this is that display that was hacked up to make the channel displays in the uhf that gets bolted just here i'm also adding the ky 58 to this sort of setup here um only because there's rotary switches in this three rotary switches so three more of those little pcbs to mount that to this one and then that will sort of be here this won't actually be physically mounted to it uh i'll just have all the cabling down into that one okay so here she is basically together um this section's so big that'll probably have to go wide angle uh you can see that the new r210 is on top uhf in the middle vhf fm there and i've attached the ky so this is not one big panel i've just put a couple of little um just put a couple of little brackets in here holding them together so these are actually separate parts i just wanted them all in one piece so i could run the wiring a bit more effectively you can see that it's a network of spaghetti in there so these cables coming out are the that's just a piggyback cable that's for the backlighting so backlighting 12 volts all in and the k wise is up under here right now the r210 is not functional in the game so all i've done is upload a really quick little bit of code in there that shows the different radios displays on there which i'll show you when i get into the cockpit so you can see that i have uh 3d printed and finished that hinged piece in there that was just two separate 3d prints and all i did was cut off a nail so there's a nail that runs the whole length inside there and um it came out pretty well uh it does have the capability to have a spring-loaded thing in there like the real one does dragonfly in here jesus christ welcome to australia i'm getting attacked by the world's biggest dragonfly it's like a bird not sorry about that so it does have the capability to have a spring in there if i wanted it to but i don't actually want to spring on it because it's a pain in the ass to hold it open and push the button and then when you let go it snaps shut so these push buttons in here i'm just going to chuck some labels from a label maker on that to label what they are because none of these none of this text here is backlit anyway i'm just going to use it for the menus on srs so all the things that are sort of communication based will be under there so i can just you know hide the chat window and that sort of stuff so basically now every single thing on this panel is connected and works in the simulator i'm just waiting on the r210 obviously to be implemented in the game but every single button is in the game and using that card there comes up as a generic input so as soon as they release this in the game i should have all those buttons working basically instantly uh you can also see how i intentionally weathered all the old radios but i'm leaving this one like it's brand new like it's just been bolted in to sort of make it look like it's an upgrade i've also 3d printed a whole bunch of these little uh diesels replicas they're pretty simple things the stl file is in the link below all i do is press fit over the top of the bolts i'm using uh so they're like covers and they make the whole thing look better and i've printed out a couple of hundred of those so i can do the entire cockpit and it's really easy to weather them all i do is a bit of dry brushing on silver same thing i do on these panels here i'm pretty i'm pretty happy how the weathering comes out on this and it's really simple to do it and the other thing about weathering them is it hides the imperfections in the 3d prints it just makes them look like there's imperfections in them because they're worn and used i might as well just unplug this in and you can see that the screen is working once i connect power to it it'll light up and basically that's the quick bit of code that i just did once it gets a signal from the game it'll show each radio's frequency there but this is temporary until the game comes out with a proper r210 and i know what goes on that screen it'll fill the empty gap [Music] okay so i just installed it in the cockpit as you can see uh i haven't found up the game you know i'm about to do that now but i just wanted to show you how i program it so i use a program called helios the link for it is in the description it's freeware so i don't program any of the buttons in this cockpit in dcs itself i run a profile in helios and i can come this this software commands dcs via the luas this software is also the thing that's exporting not the mfds because they're just view ports but all the gauges um so the whole cockpit is set up running helios i'll do another video on the ins and outs and this i plan to in the future but for now the link's in the description and there's a whole bunch of info on the forums about how to use it but it's great software i just want to clarify those pcbs that i put on this these um rotaries and how so that's connected to the bbi 32 but you'll see on helios that bbi 32 that's only got 32 inputs is now showing up with 128 inputs because of those pcbs so you'll see that if i flick the relay switch here it's flicking between switch you'll see the the lights changing on seven and eight there uh so that's that but so 1 to 32 are the normal switch inputs and all the buttons here so if i push this button it's 16 push this button 17 so that's that's the radio so all those show up is all the buttons show up as the normal 1 to 32 inputs but then when you flick a rotary so this rotary here this rotary here has got one you'll see that that's 59 to 60. so even though the card doesn't have 128 inputs it does now that's why i love the thing so much basically every single rotary on this panel is connected to one bbi 32 via those little pcbs okay so i've white up the jet and here's the radio is working you can see looks nice and weathered uh all this is working in the game uh you can also see the screen that just that little bit of code i put there changes as well it's not perfect you'll see it's um if i change these ones it changes on that too and then these ones here are controlling the vhf that used to be there so you can see i can set frequencies on the vhf and these ones are programmed to do the knobs on the vhf as well so right now it looks like an arc 210 but it's only really a vhf until eagle dynamics came up coming out with a new radio i ended up using the green bit of plastic over the top of that screen that's why at different viewing angles you can see green um i'll try it with a bit of clear later on i did the same with this one here you can see the as the viewing angle change the viewing angle on these um tfts is not the greatest thing in the world but it's definitely readable it's just the clear green plastic i chose to do the top of it it gives it that green tint and i did that because everything's green because it's supposed to be not vision capable um i can change it with clear later i did try it with that darkened plastic but it was just too dark it didn't look very good at all so i swapped it back out for the green stuff anyway thanks for watching um please make sure you subscribe it doesn't cost you anything to do it and it supports me [Music] foreign

Channel: The Warthog Project

Views: 17,809

Rating: 4.995585 out of 5

Keywords: dcs

Id: aRrlgF6j6ro

Length: 26min 49sec (1609 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021