Creating a 3d Printed FMC for MSFS2020 & P3D

hello guys and welcome back to the sim here in brunei today i'm going to be building this 737 fmc it's fully 3d printed all it requires is a 7-inch lcd screen available from ebay and about 74 tactile led switches it really is quite a simple build but it can be quite monotonous getting it all wired up now there's absolutely no pcb involved if i turn this over you'll see that every single switch is hardwired to the arduino now this is going to be a very in-depth video please feel free to click through and find the parts you need i will try and time stamp each part to help you out let's crack on with a video now i've created two versions we've got the full size version in my hand here this is for the cr10 so about a print bed of about 300 millimeters square and then for the smaller ender twos or ender threes the print bed of about two to five i've split the design down into two sections so you can print it in separate parts and hopefully when you join them together it's in a place where you can't really see the join and it looks like one piece that was the whole idea on to the next part and that's the back plate again it's created in two parts so there's three versions there's the full size version which is for the cr-10 then there's the split down version for the ender three which is a slightly smaller print bed the two parts screw together we'll get to that in a minute all these tactile buttons we've got these ones here that's what we're going to use so these tiny tactile buttons have got a little led in the middle this is my prototyping board it's the one that i used as to help design the buttons and these tactile switches just push into this and you fold the legs over and it holds them in position of course you've got the face plate that actually holds them in so they can never fall out and by using these tactile buttons we're not going to use a pcb so if you're looking for an fmc that has a pcb i haven't got to that stage yet i am going to shear use brute force by just wiring every single switch together so that the back of this board is going to be packed full of wires it's a very simple design we are going to use an arduino arduino mega we may even have to use two because i reckon there's about 70 buttons on here and only 69 6769 inputs on an arduino mega without using a multiplexer board the next thing i want to show you before we go any further is all the different types of buttons i've created to try and find the best result for 3d printing now there are four versions that i'll distribute in the design that will be filament printed buttons with raised text that's number one filament printed buttons with engraved text which you can then wax and fill then i've got the resin printed buttons and these are definitely the way ahead if you're going to do 3d printing but of course not everybody's got a resin printer as well however the text is perfect i'll show you that in a second so the first version up is the dual printed layer button where you swap the filament at the end so they're printed with white so it allows the led to shine through and it's got a black black top which highlights the letter as you can see next up we've got the resin printed raised text these are probably the ones i'm going to use today they're printed in white resin to allow the led to shine through we're going to spray them black in a minute and then sand them off and you can see the letter e here has turned out really well and actually back lights really well as well and the final version is the resin printed in black pla with wax infill and these look absolutely amazing so before we go any further before i decide which buttons we're going to use for the fmc i've got the raised text with sanded ring on my left and we've got the engraved version on my right so these tactile switches have got bases and they also have little clips fitted printed into them to stop the switches from falling out all you got to do is push them in there they go you heard it click in so first up we've got the engraved text and you can see that actually looks really good highlights it really well let's put the now the wax head on wax infill i've used the wrong kind of black pla it's kind of transparent pla rather than black pla so it doesn't stop the light from coming out at all so for this example i'm going to use the resin printed embossed version i'm gonna grab my paint stick put some masking tape down so we can stick the buttons to it ready for painting secure it at both ends and now it's just a case of putting all these embossed text onto this piece ready for painting i'm just using this standard spray paint it's matte black and a couple of coats and it really sticks well to pla either resin or filament it's cheap as well which is always a bonus let's head outside and do some painting [Music] i've come back inside because here we've got the face plate and as you can see there's a bit of stringing happening between the button holes that all needs to be cleared out so let me crack on with that so i just happen to move some of the support material from where the screen sits all the buttons are dry at least i think they are they've been out there for a couple of hours i'm going to get my small mini file and i'm going to try and gently take off the top layer without damaging the rest of the button and hopefully i'm just going to run the file across the top and take the paint off and there we have it first letter done another 67 to go now it's time to start populating the backboard with all the components got my led tester here because i do not want to put a tough led into this unit put it all together and realize i've got a bad one at the end that has happened so many times before so we've got our green led that's going to go in the top hole good that fits in nice i'm gonna bend the legs over to hold it in place it's nice and secure red is on the left yep it's one in that works so that can go in split those legs i'm going to grab my face plate because this is actually the first time i have tested the fit of the leds into the unit and once again i can probably can see that there's a bit of a lip on this led's hole so i'm just gonna use the chisel here just to cut it out oh wow that's pretty good they're tight don't get me wrong there is a bit of force and if i try and pull these back off now oh no i was expecting the leds to try and get pulled out that's good the leds are in next is our 10k pot yep hopefully you'll see there is a locating hole for the locating tang on the pot so it can only go in one position and it holds it securely flip the unit over and hopefully attach the nut give that a good tweak and once again because i've never actually tried the fit i need to put this back on and make sure that they go together without any fouling and they do that looks really cool and i can't resist it's not that one let me just search for these parts here for the good one is the dimmer knob of course i've not tried that fit either and oh that works well so we need to create the buttons first and i've got a big pot of white leds here led tactile switches should i say so you can see the red leg painted there that's the cathode and you can also hopefully see the lip that locks into the buttons at the top on the white section here so we've got our upper buttons and this is the these are the white bases these will click onto the tactile buttons so the idea is to push one side of the button in use a small screwdriver and then just push the tab in and that works i'm trying not to bend the legs too much when i'm holding them which is a bit of a downside and then we've got our black button caps to go on the end that is hopefully going to push on there i've applied a bit of super glue we're going to push the button cap on one down we need 12 of these these should light up quite well when uh that's the general idea of making them in two parts and i may have forgotten to mention that if you are going to make this design print the parts just print one base first print the cap just one of each and make sure everything fits together when it comes off your printer these are all designed for the end of three and the cr-10 so they work really well however every printer will be different and the tolerances are my new we are talking about 0.1 of a millimeter here let's see what these look like and once again you really want to make sure that all the red legs the cathodes for me i'm going to have them all facing up so it comes so it makes it a lot easier when i come to wire them now you're just going to bend the legs over to hold it in place there are uh upper action buttons all done now we've got the the large action buttons in the middle here it's exactly the same process we've got our base our led clips in we just squeeze the tongues together slide it in and that way it should be permanently attached make sure it operates i've got a few of these to do i'll catch up with you in a minute so the letter bases they're a bit bigger so they're easy to fit just compress the tongue slide it in and push it from the back make sure it clicks job done i've just finished creating all the buttons i've got sore fingertips let's start to install these i actually need my phone out my pocket because i need to see where what buttons go where let's have a look so into google doo doo doo doo let's type 737 fmc ding ding let's see if we can find a good image that i can copy let's just hope it's the right one with all the buttons in the right place okay so init ref is the top left i'm going to bend the legs over to the outside now if you're wondering why i'm bending them on the outside instead of bending them in like you'd probably expect it's because they actually touch each other because they're that long so you're gonna bend them out and there we have the in it ref button that's better it looked a bit ski with for a second there let me put this on time lapse because this is going to be very boring as i fit about 62 buttons to this following this procedure i'll get back to you in a moment that was actually quite a bit of a slog to put all them in there it's taken about 27 minutes according to the camera timer but they're there they're secure and uh it's now a moment of truth where we put the cover on and see if it all fits together here we go ah that was a good positive click so was that okay so i'm just running through checking the fin works and then you realize you've cocked up because even though i've pushed it all together and that took a little bit of effort there we go i forgot to put the lcd screen in oh dear so i really am hoping that i can now slide this in i'm going to take the protective screen off finally well i was going to try and take it off but oh no okay so that's not good what's happened there is that plastic has been on the lcd screen way too long and it's really stuck to it and it's left now a sticky residue that i need to remove you might just be able to make out here the bits of adhesive that are coming off in little round balls okay screen looks okay it's not perfect so i've got to put the tab towards the bottom i actually think the screen might be upside down but that's okay because you can always change the orientation and we'll see if we can slide the screen in now hopefully without too much action there we go let's see if we can get this to go back together turn it over and gently get some screws in okay so i'm gonna do a hundred percent button check now and that's to make sure that each button isn't stuck and it operates nice and cleanly so how cool does that look it's turned out really well we are missing the m button because apparently the m didn't exist in the alphabet when i was doing the design i can't understand how that hasn't printed out but we are definitely missing the m button on goes the 3d printed dimmer knob so next up this is the translucent green enunciator lens and we're going to install that in the top hole oh no so that's a little bit too loose can i get it back out i can a little helper super glue just a dab and hopefully next up we've got the right enunciator and all it is again is translucent clear filament with razox it's sprayed black and the top is then sanded off to reveal the text i'm gonna put that into the hole on the right hand side oh that's a nice tight fit and the same with the left-hand side enunciator that is a loose fit even though they should be the same dimensions oh it's not quite that loose but a bit of super glue just to nail it in there so next up we've got the power pack we're going to test the leds to see what they look like let me turn some of these studio lights down so we get a good look hopefully you can see now guys from those quick tests of the light flow buttons that you can achieve black faux lighting with resin and filament printed parts of course they're not going to be anywhere near as good as laser etched parts but they're good enough for a homemade project hopefully once we get this all wired up it's going to look absolutely stunning at night now i'm going to flip it over and install the interface boards on the back the final job before we start the wiring here's the main board and that's just going to go over the edge like this then we've got the menu board now this was kind of designed to go across the board before i go any further i want to insert the lcd ribbon cable before i forget it so that should just slide in like so and then we just close the little clamp on the connector to hold it in place i like how it's actually held in a down position as well there's our led what's next ah it's the arduino mount now you can see i've had to remove the back of the vga connector because i do not want that in i'm going to feed the vga collector across the bottom of the board and then hopefully slide this into position use the two studs that held the connector together to hold the connector into the board there's our vga connector and then our power plug should just slide into this receptacle there and that leaves the whole area now clear for soldering arduino board will go on last and that goes in there like so so we've got our vga our power plug and our usb with the unit proven it's now time to connect all the wires up this is going to take a while i can imagine a few time lapses coming in here and it's going to look a bit messy until we get a pcb made that's later on though as i said we're going to brute force it and see what we can achieve cool that's how we're going to proceed i'm going to repeat that procedure now for all 70 buttons i'll get back to you in a minute um that's the arduino fully wired up all 69 pins are fully populated that includes the 16 analog pins still not enough and i always knew that so rather than fit a second arduino and waste all the excess pins because we only need six more pins seven if you include the excess ground to transfer it to another arduino so we need seven more pins plus i've got the two back lighting lines here these are 12 volt so i need a further two for them luckily enough i was told last night that the the pot on the front here is for contrast screen contrast and not for back lighting control the back lighting control comes from the pedestal dimming knob so i don't need to wire that up at the moment and that's why these two 12 volt lines need a separate dedicated line out to the pedestal to be powered by the pedestal backlighting to cover the seven extra pins that i require i'm going to use these hx connectors and then take them out to another arduino via a small wiring loom let's get these mounted and they'll probably become a bit more obvious so what we've done here is we've put seven extra pins in six pins will be for the extra buttons required on another arduino and the last pin pin seven will be the common ground at the top we've got the two extra pins here and they'll be for the 12 volt back lighting fed from the pedestal panel next up i'm going to mark the ground pin for the 12 volt lighting because i do not want to put 12 volts in the wrong way and damage the leds it's finally time to plug this thing in get it programmed and get it working i've got the usb cable vga cable arduino transfer cables 12 volt power cable i've already programmed the devices to the maybe flight boards and we can check that by going into extras settings maybe flight modules there's our two arduinos the bottom one with all the buttons is the card attached to the the back of the fmc and the top maybe flight board is the auxiliary one that has the six excess buttons attached to it via the extension cable and that just got hooks two to hook seven they're buttons and they're all buttons apart from pins nine to which are the five leds for the indicators on the left hand side you can see that i've got an excel sheet now i use these i'll usually print them out and write down in the boxes what each pin does by going to the debug and look at the bottom so if you look at the bottom of the screen here it's debugging away there and if i push a button it will tell me what button is pushed and what pin that's attached to all you have to do then is when i push it where you can see the button 42 is the action key on the left hand side so button 42 i've written down is the action key left hand side number one i now need to do that for the leds so we're going to create a test line in the outputs tab hit edit display module the second one pin here we go that's correct output 9 is an led and then hit test and it's message indicator message stop that go to 10 that's the offset indicator 11 is the display indicator 12 hit test that's the execute indicator and hopefully that just leaves one more i gotta push test first and that's the fail indicator and there we have all 74 pins mapped out over the two devices open pro sim server yep user evaluation accept nope okay so we've got pro sim loaded up so i'll be using fsu ipc to interface between mobifly prosim and the sim this is the same for x-plane microsoft flight simulator and pre-par 3d so i need to enable fsu ipc support hit ok it may restart it will do it's going to load in all the fsu ipc drivers now oh yes it has computer's just a bit slow my bad here we go let's load it back up so fsu ipc driver should now be installed here we go let's click it off to the side no i don't want to update okay so we're going to config configuration combine config into navigation it'll be switches let me drag this to the side and blow it up right obviously there's 277 switches to load up so it takes a while and what we're going to do now is use the free offset table supplied by fsui pc and uh list the offsets for each switch so each offset has eight bits which means we can control eight switches with one byte so i'm looking here at cdu one key which just means captain's cdu one is the captain's key zero pushed i'm going to go to fsu ipc 8 bit 8 bits obviously in that byte and i'm going to label that 6 6 d 0 decimal 0 then i'm going to copy and paste the 660 d0 so i don't have to keep writing it in and then misalign because it's now key one pushed this is just for speed because i've done this quite a few times in the past now we're only looking for the pushed keys and i'm increasing by one each time from zero all the way up to seven now we can't use that offset we've fully used all the all the bits in the byte make sure i get it the right way around so now it's going to be six six d one decimal zero highlight that and copy it and that's going to be one and now it's just a process of repeating this through the offset range until all 70 keys have got their own individual offset so you can imagine it's going to take a little time and q time lapse that's all the offsets entered so each each switch each button has its own individual bit and we used 10 bytes of eight bits that's it so quite a few not on the last bite we only used the zero section of the bit so all the way to the top now they've all got their offsets assigned we need to copy those offsets into our excel then we can take those offsets from excel and program mobifly you could just program mobifly direct by having that open but it's always good to have a record for yourself of what offset is used for which button back to time lapse this is going to take a while so we're starting with pin 3 and that is 6 6 d 0 decimal 3. i've entered all the data for the switches that leaves the five led offsets that we need to enter and i believe you know what it was d9.0 wasn't it i'm sure let me go back into the config page of the switches find the last offset i used which i'm sure is d 9.0 and then we'll continue using the d9 offset for the leds there we go so we use the hex code 66 d9 decimal zero was indeed the last one so we can use d9.1 for the led so indicators here we are cdu i've entered our offset values for the leds just got to transfer them across now so message is 66 d9 points did i get that right point three yeah then we've got offset which is 6069.4 display which i'm going to guess is cool 6069.5 execute is d9.1 6069.1 and fail 66 66 d9.2 i can finally close down the config page of prosim now let's start with the movie flight okay let's start programming moby flight we can use the first line we're in the outputs tab so let me move this to the left make it big there we go i'm going to do the leds first and this is going to be cdu 1 message edit the line this is where the offset is important message is going to be 66 d9.3 oh no it's not d9 d9 only i always forget that then in the mask value we select the 0.3 so that is the bit in the byte that we're going to use it's a one or a zero so one being on zero being off and we're only using bit three so it's only looking for that one or zero in that bit in that byte the bit in the byte hit okay the most important thing you need to know about the offsets in pro sim and mobi flight is they must match so whatever value you use as long as that value is the same in pro sim as it is in mobile flight it should work if you accidentally use an offset that is already used by something else that's when you get problems and say if you turn on a switch there it will turn on a light over there as well cross modulation it's so important to be slow and methodical when you enter these values to stop that fault finding later on because it can take quite a while anyway back to programming mobifly we are using fsu ipc value and message is pin nine once we've entered that first line now what we can do is duplicate the line and just edit the data so it's not going to be message it's going to be offset edit the line offset is pin 10 and the value is d9.4 we go to the mask and we change the four we take off the three and hit okay do not leave both of them connected or once again you're gonna get strange things happening hit okay and then just keep repeating until it's all done edit the line so my next one is display dspy it's going to be pin 11 hit okay oh i didn't want to do that and then edit the sim variable displays pin 5 byte 5 bit 5 god damn it display is bit 5. hit okay that's it done duplicate line next one is execute that's not how you spell it there we go this offset value is d 9.1 so it's completely different take the 5 off put the 1 on display is 12 and we're going to duplicate the last row which is fail hopefully not today edit the line it's going to be pin 13. it's invariable and fail is point two there we go hit okay okay those five lines there are now i'm going to make them active they're ready to be used now to the inputs all 69 inputs need to be inputted again it's a bit of a slog but it has to be done and we're going to start off with i'm just going to run straight down the list to make it quicker cdu1 we're going to go into the edit line the module will be the second one and it's gonna be button two button two it's gonna be fsui pc offset and i'm just gonna type in 66d zero the mask value will be point zero hit okay and set value one when pushed now this part is very important do not forget the on release tab so once you release the switch you need to duplicate the data so it's now 660 0 and it's 0.3 hit okay actually to make sure that 660 and the hex code 08 is the same and it's not so i've gone wrong somewhere d0.3 that's what i thought oh that's good d0.3 so now the 08 08 and zero eight match and the set value will be zero so when we release the switch it tells the program to put zero in and now let's duplicate the other 68 keys as you can imagine even duplicating this is going to take a while cue edit it it's now going to be button 3 and the offset is d7 0.3 that's okay d7 d7 button three button three okay duplicate i think you get the idea this is pin s now button four edit the line it is d7 and this time it's point six all i gotta do is change the three to a six and release change the three to a six okay and hit okay first three buttons done guys i'm not going to bore you with the rest of them it's just a simple fact of duplicating the line changing the values and doing it for the other 67 values i'll catch you in a bit i believe that's it all programmed you can see this enormous list there we go everything's activated it's now time to hit run with all the software working on the laptop let's head over to the cdu and have a play see if all that hard work has paid off okay so this is the front screen of the fmc let's go into the main tab and i'm just going to check for aircraft failures there aren't any at the moment which means fmc should be fully working into menu fmc and we've got ident all the position info looks good okay so we're at heathrow airport and that's echo golf lima lima that went in we're not at a gate we stood on the end of the runway go for a cost index of five today cruise altitude flight level three one zero i'm going to hit the execute m1 limits outside air temperature of plus 14. take off we'll go flaps five see a g of 13.1 v1 vr and v2 and you may have noticed that now none of the buttons work and that's because pro sim server has timed out i've reached my 30 minute evaluation period i actually do own a full copy of pro sim it's on my main computer and not on my laptop guys i think that's a good time to call this an end it's been exceptionally long video i've tried to put as much detail into this video to try and help you guys get to this stage it's absolutely awesome and i love how it looks it's turned out really well for a 3d printed project so if you're interested in building this head over to the website www.737 diy sim and download the files until next time guys catch you later see him out you

Channel: Karl Clarke

Views: 141,546

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Id: e7K3BXWmipk

Length: 43min 45sec (2625 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 31 2021