Making Analog Gauges - Home Flight Simulator

welcome back to the channel today i'm going to do a video on the gauges a long time ago i did a video on cutting this panel out i'll link that right about here right now and it'll be in the description as well during that video i um said i was going to do a video on the gauges but i never got around to it um i just ripped this out of the cockpit now to do a bit of maintenance on it because the the needles aren't pointing in the right spot it's a two second fix but i pulled it out because i was going to um tear it down and put it back together to show you guys how i made it but as soon as i got it out i realized what a pain in the ass it was to put together so i will not do that i'll do a bit of a walk around today i'll take this back panel off just so you can see a bit better that really serves no purpose other than making it so you can put it on the bench safely without damaging anything and stopping things from shorting out the rear of it so i'll take that off and then we'll have a good look around it alright so i just removed that rear panel you can see that it mounts the arduino uno on there it's just a cheap knockoff brand one 12 or something on ebay i've used a shield on there as well so i don't have to unplug all the cables when i do maintenance like this um so that just gets press fit into that and everything will line up perfectly i know every time so this one arduino uno runs this entire panel including the selector switch the indicator that gauge the oled that's in there and the two hydraulic gauges all right so we'll start with the top gauges these are really really simple really easy gauges the only thing that runs them is a cheap servo so there is a telepro sg90 in there you can get them real cheap on ebay so these ones only go 90 degrees but you need this gauge to go 360 degrees so the way i did that was i just geared it up so you can see that in there there is a gear all these gears came with these servos so i didn't have to buy any it just came with a pack of random gears so i if you see in there i've geared it so this will turn 90 degrees this will turn 360 degrees nothing fancy going on in here that is literally a nail that's mounted in between those two plates the gears on there and then it comes through here and that needle is just glued on top of that nail so this one here has standoffs to hold the servos on that back plate holds the servos in place and then this little sandwich here holds those gears in place this standoff here holds the whole assembly and it also acts as the back line so the back lighting of all the gauges is not done the same way i did the panels you can see there's just led strip in there that's white i did the gauges in white it's not realistic but i wanted the gauges to stand out a bit so the whole panel is green and throughout the cockpit all the gauges are white be really easy to swap it over i was actually planning on doing rgb strip in there so i could change the colors if i wanted to but i just never got around to it so the reason i chose servos for these gauges is because they need to move really really fast i tried to step up with it but i couldn't get the stepper to move accurately or fast enough as these servos will you'll see how fast they need to move i'll show you that now all right so this next gauge down here um i made that so it's just press fit you can take that off uh is a little bit more complicated so i probably could have worked out how to use a servo for this but i chose not to because i couldn't be bothered gearing it and doing all that and i wanted to keep it nice and compact and i also would have had to work out a way to gear the servos concentrically so obviously one needle in the middle but two gauges moving different ways so the way i did that was using a stepper motor i can't remember what it's called but i'll put a link to it in the description and i'll flash it up on the screen now it's not expensive it's the same sort of thing you'd find in a car dashboard that is because it's a stepper motor it needs it needed stepper motor drivers so that's what these little uh breakaway boards are here so one for the left and one for the right so inside that unit it's hard to see without pulling it apart there is actually two stepper motors running the two needles so if i pull this out now you can see i've just pressed fit them so that's the internal stepper motor and then this one here if i just pull it out gently is the other stepper motor so you can see if you look down in there this stepper motor you can see that rod just there that is the inside stepper motor and then you can see that white plastic bit there is the outside separator so it's two two different motors running on the same axis and then if i just put this down here these are the two needles uh that's just some brass tube with a laser laser cut plastic needle and then that's the only reason i've got another one in inside there is because to reduce the radius so it can tightly grip onto that but anyway that goes in there and then that's how you get the two working you can see if you look in there this outer outer ring grabs onto that white plastic bit and then that inner ring which is that one grabs onto the emit the rod that you saw in there so that's how that works off the same stepper so that stepper motor needs these two breakout boards which are again i can't remember what they're called they're motor drivers but i'll link them as well inexpensive on ebay it's only one connection to the arduino and then dcs bias talks to them directly and tells them which way to go uh so this one the only reason i've got two is because i couldn't find a standoff tall enough to hold the back plate on um so you just need one this rear one holds the stepper motor drivers uh it also protects that so that that's pcb in there these stepper motors come with little solder tabs sticking out of them so i used pcb just to hold it in place and then the wires for the signal go off that pcb and then around into the arduino uh that one there holds this whole assembly in place you can also see it's the backlight um led strip uh that one there holds the oled screen which i'll get to in a second and then that is the actual panel which holds the gauge and it's got the faceplate uh so this gauge right here has an oled screen in there which is supposed to be the fuel counter it's a it's a simple little oled really inexpensive again off ebay that goes up to the breakaway board which is connected to the arduino i can get it to display everything but i cannot for the life of me working out the code to get it to display the fuel totals i can get it display random numbers i can get it display like i had it just to test it displaying the radio frequency so i know it works i just can't work out the code to get the total fuel displaying in there and then down the bottom here this is just the selector switch for that um again white up to the arduino dcs bias runs that and the test indicator button so the whole thing is a self-contained unit the only thing it's got going to it is 12 volt power for the servos and the stepper motor drivers a usb cable to the computer for dcs bias to run the arduino so everything works and then the separate these these ones here are just for the backlighting um that's only because the backlighting is run off my dimmer panel so turn one knob the backlighting on the whole thing changes so the only reason i have to come out in the garage today is because this outer ring here had worked itself loose so it wasn't changing so all i'm gonna do is just lightly squeeze that so it grabs onto that white bit of plastic a bit better um and then i shouldn't have any issues with it um again i was gonna pull it apart and put it back together for you but i just cannot be bothered undoing all that okay so thanks for watching the links for this panel design and as well as all these sort of panels here in the description so i just made this video so if you do go down this route you want to copy my design um hopefully when you've got these cut out you'll be able to look at them and work it out reference this video so you can sort of see what's going on with it i'll also put the code for the dcs bias for arduino in that folder if anybody can work out how to get that displaying the fuel total i'll i'll give you a whole bunch of internet points okay so i'm back in the cockpit fuel gauge is back in i just thought i'd bring in here to show you all the other gauges that i made throughout the cockpit so as you can see my whole main infrared panel is mostly lcd screen so all these gauges are done with the lcd and the only reason i made this one and the flaps gauge is because they don't fit on the lcd so obviously the fuel gauge you've already seen that one the other gauge is the flaps gauge which is down here and these gauges down on this panel i've got the oxygen regulator gauge liquid oxygen quantity gauge and the cabin pressure gauge uh you would have heard me mentioning the backlight so all the backlighting is off this this um panel here console backlight does the whole lot and you can see that the gauges stay white on there and there um and i've got that one wired up to the instruments lights so you can see that i can change the brightness of all of them together using that now the other thing the camera doesn't really pick up very well is these little light posts that i put on there they're true to the real aircraft the real aircraft has them as well um you can see obviously because of the backlighting the needle won't backlight you could probably work out a way to make it backlight but i never did um i'm using these ones and they back they shine on the needle um so when you turn the console light on you'll see the green light so this light is shining down on that needle so it glows green the camera doesn't pick it up very well because the camera seems to pick up the reflection a lot more than the human eye does i don't really see that reflection of the glass all i see is the illuminated green needle it looks really cool the construction of these gauges is basically the same as the construction of those ones i'll start with the flaps one so the flaps gauge is the most simple of them all it's literally not geared at all all it is is a servo and that needle is directly connected to the servo and all the limits are done with dcs bias so you can see when i put it flaps the maneuver and flaps all the way down full so servos are louder than steppers obviously but i actually like that i think it gives it a mechanical feel when you click it and you hear that servo moving it sounds like something mechanical is happening um which i like makes it sound like the flaps are going down and up also it gives you that audible feedback especially when you're you're in maneuver the flaps are automatically changing when you hear that servo moving you know your flaps are going down so it gives you the chance to sort of a hint to look at your speed and work out what the hell you're doing so that one's the most simple fuel gauge you've already seen that one so over here we have the oxygen regulator gauge uh that one is geared from memory to cover that's 180 degrees it works and i've done the tests and everything but in the game i never even see a change to tell you to tell you the truth uh the next one down there is the liquid oxygen gauge that one is geared um because it needs to go 360 degrees so this one in the real aircraft is actually uh like a free spinning one um it'd probably be better to use a stepper motor for it but i've used the servo because it's got 360 degrees of travel you'll see what'll happen in the real aircraft when you put oxygen test it should spin the whole way around but because this one is restricted because it's a servo not a stepper and it's not free spinning it will do that so it still covers the full range of motion but dcs bias knows that it's supposed to be displaying negative 0.1 so and it knows that that's a stop so it will go back around and do the right value i um i don't mind it like that it gets the job done and honestly i never even look at that in the aircraft um except when i'm doing stuff start-up checks and i have to test the indicator certainly real time it gets used uh so the cabin pressure gauge um same thing i think it's got the same setup as that so it's geared and it works when you when you get to sort of 30 000 feet you'll see that that will be at 30 000. um yeah it's pretty cool um thanks for watching like and subscribe see ya hold on [Music] you

Channel: The Warthog Project

Views: 137,128

Keywords: dcs, flight simulator, digital combat simulator, warthog, warthog project, the warthog project, a10 warthog, a10, a10c, brrrtttt, a10 simulator, dcs a10c, flight sim, flight simulator cockpit, diy flight simulator, diy, gaming, game

Id: Ib9axlfK0f4

Length: 13min 19sec (799 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020