Upgrading the Caution Panel (and laser cutting PCB's)

boxer one is in hot g'day everyone welcome back to the warthog project today's video we're going to be talking about the caution panel and how we changed it from a fidget 64 card to being run completely on Arduino and DCS bios all right so here is the caution panel out of the cockpit if you look at this video that I'll link right here now um that's the overview of this all I'm going to do now is pull it apart rip that card out and um pull these LEDs out [Music] okay so there's the old card you can see it's a fidget LED 64 and this network of cables came with it so you can see that every LED in here had its own positive and negative coming to this card this card had its benefits um the major one being you can select the voltage that it outputs to each LED it means I didn't have to put any resistors in the circuit at all time to get rid of that and I'm moving to Arduino with a DCS bios setup so you can see how this was attached what I'll do now is I'll just pull the top panel off because this top panel is still usable it'll go on the new one all I'm redoing is this back panel foreign s will be reused you can see that the LEDs were just held on with some vinyl wrap so all I need to do is pull that wrap off and the LEDs will just fall out and that's the panel with all the um LEDs out of it all right so this is the caution box design from sort of the back to the front on this side that's the top panel does nothing other than to give it a bit of depth that's the one that's made out of green plastic that you would have seen me replacing and Engraving in the last video uh this one is a spacer this one is another spacer but it's also the one with the the holes where it actually gets mounted to the cockpit and then this bit here is the one that had the LEDs in it you can see I was using two LEDs for each um indicator and then that's the rear one that just mounted the fidgets LED 64. so that's the old design and where we Branch off at the top here is the new design so you can see that I have a new rear plate I'm now using one LED per indicator I'm doing that just because I don't want to run a separate power supply for the LEDs I just want them run direct off the Arduino itself so I need to sort of keep the amperage down on it so the way I'm going to stop hotspotting with one LED in the middle there is to space them further off these LEDs the further away from the panel they're backlighting the more even the spread will be so that's why I've got this panel right here this is just a a spacer I'm going to throw that into free Cad and extrude it out to about 25 millimeters and 3D print that spacer so I think there's going to be probably a 25 or 30 millimeter spacer so these will be a fair distance away from that panel which means that hopefully there won't be much um hot spotting you won't see the center LED in there it should illuminate it nice and evenly up the top here this is the pcbs so when I designed this one here you can see that basically the LEDs would have been in the center these ones if I click and drag this you'll see that they are not exactly centered in the in the indicators themselves another reason why I wanted them spaced out so they don't hotspot so you can't see the LEDs aren't lined up so the reason that these are like that and they are not centered is because I've spaced it for 2.4 millimeter pitch PCB board so all these LEDs will now be mounted on PCB it's just going to make building my Matrix for the max 7219 chip a lot easier to have it on PCB rather than running individual wires to which thing so you can see if I just turn on the guides here you'll see that I've spaced all those LEDs perfectly so the LED will sit in the PCB perfectly spaced and then when I drill those holes and mount them to the back of that panel the LEDs will fit perfectly in there you can see that so the red is the black is the cut outline and the red is just a lighter cut I do that so again if you if you flick the guides on you'll see that all the LEDs perfectly line up and you'll see that these cuts are in between the two so I'm not cutting directly through a line here I'm cutting in between the two to give it a bit more strength um I'll show you how I do that in a second and these these will just lightly etch across so I know where to put my drill press to drill that hole perfectly I'm also going to etch the just a light outline of where the LEDs go to make soldering it on easy I can just set the LEDs up not without having to count how far they are if I can just set them straight in there I also lightly cut this line so when I put the PCB over the top you can see that line lines up with the hole so it makes it a lot easier for me to line up a piece of PCB before I run the cut all right so what I'm going to do now is the PCB is the only reason I've separated it into two is because the pcbs that I'm using are not big enough um so I'm going to have to use two to cover the whole panel um otherwise if I had a larger PCB I could just cut it out of one uh so what I'll do is I'll just take the top one here I will copy that and I'll paste it into my workspace and I will save that as a dxf and then I will open that and import that into the laser cat software okay so here we are in lasercade you can see how I've got it set up so I've got these lines are going to be so the black line is the outline that's going to actually cut the PCB that's speed 10 power 50 so it's going nice and slow and it's pretty powerful to cut through that PCB the other ones are pretty fast and not much power because I only want to score the PCB so what I'm going to do now is just run the blue layer so I'll lace a masking tape on the bed I'll run the blue layer and then it will just cut those lines and then that gives me a reference point to line the PCB up before I run the black and the red layer together which will score the PCB so I know where to put the LEDs and know where to drill holes and we'll cut the outside of the PCB all right so here we are at the laser I'll just quickly run a test just so I can see where the outline of it will be [Music] so what I'll do now is just run some masking tape on the bed like this which will give me a reference point foreign [Music] just run those blue lines and then that will give me a reference point of where to drop my PCB so I know it's going to cut in the right spot [Music] all right so now those lines are there all I need to do is line those lines up with the center of the holes on the top and bottom but it makes it a lot easier I can look through these holes at where that line is and then I know I'm lining it up perfectly it's a bit hard to catch on the um camera so basically I'm looking through the holes on the PCB and lining it up with this so I know that that's the top of the panel as long as there's holes on the sides and there's holes in the bottom but it'll fit on this PCB foreign [Music] so I ran that um outside cut twice just to make sure I'd gone through the whole PCB um it never goes the full way through but what I can do now is just bend it slowly and it will come off and then I'll sand the edges and it'll be good you can see how I've scored the parts where the LEDs are so I know where to sit them before I solder them anyway I'll do the other one we're done thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so here is the rear panel and here are the um two pcbs that I've cut uh you can see that I've also scored so it's pretty easy for me to work out where I need to put the LEDs and you can see that these pcbs are the ones that I've used throughout the pit that have the solid lines on them that makes it much easier to do a matrix because I don't have to manually connect them all they're all connected already and I just break it where I don't need a circuit so you can see that those two will bolt together like that and you can see that because I've laser engraved those holes line up on those ones and the LED should fit perfectly in there once it's all salted up and then on the back side here is where the sorry that way is where the simple Matrix will be wired up okay so there is the same front plate like I said before um engraved reverse engraved uh next one that comes along is the this is the same rear plate I was using these little white pieces of plastic to diffuse the LEDs and I've done that with this thing right here so this is a 25 mil thick 3D printed spacer it doesn't look pretty because it doesn't have to look pretty I just printed it at 0.2 layer height at very fast so this is the very rear spacer you can see so that piece bolts over like that you can see that there's a space for a single LED in each indicator and because it's so far from the front panel it's that far away I don't get hot spotting the light's got enough spread in it to fill the whole indicator all right so the Matrix looks really complicated to wire up but it's actually not I use this PCB which has the lines across it so that cuts down a lot of the wiring so all these LEDs anodes at the top cathodes at the bottom so I've shared all the anodes easily and then you just break the connection on the PCB where you need the Matrix to be I copied my exact Matrix for this wiring from Craig at mysinpit.co.uk if I'll link to his channel down below and I'll pop it up just here he made the exact same panel as this and he goes into heaps and heaps of detail so all I did was watch that video on copy his design completely he also shared the code with me so I threw that on the Arduino and it worked Straight Out of the Box it's really easy to wire up your own Matrix not hard it's just tedious um soldering so many little wires together and that sort of stuff so this is just a rear plate that I made that goes on the back of there you can see that it is in Arduino Uno and this little Max 7219 breakout board so this used to have an 8x8 display on it all I've done is worked out which cable goes to which one thanks to Craig over at my sim pit I just copied his and then on the back I was just trying to make it look pretty it didn't come out very well but it's on the back and everybody can see it so I've just got these really long bolts you just put them through here so those same bolts line up on every single panel so that's how the whole thing gets held together like a big sandwich goes like that then your spacer goes on like this then your rear plate goes on like this in your pcbs go on like this so that goes on there and then the whole thing gets um connected with these standoffs and then the standoff support the rear so that's what the sandwich looks like and then the rear panel with the Arduino just gets connected and bolt it on there with some screws and that's basically it um if you see now the whole thing's powered off the Arduino so I'll just grab cable and hook it up and everything will illuminate so Craig's programmed it too far when it first turns on to illuminate every LED I like it because it just means that I can quickly look at it and see that everything's working as soon as it receives signal from DCS bios so as soon as you start DCS this will all turn off and it will start as usual and mirror what's in the game you can see how there's very limited hot spotting because a space the LED is so far away from it uh whereas if they were too close you'd see sort of a circle where the LED is in the middle and it wouldn't be so bright on the outside anyway that's it for this video make sure you like And subscribe make sure you go over and check out Craig over at mysimpit.co.uk and follow his YouTube channel links in the description uh I'll put some flying video up now because why the hell not thanks you switch to aft UHF radio to On On and On accelerometer reset exterior and internal lights uh position lights to flash console lights on give ourselves emergency flood battery to power inverted to standby flat lever to indicated which is all the way down double check that those are locked back before I bleed our leak test signal lamp light tests fuel display selector to main test out fuel indicator which is working it's currently moving because they're defueling us AP switch to start Works Oxygen on epidem on CU and egi on push pumps left throttle to idle pitching your SAS test engine off we'll do that once the engines are started that left engine is now on right into the start and you start cycle yeah sorry engine start cycle light comes on there we go stat all in the green which is what we want CDU iron s nav ready nav mode egi steerpoint emergency flat body can go off yeah corrode altimeter on verify we've got a map loaded which we do makeup Tower pick on one request Taxi I'm not going the whole way down there I'm taking two two I'm not going to taxi the whole way down the length of the Airfield through all this just to get to the runway so instead I'm gonna go yeah that's right all I do when the bot tells me what I don't want to hear is I just ignore it I usually do that with this human ATC as well just ignore what they're telling me and I'll do whatever I want it's multiplier DCS man everybody does that a little white just here we will go flaps set for takeoff speed brakes are closed iff is on oxygen is on defog di so I don't need to worry about canopies down a lot seats armed speed brakes are closed exterior lights any Collision on position flash too steady Landing lights on where are we again like a makeup Tower pick on one single ship A10 taking Runway two two four departure oh my God all right no warning lights flaps down 80 percent breaks off 100 . you're up laptop we are I love it now make himself equal one through the active departed to the West good day what we will do now is set in that on that video on this is not much for need to change it now we didn't bring any old GPS plays around gonna Master arm we're out engines gauges are good no warning lights fuel we've got 7 7 300 pounds columns to two five three yeah and one three four external lights all off countermissions to semi can I already see holy crap this flare is such an improvement how good is that I can actually see these targets and we're like 25 miles away and look how clear it is should have brought a cluster bomb to this shouldn't I look at that look how close they all are together anyway it comes our first shot the wrong one I don't want to track that one I want to track that tank I don't want to track that one I want to track that one awful away on that might work one of these in the same pass not with a Maverick though though with a laser rocket by the way only 5.2 5.0 4.9 that'll do us see rocket away hopefully that tank will explode and this guy will explode thing did the tank explode what the Maverick here is that the tank it was the tank that's what I like to see I reckon one rocket right in the middle of those two might actually both have a look at us wonder if the rocket will um get both of them one of them see alive still experience they're all been a bit close now 2.7 miles is too close it's a punch it down this little Valley here with a pull up pull up our ones are pull up pull up altitude altitude 0.4 5.3 4.2 5.15 laser on block it away I love that new explosion effect let's go in guns I'll give a laser rocker to this guy and a gun run to his friend that's it where did his friend go he's his friend oh they're shooting at us there he is oh got some problems we're on fire for one but we obviously missed one of those oh what have we got here fires out leaking lots of fuel stores are going off right engine oil pressure Wing pump what fuel pressure right Jim and crcu yep we're all good left engine looks good control feel pretty fine that's a lot of fuel coming out of that I think we're gonna have to bug one out after that let's go safe safe and safe oh we've got no harder either that's all right we don't need a HUD just need to navigate back to maycock she is let's just go dismiss and load up in the CPU page on that we'll go back to Mission uh function two for now divert to makeup which is over there I've not got two four point seven makeup Tower pig11 inbound zero three one is about there really um well that's what happens when you go for a gun run and you didn't see the zsu that was still alive I thought I got them all but I was wrong makeup Tower pig11 emergency aircraft um straight into practice on zero four on Final makeup for 10200 what have you tried the speed brakes there's more hydraulic pressure looking bad simply breaks around and we'll go get down flaps down three down and locked this make up there I'll pick one one uh emergency aircraft short final zero four make up no HUD we're just wigging it it's actually pretty smooth I think speed brakes are out flaps it down threw down unlocked Landing lights are on I feel like I'm short a little bit of throttle it's taking lots of Rudder when you throttle up that's all right like a glove look at the throttles [Music] it's pretty breaks in flaps her up like I'm saying [Music]

Channel: The Warthog Project

Views: 30,462

Keywords: dcs

Id: mlAXTiZ11Rw

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022