Wow. What's that part for? Center-mounted joystick?

Yes, that was an early example. I mounted the magnets directly on to the joystick piece. After thinking about it for a while I decided to extend the shafts and mount the magnets where they will be more accessible. That way I can take care of all the mechanical elements first and once all that is done I can make and adjust the magnet mounts to suit.

I should mention by the way, that all the sensors will be Hall effect, hence the emphasis on the magnets.

Here are some pictures of the center mount joystick arrangement. The big almost vertical bolt will hold the joystick, the little bit of tube behind it is only used as a stop so the whole thing doesn't swing 360 degrees!

The first two show the joystick at what will be top-right and bottom-left.




Close-up of the assembly.



These last two pictures show the throttle assembly. Two throttles mounted side-by-side. The rod projecting forward will be used as a friction stop. There will be one per throttle and the little bit of plastic around the rod on the left holds eight magnets that provide the friction. The other end will obviously be connected to the throttles.

Before you know my workmanship too much please note that the mounts are temporary and only there so I can work out the dimensions and positioning. I imagine they will be quite sloppy in use the way they are.





You can probably see that the 'square' white plastic piece with five holes is important to me! I made a mould for it and can now make them from the plastic I mentioned earlier quite quickly. I put the ball bearings in to the piece when I make them so it's all held in place very tightly. The ball bearings can pop out if required too.

Wow, custom joystick and throttle as well? That's a lot of work! Looking forward to see what you end up with!

Ice, I'm looking forward to seeing what I end up with too!

My first milestone will be simulating a glider in 'Condor', I hope that's only a few weeks away.

I suspect the project will never be 'finished'.

I spent some more time on the throttles (air brake in Condor). when I tried out the throttles with the magnet friction locks I found them to be very 'sticky'. I didn't like that at all so I thought about how to do it better and came up with a way that's working very well. I use the plastic to make a sheath for the friction rods. I've included some photos of how this is set up later on but first I thought you guys may enjoy some photos showing how the original friction locks with magnets were made:






And here it is cooled down and mounted on the throttle. I wasn't happy with the feel though.


Here is the improved friction lock system. The plastic sheaths the friction rod. I'm not sure how long it will remain consistent for. It will be interesting to see.

What is the plastic and where did you find it?

It's called 'Polymorph', although it goes under different names. An eBay search for Polymorph will get you plenty of sources. I paid around AUD$50 for a kilo delivered to Australia.

Thanks. I'll look into it.

I've made some progress in the last few days. I've moved the seat forward to put the panel within easier reach. I don't remember why I originally put it a little further back. Probably just a layout mistake. Once the seat and therefore panel were in the right positions I was able to find the right position for the rudder pedals. Here is what I settled on:



I can't say I'm too happy with the Saitek Pedals, the brake action is way too soft and the only way to use the pedals without having the brakes on is to push only on the round metal part at the bottom. If you rest your feet on the main part of the pedals the brakes are almost guaranteed to be applied unless you're thinking VERY hard about it. Even then holding your feet up is just not comfortable for long periods of time.

The last photo shows the center mount joystick gimbals bolted on to the pit and a temporary joystick in place. The nut you see in the middle actually joins the short thread below it to a larger bolt sitting on top.



I think I'm now ready to remove the controls from the cockpit and wire them up to the controller board.

Very nice!

g.

Thanks Gene!

Made some progress over the last few days.

First of all, I've wired up and tested the gimbals and throttles. I forgot to take photos of the installed sensors but here is a photo I took of the sensor cables. They're basically just four Hall effect sensors connected to the 3-pin plugs supplied with the interface board:


I was going to install the controls tonight and try to go for a flight but I realized that without ANY buttons at all even a glider is going to be a challenge. So I quickly put together a joystick. It's very rough but it seems to be working and it has enough controls for a glider, helicopter, GA and perhaps even a Black Shark or A-10 depending on how well the iPad interface ends up working out.

First a quick mockup of the stick plate. Please note, no trigger at the moment and perhaps not for a long time. I'm not a fan of them as I can never fire without moving the stick a little.



Holes 'drilled' and buttons fitted. Anticlockwise we have, an 8-way POV hat, a button, two 4 way hats. The bottom 4-way hat is only wired for up/down as I run out of inputs on the interface board. A matrix configuration is relatively easy to set up but I didn't have the time tonight and this thing is just a quick experiment.



Completed wiring loom for the stick. I'm sorry for the quality of the holes! This thin MDF is difficult to be neat in, it feels like it's just thick cardboard. Plus, I just wanted to get it done quickly.



Stick assembly ready for mounting on the gimbal:



I hope you all don't mind the incremental progress reports. Posting here is a motivator for me.

Two closeups of the mounted sensors, first of the pitch, then the roll axes.

HI, cool work, can you explain your magnet arrangement? I can't figure out how it works.

I'm guessing that each magnet has a different pole facing the sensor. As the shaft rotates it would go from a strong North through zero to a strong South.

Did I win the prize, or am I just thick ?

Cheers,

Andy

Andy, that's 100% right. The magnets have opposing poles facing each other. I bought the cylindrical magnets on a whim but they're fantastic for this because I can slide them in and out of their mount and so adjust the range of movement. By rotating the magnet mount in relation to the shaft I can adjust the center point.

Lots of progress tonight, I'll post some photos tomorrow. It's after midnight and if I hadn't stopped I would have been ready to boot a sim at 0100 and that would have meant no sleep for a long time after that!

Lots of progress last night, controls mounted and PC shelf is in.

It looks very different with a PC growing out of it no?


View from the seat, hmmm, perhaps I should spend less time on the cockpit and more fixing that fence.



This is easily the most over-engineered shelf I have ever made. The top bit of MDF is a spacer, I have no illusions that it adds any strength. I put the PC in, drilled two screws next to it towards the back then shaped the triangular bits of plastic to help guide the PC into place and at the same time stop it from sliding back when the cockpit is being used.



All that's left now before this first stage is completed is to add mounts for an iPad, keyboard and maybe trackpad. I could use an iPad application to duplicate trackpad functionality but it has to go over the network while a real trackpad is bluetooth. Still thinking about that one.

Lots of progress and use since the last post.

Instead of a dedicated iPad mount I made up a little shelf on which devices can be rested. I also added a the right-side panels because I was running out of room and needed something to rest the touchpad on:



I finally sat down for a first flight in Condor and after a one hour flight I crashed a perfectly good pretend glider because the joystick didn't have auto-centering. I was down at the hardware store the very next day looking through springs.

I originally wanted the self-centering mechanism to be part of the joystick assembly but it was taking too long to come up with a a feasible way to do it. The way I ended up implementing works fine for now.



I can add self-centeting in a future version of the joystick gimbals.

The wiring also, obviously needs a little work! it will probably remain as-is for a little longer. I'm going to order another interface board to make the wiring more modular. One board will be dedicated to the joystick and another to the throttles. Once you start adding up the price of connectors and fancy parallel wiring it makes more sense to get to USB as close to the controls as possible. Then cabling and connectors becomes incredibly cheap.

I'm very happy with the progress so far. The large range of movement of the stick is fantastic for flying, it has a light feel too so you can fly holding it lightly between two fingers or with your whole hand at the top to access the buttons.

The throttles are probably a little too stiff to be used as collectives so I'll loosen them up soon. I did some Black Shark flying last night and they were good but if I needed to quickly decrease collective for an autorotation I'm not sure it would be easy.

Thank you all for following the progress so far. I suspect updates will be less frequent now because I can actually use the cockpit and changes will be made as needed to support flying.