Button Box Experience
-
@Vandal - It sounds like your project is coming along nicely! Using a jewelry tray is brilliant, really thinking outside the box (yeah, I did that). I over-sized the box I use, but It does leave room for expansion. I may put some white-board tape on it so I can jot down fight notes - C/S, UHF, VHF, Tacan, etc.
The RF switch is a good idea too. I’ve put that on my list of improvements.
After using my switches for a week or so, the ones I’ve found the most useful are for the auto pilot. (Especially useful when using Delilahs and LGBs.) I used a couple of ON-OFF-ON swtiches for those. Also having Master Arm and Ext Lighting Master is handy for fencing in and out.
I’ve been working with Inkscape, I’m glad there’s lots of Youtubes out there, it just takes practice to become proficient. It’ll give a much cleaner look over a resized jpg image.
Keep the updates coming!
-
Oh heck yeah to, Autopilot, Master Lights, and I think Jammer On/Off as well! LOL – I probably won’t be able to stop until I have all the callbacks mapped.
And I didn’t have any issues with BMS getting confused. Again I think bc I have devicesorting.txt, [mykeymap].key, and axismapping.dat set to read only. Since I haven’t started using pots, axismapping probably wouldn’t have got confused at this point, but I do plan on putting in knobs for HSI CRS, HSI HDG, and also the pressure setting knob.
I’ve been thinking about the the ICP and how to do that without running out of pins. I think I’ll try to put these switches onto a resistor ladder or two. That should free up a all the digital pins. Then I think I can treat pins 2 through 14 as a matrix as needed (I hope).
So pin 2 and pin 3 both to HIGH might be “0”; 2 and 4 both to HIGH might be “1”; 2 and 5 both to HIGH might be “3”; etc. So, instead 12 buttons there I would get up to 144 I think. I am not sure if that will work and the wiring will get complicated. But I think it’s doable. Hopefully, if that’s wrong someone will let me know.
-
So I started prototyping an ICP with some cheap components and proved the concept of using an analog pin to read multiple buttons. I pretty much followed this example but instead of using a keypad membrane I used a flat piece of plastic and mounted seven rows and three columns of those cheap 12mm momentary buttons. Short story, IT WORKS. Long story, I have no idea how. LOL.
On the positive side I first have a 4.7k ohm resistor and I really don’t understand its function. Then my positive splits. One wire on its way to an analog pin on the Leonardo and the other to the positive side of the button switches. I used 220ohm resistors to connect the negative side of the button switches (the buttons are so close I had to trim the resistor leads) which also is heading towards the analog pin and also the ground pin. I just keep looking at this doohickey and can’t figure out why the positive splits to the buttons and to the analog pin and the negative side splits to the analog pin and to ground? I definitely need to learn more about circuits.
But the result is quite amazing. Reading the ONE analog pin I will get numbers between 0 - 1023 depending upon which button is being pressed. Well actually I get 1023 when no button is being pressed and the seven buttons wired so far give me 0 to 200 something. So all I have to do now is say, for example, IF analogpin reads approximately 44, send Numpad 1 to the computer. IF approximately 70 send Numpad 2. That sort of thing.
So now that I have tested it and know it works I am in the process of planning on making an ICP with Cherry MX switches. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll need a plate for mounting the switches and a specialized housing for the whole thing. So I am going to take the plunge and get a small milling machine. The plan is to mill out the circuits on PCB but I’ll also be able to mill out a plate for the switches to fit nice and snug.
Also I am thinking about mounting some female plugs on to PCB. I am leaning towards either RJ45 ethernet plugs and-or HDMI plugs running on the outside (think of a ethernet switch with a row of plugs) and on the inside I’ll break it out the plug so you can run any wire from the plug to any pin on the micro-controller. That way I can make a gear panel, a comm panel, and-or a lighting panel, and just run an HDMI cable from that panel to the micro-controller box. Using readily available cables like this should make it easy to move, adjust, readjust, setup, takedown, etc.
So, as predicted early on by some folks, I am right now spending more time on tinkering with these cockpit controls than I am flying. Why didn’t someone STOP me! LOL