Dual Control Flight Sim Upgrade
My dual seat flight sim is complete. The sim software I continue to use is FS2004 (FS9). It's old but reliable and still has sites that you can obtain airplanes, scenery and other upgrades. I also use Pilots Real Time Global Weather. This app brings back weather anywhere in the world and can be set up for dynamic and static real weather. For the full experience I have purchased the Aerosoft Airport Enhancement Services (AES). With third party supported software it provides gate to gate dynamic simulation including movable ramps, service vehicles, deice services and more. Years ago I purchased RealityXP which adds a real time weather radar. Combined with the Pilots Real Time Global Weather it displays the weather at the aircraft's location. 

Some more programming needs to be tweaked for the custom switch panels. There are three panels I built consisting of Arduino 2560 R3 boards using Mobiflight interface. Each panel is a separate stand alone module and programmed separately. Each module program is merged into one master application. Additional modules can be added at anytime and merged into the master app.

My AES Airports Installed
  
Videos

JFK Gate Departure and Takeoff      JFK Night Departure - Delta MD80      Montana - Delta MD80      Distracted Landing at Asheville, NC
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


NEW - Prototype of 1/4 Scale FS Dynamic Bed
   Over the years I had a design in mind for a full motion FS dynamic bed. I wanted to minimize the parts necessary. Traditional dynamic beds use 6 hydraulic cylinders. I had a concept that on paper seemed like I could build a system that reduced it to 2 actuators of some sort.

Basically a frame within a frame design. As shown below I built a control panel using the MobiFlight interface. With this interface it was possible to integrate the outputs for bank and pitch from the flight simulator to control the dynamic bed without a lot of complicated programming.

Since I already had three 12v linear actuators and a 16 relay board to interface with a 2560 Ardunio board I started with the linear actuators. Programming and wiring was straight forward, however the actuators were too slow. For the design it would also require more height from the floor to the base of the cockpit.
The second option for the prototype were servos. I was able to find some on Amazon with a high torque capacity. For a full scale version servos may be cost prohibitive but for they prototype they would at least confirm that my design would work. I used two servos. One for the pitch and one for the bank.

Here are some videos of the work so far. The servos are a bit choppy. The are designed to work at a recommended 18 volts. I ran them at 12v power supply with at reduction drive of timing pulleys. For a full scale version I switch to a gear drive off of either servos or hydraulic drives.
Video 1    Video 2    Video 3

Fleet Photos   


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