10-10-2024, 02:42 PM
I have been thinking for a while on opening a thread which will enable me to add little snippets as I go along rather than seperate threads on different projects, which often come to nothing or are abandoned before conclusion. It is far more often that I build test circuits or smaller modules which I test but proceeed no further on. I do feel that occasionally I may be working on something of interest to others and obviously invite anyone to add their input and ask questions as they feel.
This does follow a little on my experiences on other forums wherin some do have (very loose) diaries which they add frequently to. It would also enable me to keep track of where to find things, particularly in reasonable chronological order. I also see it as a good method of widening use of the forum, at least my use.
I hope this is Ok with mods. It can obviously be moved if I have got it wrong.
Having said that I will start with a couple of items, the first of which not really being directly related to vintage, except for the aircraft I tend to fly, and at least a year or more back, although it did take a little fettling, as some say.
One of my interests, particularly in recent years, has been flight and a flight simulator. I have one which runs on my Linux based laptop (X-plane). To increase the realism I have added a commercially available joystick and rudder controls but, a few years ago, I decided that realism was a bit limited and control of some machines, such as a helicopter, were extremly difficult and impractical with what I had. Control of collective pitch being an obvious example. I constructed an interface using a Arduino Leonardo controller board (which readily interfaces by USB to an application on a PC) with three slider controls and nine pushbuttons which improved things no end. As well as sensible control of a helicopter, even though actually flying it was very hit and miss, was at least practical and individul throttles on a twin engine plane was brilliant.
After that start and a year or two I decided to upgrade to my present controller which I detail a little more fully here.
The main intention was to increase the number of control inputs. I wanted to enable more realistic control of multi engine aircraft, the current controller with three slider inputs being sensibly limited to three. This worked well but one slider for each engine limited it. The controller I designed has five sliders and four rotarly controls. These will cover multiple engines plus also flight trim controls which increase realism even more. The controls also have thirty eight push puttons and two mode switches.At present I use one mode switch only, for switching between two and four engine flight. I did work out that I could use the other mode switch for (specifically) eight engine control of a B52 but perhaps mainly because I often too busy to even connect up and switch on the sim it's never happened.
To implement all this I have increased to using two Arduino Leonardo boards with two USB interfaces to the PC. This brought a tricky problem. These boards have nominally the same identity and although Linux seems to seperate them the flight simulator didn't do well at all and I got intermittant data scrambling of joystick setup. I should say that the Arduino software I used was from easily modified joystick interface software freely available online. After a bit of searching online and finding lots of dead ends I finally figured it and it's now well sorted. It's all down to settings in an Arduino configuration file. The name escapes me at them moment but if anyone is interested I will search thing out with regard to this and also the joystick software.
The Arduino's receive their power via the USB port. The switches are configured as two seperated switch matixes to digital lines and the sliders / pots are to the analogue ports. For identification in the flight simulator one Arduino controller is nominally for engines and the other for controls but individual controls are only defined in the sim control setups.
Having got this up and running I did find that using trim controls in the simulator did confuse things. It's perhaps more understood by a pilot but having a trim at a point the main control has effectively a differnt setting. That along with there being interaction between say aileron and rudder controls means control was a bit iffy. I had to have some indication of the settings, for repeatability. With that I added another small processor (Arduino Nano) just to show trim settings. This sorted that out and made for a very useful control system.
The system was designed to go into a wooden box I had handy (for "The Works"). The controls are not labelled as their function may well differ according to function in different aircraft. Perhaps the weak link? Having the circuit in a box like this made construction of the enclosure much easier and neatly avoided any issue with dust accumulation.
It's perhaps a bit messy at the edges but I'm quite pleased. A short introcuction of, although what was electronically very simple, a fairly long projet, at least for me. See attached photographs.
The second item I add is somewhat more vingtage. I have had interest in old radio for some time. Over a long period I have been accumulating odds and ends and have now much of those I need to put together a 1930's regen radio. Among these parts I have a Telsen Binocular coil. On seeing one on sale online, with figures for it's resistance and inductance valuse given, I checked out mine and found it to be open circuit. On opening it up I found that the solder on the wiring to the terminal tags had aged and gone open circuit. A quick resolder sorted the problem. Access is via a plate on the underside. Loosen the two screws / terminals.
I had been thinking about a 1930's open plan board layout. Looking through old magazines I realised that they tended to have rather larger voltages on uninsulated terminals than is safe (100V or more). I tested the repaired choke using a signal from my MW signal generator to a lashup amp with various valves to get a feeling for the difference in amplification using 60V and 120V. My rough figures indicate that with modern valves (relative lol) I could get better results at 60V than with older designs at 120V. I don't think I would use old ones though as I prefer these to go into old sets. A point I think about now though is that maybe there are fewer collectors and even these are scrapped?
The result was though is that the coil seems to compare well with the more modern coils I have so that's one component tested. Coil photos attached.
Tracy
This does follow a little on my experiences on other forums wherin some do have (very loose) diaries which they add frequently to. It would also enable me to keep track of where to find things, particularly in reasonable chronological order. I also see it as a good method of widening use of the forum, at least my use.
I hope this is Ok with mods. It can obviously be moved if I have got it wrong.
Having said that I will start with a couple of items, the first of which not really being directly related to vintage, except for the aircraft I tend to fly, and at least a year or more back, although it did take a little fettling, as some say.
One of my interests, particularly in recent years, has been flight and a flight simulator. I have one which runs on my Linux based laptop (X-plane). To increase the realism I have added a commercially available joystick and rudder controls but, a few years ago, I decided that realism was a bit limited and control of some machines, such as a helicopter, were extremly difficult and impractical with what I had. Control of collective pitch being an obvious example. I constructed an interface using a Arduino Leonardo controller board (which readily interfaces by USB to an application on a PC) with three slider controls and nine pushbuttons which improved things no end. As well as sensible control of a helicopter, even though actually flying it was very hit and miss, was at least practical and individul throttles on a twin engine plane was brilliant.
After that start and a year or two I decided to upgrade to my present controller which I detail a little more fully here.
The main intention was to increase the number of control inputs. I wanted to enable more realistic control of multi engine aircraft, the current controller with three slider inputs being sensibly limited to three. This worked well but one slider for each engine limited it. The controller I designed has five sliders and four rotarly controls. These will cover multiple engines plus also flight trim controls which increase realism even more. The controls also have thirty eight push puttons and two mode switches.At present I use one mode switch only, for switching between two and four engine flight. I did work out that I could use the other mode switch for (specifically) eight engine control of a B52 but perhaps mainly because I often too busy to even connect up and switch on the sim it's never happened.
To implement all this I have increased to using two Arduino Leonardo boards with two USB interfaces to the PC. This brought a tricky problem. These boards have nominally the same identity and although Linux seems to seperate them the flight simulator didn't do well at all and I got intermittant data scrambling of joystick setup. I should say that the Arduino software I used was from easily modified joystick interface software freely available online. After a bit of searching online and finding lots of dead ends I finally figured it and it's now well sorted. It's all down to settings in an Arduino configuration file. The name escapes me at them moment but if anyone is interested I will search thing out with regard to this and also the joystick software.
The Arduino's receive their power via the USB port. The switches are configured as two seperated switch matixes to digital lines and the sliders / pots are to the analogue ports. For identification in the flight simulator one Arduino controller is nominally for engines and the other for controls but individual controls are only defined in the sim control setups.
Having got this up and running I did find that using trim controls in the simulator did confuse things. It's perhaps more understood by a pilot but having a trim at a point the main control has effectively a differnt setting. That along with there being interaction between say aileron and rudder controls means control was a bit iffy. I had to have some indication of the settings, for repeatability. With that I added another small processor (Arduino Nano) just to show trim settings. This sorted that out and made for a very useful control system.
The system was designed to go into a wooden box I had handy (for "The Works"). The controls are not labelled as their function may well differ according to function in different aircraft. Perhaps the weak link? Having the circuit in a box like this made construction of the enclosure much easier and neatly avoided any issue with dust accumulation.
It's perhaps a bit messy at the edges but I'm quite pleased. A short introcuction of, although what was electronically very simple, a fairly long projet, at least for me. See attached photographs.
The second item I add is somewhat more vingtage. I have had interest in old radio for some time. Over a long period I have been accumulating odds and ends and have now much of those I need to put together a 1930's regen radio. Among these parts I have a Telsen Binocular coil. On seeing one on sale online, with figures for it's resistance and inductance valuse given, I checked out mine and found it to be open circuit. On opening it up I found that the solder on the wiring to the terminal tags had aged and gone open circuit. A quick resolder sorted the problem. Access is via a plate on the underside. Loosen the two screws / terminals.
I had been thinking about a 1930's open plan board layout. Looking through old magazines I realised that they tended to have rather larger voltages on uninsulated terminals than is safe (100V or more). I tested the repaired choke using a signal from my MW signal generator to a lashup amp with various valves to get a feeling for the difference in amplification using 60V and 120V. My rough figures indicate that with modern valves (relative lol) I could get better results at 60V than with older designs at 120V. I don't think I would use old ones though as I prefer these to go into old sets. A point I think about now though is that maybe there are fewer collectors and even these are scrapped?
The result was though is that the coil seems to compare well with the more modern coils I have so that's one component tested. Coil photos attached.
Tracy
