Mobile Driving/Flying Cockpit with Motion and Tactile ( Build )

[RCHeliguy]

I don't even know what I want to do with these, but I had to have them just in case I came up with a good use for them.

These are some rather large aluminum Quick Release Levers with threaded centers and some T-Nut head bolts in a few sizes. The levers were about $10 each and came in a couple days from the US. The T-Nut bolts came from China and took a few weeks to arrive.

 

[mechsicko]

I don't even know what I want to do with these, but I had to have them just in case I came up with a good use for them.

These are some rather large aluminum Quick Release Levers with threaded centers and some T-Nut head bolts in a few sizes. The levers were about $10 each and came in a couple days from the US. The T-Nut bolts came from China and took a few weeks to arrive.

Along these lines, I found some other qr's that are quite useful. They're mountain bike skewers so M5 but have removable shanks cause they're titanium and conveniently use a set screw to trap them so very simple to replace with any M5 bolt/rod/etc. Despite being very petite they're strong enough to support your weight on a bike at speed doing jumps and whatnot. Well engineered with bronze cam seats too... can't believe they were $7-12 a pair on ebay

I picked up some of the M8 ones you recommended in an earlier post, which I thank you for as they're great too and I'm using them for my new adjustable shifter mount. Here's my M5 one next to one of those for scale:

Deeru M8 qr for scale

 

[RCHeliguy]

On a bit of a side topic out side of racing sims, I've found that DCS is far more demanding on the CPU and GPU than any racing sim game. It is also a game that runs better if you have 32Gb of RAM most likely because of the large world maps that it uses.

There is a whole community of people who build very accurate cockpits for specific planes and their idea of button boxes is much more complex than what I've built. The support DCS has for elaborate button boxes is beyond anything I've seen before.

This is the DCS-Bios users guide that explains how to map all of your controls into files that DCS can import.

DCS-BIOS User Guide

dcs-bios.a10c.de

There is whole niche market that produces realistic button box panels for people who are hard core about this and want to purchase vs. build everything from scratch. There are also open source projects and many groups who support each other to do this.

The amount of information involved with DCS can be overwhelming and allows someone to take everything all the way and there are many ex-military pilots involved.

I don't have the interest level to get that deeply involved and I don't like the idea of something that bulky that is so highly specialized. I like the idea of something much more generic. In VR you can right click your mouse and then point to any control in the cockpit and then control it. There is also hand tracking that allows you to reach out with your hand and do something similar. And many people use something like Voice Attack to verbally control things. I like the idea of something much more generic where I can standardize the key controls between aircraft.

I've put down DCS for the time being and have been back in sim racing mode. I'm still awaiting the release of the Apache which may be another month away. I'll pick it back up then.

 

[RCHeliguy]

After all my mucking around to get my clutch pedal to feel right, I've decided that I like the feel of the HRS clutch pedal where I have it positioned and I'll leave it in place and not go back to the curved 3D printed pedal.

 

[RCHeliguy]

WHY DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS SITE when I was building my button box?!?!

Flight simulator knobs | Home aircraft rotary knobs

Home cockpit circuit breaker knobs in our online store - the best choice for flight sim cockpits builders . Also we are ready to discuss and develop custom projects.

pcflights.com

HOME COCKPIT SWITCHES | HOME COCKPIT BUTTONS AT PCFLIGHTS

Home cockpit switches | Home cockpit buttons is an indispensable unit for home flights building. Buy proper item with fast Worldwide delivery. If you have any ideas - contact us.

pcflights.com

 

[RCHeliguy]

Off topic, I'm a bit of an audiophile, but NOT the type that believes in magic

I picked up this Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb Model B kit and it is my new music server.

Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Starter Kit - 8GB RAM : Electronics

Amazon.com: CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Starter Kit - 8GB RAM : Electronics

www.amazon.com

FYI, this Raspberry Pi solution has

• Ethernet
• WIFI
• Reads FLAC, and every other format I'm familiar with.
• Runs USB drives directly
• Runs shared drives on the local network
• Streams from just about any service
• Has client software by browser so anything with a web browser can use it.
• Has mobile apps for Apple, Android phones.
• Has applications for Windows, Mac and Linux
• Very quiet
• $119 ( for the specific kit I purchased )
• Volumio is free ( unless you subscribe to their service for Tidal support etc.. )

This kit is $119 plus tax and Volumio is free unless you want to subscribe to their My Volumio which has native Tidal support among other things. Given the cost of most streaming hardware this is a real bargain.

This solution relies on already having a good DAC in your stereo system.

The kit popped together ridiculously easily. It's serving music directly to my OPPO 105D's DAC and most of my music was ripped as FLAC files. The music quality is excellent. Since it is simply transferring data asynchronously to the DAC buffer it has no sonic footprint what-so-ever.

I went by the book for installation.
Plugged the small fan into 3.3V vs 5V so it is quiet.
Downloaded the SD card association formatter and did a full format just to verify all the sectors on the 32Gb micro SD card. (time consuming and probably unnecessary)
Downloaded Etcher to my computer to flash the card.
Downloaded the Raspberry Volumio image.
Flashed the Raspberry Volumio image to the card using etcher. ( 30 seconds )
Plugged newly flashed SD card into my Raspberry Pi.
Moved this into my den and connected it to my Oppo 105D DAC by USB cable and powered it up.
It created the WiFi Hotspot "Volumio" automatically.
I connected to that Hotspot with my Smart phone and logged in with the password provided.
The configuration was extremely easy.
Set it to English.
It recognized my OPPO USB 2.0 DAC immediately.
I connected a 2Tb USB music drive using a powered USB Hub just to make sure.
Then Connected it to my local WIFI.
It asked me about any NAS drives, but I don't have one setup yet.
Last it asked me for an optional Paypal donation and was done.

It rebooted and immediately started to index the music off the USB drive.
I can now browse to the Volumio server off of any computer connected to my WIFI.
The temporary Hotspot is gone.

I downloaded the Android Volumio app and it immediately connected to my local Volumio server with zero setup.

Then I started to play my music using the Volumio app. As long as I'm connected to my local secure Wifi at my house or am on the wired network I can control it.

That was pretty easy and it sounds great.

I'm going to move all my music to a 6Tb drive on my network that is running 24x7 that and in another room and use that for all of my music so this has a tiny footprint.

 

[DrRob]

Interesting! Thank you for sharing. I went the traditional route with a QNap 4-bay Home Server and ethernet-streaming to my home cinema setup (and other devices via wifi).
As software I use minimserver, which is (still) freeware, compact and quick on rescan. All my receiving devices have their own software built-in, but can be remote controlled via app.

 

[RCHeliguy]

This just keeps getting easier and easier.
1. Plug an external USB drive into my WIFI router, and instant NAS drive.
2. Have Volumio scan for network drives, select drive and let it index the music.

In the category of this just can't get any easier, this is amazingly simple.

I'm not going to even bother sharing a server drive for music, this is far too simple.

These Raspberry Pi's are pretty cool. I wonder what I could do with some little Arduinos?

I don't really need a steering wheel, but it may be fun to build one.


I just found out Spotify is now broadcasting at 320 kbps ! That is generally considered the cut-off point where it becomes very hard to tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed music with your ears.

Even better Spotify will be going head to head with Tidal later on this year.

Spotify HiFi will deliver music in CD-quality, lossless audio format to your device

Five Things to Know About Spotify HiFi — Spotify

Artists and fans have told us that sound quality is important to them. We agree, and that’s why today at Stream On we announced Spotify HiFi. Beginning later this year, Premium subscribers in select markets will be able to upgrade their sound quality to Spotify HiFi and listen to their favorite...

newsroom.spotify.com

This just keeps getting better and better!

Edit 5/19/21:
I'm now running my 2Tb external music drive off the USB 3.0 port directly without a powered USB hub in between. It starts a newly selected track nearly instantaneously compared with taking a couple seconds to buffer a new track when using the USB 2.0 port.

I had previously ripped all my CD's using JRiver on a PC and it mostly did a good job, but afterwards I did have to clean the meta data on some tracks so everything would sort correctly.

I've ordered a couple 100Mb/s microSD cards. The kit came with a class 10 80Mb/s card which should be adequate.

The browser interface for my computer and Android app for my phone have been working flawlessly.

It's having no issues streaming flac and aif files as high as 96kHz x 32bit wide without a hiccup. I downloaded a bunch of stuff from HDTracks before I realized the mastering mattered more than the bitrate. In some cases they did remaster these higher rez tracks so they were less compressed, but many sound no different from my original redbook CD rips.

 

[RCHeliguy]

It shouldn't be too surprising that I ended up using my large T-Bolt Quick Releases.
This isn't a major change, but these larger levers are easier to open and close. They also have more throw, so the pedal plate drops more when they are simply opened. I don't need to spin the QR's at all. At first I thought they would just be too large to use, but after I staggered the heights I got it to work.

You can see the stop bolt in the center slot of the 120x40 profile that I use when I push the pedals together to get the same spacing every time exactly where I want it.

Notice that the T-bolts are shorter in front than back.

The do overlap, but are very solid. I'm using 2 spacers on the front and one in the back.

What I found was that the threads are such that if I flip the insert 180 degrees it changes the side that the QR needs to align when I tighten it. I also used washers to tweak that.

These are beefier and I think they look a bit better cosmetically. They should. The aluminum QR levers were about $10 each. The only thing that would make this look better would be to find aluminum spacers that are a bit wider so the QR's have a uniform width to the plate.

From the back they are easier to reach and here is the neat trick. Since they overlap, I can open the rear levers and also push the front leavers open in one motion. So this has gotten even easier to do.

Really this was just swapping out the only bicycle seat post quick releases for something a bit large and more upscale, but I like it.

Back to my rig being done again

For those who haven't seen my throttle mount. I have additional angle available, lowered the pedal about 2 inches and slid it back to line up appropriately with the other pedals.

Similarly, I moved the clutch pedal back a bit after giving it more rotation so the pedals would align better. The front bolt on the clutch is countersunk and threw bolted to the aluminum plate. The rear of the wedge has 5mm threaded inserts on both the top and bottom since the rear of the wedge is under compression this works fine.

 

[nopointinnames]

I don't even know what I want to do with these, but I had to have them just in case I came up with a good use for them.

These are some rather large aluminum Quick Release Levers with threaded centers and some T-Nut head bolts in a few sizes. The levers were about $10 each and came in a couple days from the US. The T-Nut bolts came from China and took a few weeks to arrive.

View attachment 473664

Those are pretty cool. That's kind of what I've been looking for. I race the majority of the time but have been wanting to figure out a quick release situation so I can easily add/remove a hotas setup for when I do fly.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Those are pretty cool. That's kind of what I've been looking for. I race the majority of the time but have been wanting to figure out a quick release situation so I can easily add/remove a hotas setup for when I do fly.

I assume that you saw these. I really like the mag switch quick release for my stick.

The double economy T-nut works well for my removable throttle and collective. I'm not sure it could be improved much. This allows for some fore/aft adjustment.
This shows my old stick mount that I replaced in the above video.

The foot pedal setup will vary dramatically with each rig. If your seat slides back, you can always mount the flight pedals in front of the driving pedals and that will give your stick more clearance.

 

[Wmacky]

Nice!
Geez, I'm going to have to revisit my racing / flying change over. I'm not quite to were you are at this point. MY biggest issue is my permanent swing out throttle mount. IT will not easily disconnect from the rig to allow the collective installation.......

 

[nopointinnames]

I assume that you saw these. I really like the mag switch quick release for my stick.

The double economy T-nut works well for my removable throttle and collective. I'm not sure it could be improved much. This allows for some fore/aft adjustment.
This shows my old stick mount that I replaced in the above video.

The foot pedal setup will vary dramatically with each rig. If your seat slides back, you can always mount the flight pedals in front of the driving pedals and that will give your stick more clearance.

Actually hadn't seen your video with the mag jig. Pretty cool for sure! Need to look around and take inventory on all the spare things I have to see if I can get something similar going on.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Latest installment.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Now I just need to create a montage entitled "The Simrig Addiction" showing where it started and featuring each upgrade and modification in sequential order. Not sure what royalty free track I would want behind that. It would probably take multiple tracks to run to completion.

 

[blekenbleu]

The Amazon link for Sparco Seat bracket appears to be broken at YouTube

 

[RCHeliguy]

The Amazon link for Sparco Seat bracket appears to be broken at YouTube

Thanks! I had copied and pasted a number of links that broke in the process. They have been fixed.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Thanks to @stigs2cousin for pointing out that I didn't have large rings supporting the rubbers like I was supposed to and even including a video from Heusinkveld to show why it was a bad idea.

He messaged me privately to avoid my embarrassment. However, since I inadvertently posted how not to do this in images above, I need to at least show an example of one of the many right ways to do this. The rubber cushions are now properly supported.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Quick reaction, Mark.

And about the embarrassment, that was your decision to make.

MFG Carsten

 

[RCHeliguy]

And about the embarrassment, that was your decision to make.

I appreciate it when someone teaches me something I didn't know especially when I was doing something wrong. I've also appreciated the people who have given me good usable suggestions that helped improve my designs and solutions over the years. It's been a fun journey and a better journey because of the interchange of ideas.