I started this series of projects when I had just begun my journey as a student pilot. To familiarize myself with aircraft systems and running checklists, I wanted to build a realistic simulator on a budget.

Graphics and such are far less important to me than realistic interfaces. Here's what my setup looked like (with X-Plane and Logitech/Saitek controls).

The switch panel

I built a switch panel which would issue commands to X-Plane by sending keystrokes. I flashed the Arduino Micro board to appear as a generic keyboard, and the turn on / off commands for each aircraft system would correspond to a unique key character.

The final result looks like this:

I sketched and then 3D-printed a case for the Micro in PLA.

Wiring it all up.

Interrupts were used to detect rising/falling events on the digital input pins. The downside of sending events from the device as keystrokes is that there is no two-way synchronization of state between the real switch and the virtual, so at startup, you'd have to set your virtual switches once to match the state of the real switches.

The COM/NAV controller

Having built up my confidence somewhat in CAD, I took on a more ambitious project to create a COM/NAV radio controller.

I had learned my lesson about the pitfalls of treating the interface device as a keyboard; and this device would surely need two-way communication to display the active/standby frequencies on the LCD display.

Code for the controller on GitHub (C++).

The component I'm most proud of: a unit for driving two separate rotary encoders from concentric knobs.

Here are all the major internals: the rotary encoder assembly, the Arduino, the 16x2 LCD, and a momentary switch to flip the active/standby frequencies.

I based the dimensions on a real Bendix-King radio panel and designed a special housing for the momentary switch button.

Detail of the switch button mechanism.

Populating the panel with the knobs and LCD.

The standalone IoT METAR display

Just for fun, I wanted to build a small unit which would poll the publicly available METAR data for a local airport and display it on a compact screen. Here are the internals, featuring a Raspberry Pi and relays left over from another automation project. The idea was to trigger certain real-world devices based on the weather forecast and time of day.

The OLED display in action.

The bezeled instrument panel

As before, here's the final result:

Progress shots:

The display is the guts of a Dell monitor driven by a separate Lenovo SFF PC.

Custom printed brackets hold the PC in place from top and bottom with the help of gravity.