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habhab

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  1. I'm building my own A320 cockpit. I'm starting with the FCU, which is pretty challenging, but if I can do this, I will have learnt a lot to start the real project. I'm making a mockup right now. I'm having a Snapmaker 2.0 A350 allowing me to 3D-print, CNC and laser engrave. I have knowledge about electronics and software (C, C++, C#), and have already developed a software suite that allows connecting my panels via a PIC Microcontroller, using USB. So far so good. For the backlight of my panels (using painted opaque acrylic of 5mm in which I engrave my characters/symbols), I plan to use white LED. I might need quickly 10 to 20 LED's of which I plan to control brightness using PWM. I know that connecting multiple LED's can be done in series or parallel, and by eventually using driver chips. But I'm looking for some practical examples/schematics by somebody that has already done this before me. Anybody here that wants to share schematics and concepts for LED-backlighted panels? Thanks in advance!
  2. I'm building my own A320 cockpit. I'm making a mockup for the FCU using 3D-printing, CNC and laser. Electronics and software are already working on the FMGS add-on. What I was wondering is if there are ways to control the light output of all the elements in a cockpit. See below picture identifying 5 elements. 1) Intensity of indicators related to SPD, HDG, ALT and V/S 2) Intensity of 7-segment display 3) Backlighting of panel 4) Permanent indicators of Korry switches 5) Status of Korry switches As I think that 1) and 2) in a real A320 is based on LCD-panel with backlighting, it's probably an irrelevant question. I can also assume that 3 and 4 are controlled together. Might even be that there is nothing to control at all, and all is defaulted to a certain intensity. Just curious...
  3. Hello SamTE, I started building my own A320 cockpit as well, and am still in study phase. And yes, the FCU is my first goal. Not the easiest panel, but if I can build this, then I convinced myself I can do it. I'm using FMGS, and was lucky enough to get the API from Jean-Luc. With this, I could build a DLL that fits on the FMGS simulator. I used Sockets (IP) to communicate with a kind of Hardware HUB that connects with my Hardware. This HUB is written in C# (Visual Studio), and connects with my Hardware over USB. The nice thing is that this HUB can be installed on separate PC's, so I can distribute my Hardware. The Hardware itself is based on the PIC-microcontroller. I'm now using the 18F45K50, which doesn't even require a crystal, and still has a stable USB clock. I have written a stack of tools that allows easy control of switches, LED's, 7-segment displays, Rotary Encoders, etc... All software is written by myself. I now jumped on the hardware. I purchased a Snapmaker 2.0 A350 (CNC, 3D-printer, Laser) and started cutting plexiglass, printed my own Korry-switch and push/pull encoder (these are all pretty expensive to buy, so better make something yourself). I am now experimenting with my laser-engraver to cut out the characters and symbols. This works already great with painted blank plexiglass, but this weekend I'll do a test with the opaque version (better diffusion for backlighting). All this requires a lot of tools I have to learn. Snapmaker Luban is the tool that came together with my Snapmaker, but there are a lot better tools that I'm using as well. I learned to use Fusion 360 that I'm using for my CNC cutting. I use Sketchup to make the 3D-printing designs, and then import them in Cura to do the slicing. And for the characters and symbols to be cut by my laser, I'm using Inkscape. So, that's my story so far...
  4. I just tried with 3mm, and it looks perfect to me. So I guess that I'm pretty close to reality.
  5. Hello, I'm building my own A320 cockpit (using FMGS). I'm starting with the FCU. I wrote already the software, which allows to connect my own made HW. HW is running on PIC Microcontroller, and communicates via USB with one or more PC's. These PC's then communicate via Sockets with a DLL that is working with the FMGS simulation software. I'm now starting to build the HW of my panel. I have a 3D-printer, CNC and laser engraver (Snapmaker 2.0 A350). I have already a concept working for push/pull rotary encoders. If people are interested in one of these topics, feel free to ask. I have all dimensions of the A320 FCU. For the characters, I'm using the MS 33558 font, and use my CNC to carve out the characters on painted acrylic. QUESTION: Does anybody know the exact size of the characters on the FCU (SPD, MACH, ...). I estimate this to be about 3mm high. Thanks!
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