gnarly

I'm currently building some of my own switches, and hardware using the GSA-010 board from Flight Illusion. First, I'd like to say how much I appreciate using the GSA-010 board has been from Flight Illusion. I was able to wire up my switches and LEDs without any hassle, and it works great with the FI G-Step configurator software. Support from Flight Illusion has also been second to none, and my preferred go to source for flight sim panel gear. I'm now working on wiring up a few potentiometers (both slide and rotary). The slide pots are used for my TPM, and am currently testing on 20k and 50k slide pots. However, when I wire them up to the board, and running the test, I'm getting approximately 0-1000 input from one side of the slider to the middle, then the middle and to the other side goes from 1000 to 1023. I'm getting the same results on both slide pots tested. I've tried adjusting my potentiometer slide limits (negative, zerocross, positive), but have not had much luck. Does anyone know why the second half of the slider is not balanced with the first half of the input values? Ideally, I'd like a balanced progression from 0 - 1023 (-4096 - 16384) across the slider. I welcome any tips on wiring slide pots.

Once again, great advice that I'll happily take on board Phantom! The world of soldering and electronics is still fairly new to me, so I appreciate all the feedback. It is definitely being used during my build. I will make some updates to my soldering/wiring toolkit based on your response. I do have a box of heat shrinks I used for both wrapping a series of wires (to help organize the wiring), and the odd wire-to-wire connection when not using spade connections. The Cessna 172 project is slowly wrapping up. Only thing left for me to do is wire up the slide and rotary pots.

Wow, what a fantastic reply, thanks PhantomTweak. So I did realize my problem was that I was trying to wire in a series of switches that were already part of a pre-built circuit board switch panel, thus, only allowing me to wire in series vs parallel. The good news is, that I did finally figure this out after a late Saturday night and managed to work out all my switch issues and have been able to wire the toggle switches that weren't part of the switch panel circuit board in parallel. However, as you can tell from my soldering examples, I have very little experience when it comes to soldering. Your tips are definitely appreciated and I will make sure to put them to good use. Thank you!

I'm new to using perf boards and am trying to figure out how to ground multiple digital inputs using a single ground wire. I have an 20 pin bus cable going from a FI GSA-010 main board to an extender board that splits the bus into the PCB/perfboard; 16 inputs, 4 grounds. How do I share a single ground with the 16 digital inputs so they run in parallel vs running in a series? I've tried creating a single ground strip and attaching each digital switch ground to the ground strip I've created. Unfortunately, that creates a circuit that shares the switch inputs, and doesn't isolated each switch. This image has the extender board using one ground (which connects to me perf board ground strip on the left hand side), and the red wire connecting to a switch input on the perf board. https://ibb.co/vdG0Wm2 Example; using two switches, switch one or switch two will only turn on if both switches are turned on. Do I need to create a separate ground for each digital switch/input? Here is the backside of the switch panel that I'm working on: https://ibb.co/dchZ6w1 I've taken a couple photos. My soldering skills aren't very great, so bear with me. I'm also new at this, so any help is appreciated. I'm sure this is a simple question to most. Top side: holding the PCB ground that will feed into ground strip: https://ibb.co/12rtKQK. The underside showing how my solder connects the grounds to the ground input on the left hand side: https://ibb.co/xCFN6Fr This is the solder and tools I have available right now: https://ibb.co/QX02yxF . I suspected the solder gauge might be too heavy, but it does seem to work when I connect a single switch. It's when I add a second switch to the shared ground that the circuit then requires both switches on, which then activates both switches. If one switch is on, and the other is off, both switches are then off.

I'm in the midst of wiring up everything for my c172 trainer. Gauges are installed, GPS is up, TRC radio control board in the mail, and my Brunner yoke comes in on Monday. I still need to wire the switches and sliding pots which will be done once I get a couple FI extender boards delivered. Everything seems to be lining up. However, I would like to protect the rear side of the dash panel, and was wondering if anyone has come up with any ingenious solutions on their own build? For the top, I would need something that is flexible enough for the top trim, and have been leaning towards foam board, and possibly using that material for the back as well (surrounding the yoke base), and have wood providing the strength and support for the panel frame. Any materials that I should also stay away from that might induce electrical shock that might be easily missed when today's building supplies?

I use to fly with 3x 24" monitors and it was a decent experience. However, I sold off 2 of those monitors in the past when I took a break from the flight sim. I currently have an ultrawide 34" curved, and a 24" to the side. However, I am debating getting at 43" or 55" and trying that for my flight sim set up instead. Has anyone experience setting up their cockpit/flight set up in front of a large screen, vs a 3 screen monitor set up? Is it worthwhile to upgrade to one large screen vs using 3 smaller screens?

Thanks for the link, had a look through. Also stumbled upon this one in Quebec, Canada which has a load of incredible options: https://www.dix30simulation.com/store/c31/HARDWARE.html. Shame that Black Friday isn't really a thing for flight sim hardware.

I currently use the Saitek Cessna yoke, rudders, throttle quadrant, multi-panel, and switch panel with Prepar3d, and all the OrbX and REX addon's that I need. However, after years of use, I'd like to upgrade my flight sim hardware and was hoping to find some recommendations. I'm mostly simming for single and/or dual prop planes so my focus would be in that area. I know Iris Dynamics in Canada use to have a magnetic feedback yoke that looked very promising. I'm based in Canada, so any shops in the North American region would be ideal. Anyone have any suggestion as to the next steps in upgrading to more accurate hardware? I noticed https://www.simkits.com/ has some fantastic options, was wondering if there were other online stores that were similar.