Building a Simpit

[One Wheeled Panda]

Over the past few months I took some inspiration from the various custom controls/displays and decided i needed one too!

My vision is as follows: In front of me there is going to be a flat space, where the joysticks are mounted. In between the joysticks sits a clipboard.

Behind that, the panel will angle upwards - that's where all the display-stuff goes.

The whole panel will also angle towards me at the sides. The upwards angled plane is where all the other inputs go.

I wanted it to have a vintage flair, so i started to shop around on ebay for the right bits and pieces - no LCD screens and such, all 7-Segment and analog displays with loads and loads of toggle switches!

After reviewing several alternatives i decided on an Arduino2560 to drive my construction. It's got lot's of analog and digital I/O for reading buttons and driving dials and can be freely programmed so it seems like the perfect choice.

This week some of the stuff i bought started to turn up in the mail! YAY!

I assembled and hand soldered the first 7-segment Display, and got it to work with Zitronens plugin. (Which took me - like - the wohle day) Have a look:

The display currently shows altitude in scientific notation - 6 digit reading + 1 digit for the exponent.

In the front you can also see all of the stuff I already got: A Big Red Button, smaller red buttons, rocker switches, toggle switches and safety covers.

I'll be posting regular updates (probably mostly on Weekends) to show my progress.

So if you have any questions or even suggestions/tips, please let me hear them!

[One Wheeled Panda]

-May need that second posting for a thread index

[psychopoak]

Cool! I am relieve to see what you have on your table! most of what you have is supposed to arrive at my place in the next weeks.

I will keep an eye on this thread, it pomises to be resourceful considering I have litteraly no background in electronic.

Have you already thought about final form of your controller? I think I'll go for something the size of a 13' laptop, so it could sit on my lap and still let me access my desk. and why not a flycase or so, it would be so cool ^^

[LordFerret]

That's really cool! Can't wait to see the final results!

FYI, a little unknown family history here (excuse me while I blow this horn lol) - my uncle was the guy who designed the zero-g illuminated toggle switches used in the capsules of the Gemini and Apollo programs. The company, if I'm recalling correctly, was "Daven", based in New Hampshire (USA). I don't think the company exists anymore.

[Mulbin]

Great stuff! Good to see another classic style panel being built.

[zekes]

when i get a proper desktop i'm gonna build a full Apollo-style console to house it in, and have massive monitors on top, with smaller ones for tech data and readings.

[White Owl]

I love toggle switches. They're pure simpit .....

Edit: dirty dirty pictures.

[AmeliaEatyaheart]

I have one thing to say...

hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe...

You're gonna have a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOTA fun with all those switches <3 Big phat toggles, missile switches and big red buttons is what makes a simpit fun <3

Suggestion: If you get serious about readouts as well, invest in a 20x4 character LCD. The library to use them is included in the Arduino IDE, and there's heaps of tutorials out there to help you make em work

Also, OP: You asked me about buttons in another thread, check your PM

Edited November 23, 2014 by AmeliaEatyaheart

[One Wheeled Panda]

Moar stuff in my mail today:

A Rotary Switch for timewarp, a shroud for my red abort button, a Big Red Button with LED for Staging, 10 5V meters and loads of Buttons (inspired by KK4TEE) for (science) action groups, EVA camera and whatnot.

Now I've got most of the parts i wanted. Some minor stuff is still missing but i might get that tomorrow at a hardware store.

Here are some schematics I scribbled. Sorry for the bad pic, my cam can't really do better with the lighting, cramped space and crumpled paper :S

If you zoom in you might be able to see the Details. Measurements are in centimeters.

If you got any ideas what to do with those unassigned toggle switches - I'd love to hear them.

I hope to make some real progress this weekend

For now I'm off trying to make a panel meter display monoprop levels.

Edited November 28, 2014 by One Wheeled Panda

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Hmm... Those buttons... Care to share where you got them? Is the cap transparent (and removable) by any chance?

[FlyingPete]

This looks like an interesting project

One suggestion for the big red 'stage' button- fit it in series with a toggle switch with a 'missile' cover. The toggle then functions as an arm/disarm switch so you don't accidentally stage too early...

[razark]

when i get a proper desktop i'm gonna build a full Apollo-style console to house it in, and have massive monitors on top, with smaller ones for tech data and readings.

<removed picture>

New goal for self:

Borrow friend's laptop. Play KSP in that room between tours.

[One Wheeled Panda]

Hmm... Those buttons... Care to share where you got them? Is the cap transparent (and removable) by any chance?

The keyboards are off of ebay here.

Their caps can be removed and consist of two pieces: A clear top and a white inner piece. So labeling should be quite easy!

Edited November 29, 2014 by One Wheeled Panda

[sal_vager]

Fantastic stuff One Wheeled Panda, but I had to move it to Fanworks :/

[One Wheeled Panda]

I've got another (very small) update for you.

Now the Arduino can display output on the panel meters (even if they are mounted upside down or on their sides) - still need to create custom scales for them though. This weekend maybe

Code-wise the keyboard matrix still has to be implemented and I might just rewrite the Arduino LedControl library. It just doesn't feel right and I want some high-level functionality anyways.

With the holidays coming up building the actual hardware might be done bevor 2015

Here's another Photo showing the panel meter displaying fuel (left) and el. charge (right). Note that el. charge says is 80% full even though it reads 20% on the current scale.

Edited December 11, 2014 by One Wheeled Panda

[MrOnak]

Looking good there!

One hint though, if you have an analogue pin to spare, you could create a 2r2 ladder circuitry and handle all inputs from your keys with a single pin and one interrupt. I'm using this to read 19 buttons without much trouble, although for much more than that I suspect you'd need somewhat exotic resistor values to get distinct values for each button.

The schematic I'm using is this:

If interested, I can look for the code over the weekend and publish it here. In the meantime, here's an example for a standard 16 button keypad: http://www.technoblogy.com/show?NGM

Edited December 12, 2014 by MrOnak

[One Wheeled Panda]

Thank you MrOnak! I've seen this before but decided not to do it.

I'm not tight on pins anyways.

8 PWM pins to connect the analog meters and mere 3 to drive those segment displays in a daisy chain. The seller says chaining more than three is not advisable, so i may need 6 pins. But i suspect that's only when supplying vcc through the chain - which i won't do.

That still leaves 48 pins unused on the Mega2560 - which could drive a button matrix up to 24*24. That's 576 switches! I doubt I'll even go beyond 196 (28 pins in a 14*14 matrix configuration)

Rough estimate: 30 matrix connections for rotary switches, 25 for the toggle switches, 50 for the keypads, 6 for the rocker switches and maybe another 10-20 for varios other buttons.

That's 131 matrix connection points - 23 pins (11*12) should do the trick.

Edited December 12, 2014 by One Wheeled Panda

[MrOnak]

Oh yeah I forgot you're using the Mega2560 - by reflex I was thinking Mega328 or similar . Nevermind hehehe

[DarkGravity]

You could sell these.

[One Wheeled Panda]

Due to circumstances (read: general laziness) there hasn't been much progress... I promise I'll do something about that.

You could sell these.

Maybe, but they'd be rather expensive. I guess price would have to be around 500-600 dollars - shipping excluded. Which is the next big problem. The console I want to build is rather sizeable - shipping in parts and having the recipient do some assembly and possibly soldering? Nah. I'd also feel obligated to offer some sort of support for something I'd be building, but I honestly don't want to do that.

On the other hand the community offers lots of mods and advice that help to DIY - so that's what I'd recommend anyways.