Control Panel

Arrangement of the operation panel

For the operation panel, I fixed the meters that my made. I didn't have an overall design for what to make, so I just arranged what was completed.
I planned to keep the equipment compact so that it can be put away when not needed, instead of leaving it on the desk all the time. Visibility is also important because the control panel switches are within reach. The yoke and throttle are placed at hand.

Processing of panel board

The panel board was cut out from the exterior used for the broken scanner.
3mm thick high impact polystyrene >PS-HI< .
I cut out the hole of the meter in a round shape, but I couldn't reach it with a jigsaw, so I used a plastic cutter like a compass to dig a groove from both sides.
The cut out round plate can be used to install my step motor. This photo is from the early stage of production when I installed 5 meters. There is a transparent plastic on the surface of the compass, which reflects light and makes it difficult to see.
Each scale is also before improvement.
The size of the panel board was the cover part of an A4 size scanner, so the width was this size. The length is the size that two meters can be installed. If I make it larger than this, I will not be able to see the monitor behind this. To the right of the control panel, I added a newly created FCU and engine related panel. Torque meter is duplicated, so
Remove the old meter to free up space. I'm still undecided on what to install in the empty space.

Meter lighting

Lights were installed on each meter. Basically, two chip LEDs are installed 120 degrees apart at the top of the front.
It is angled so that it points slightly inward. In the early stages of production, I used lighting to pass through the scale plate from the back, but with this method the pointer would be dark and in shadow. So I changed the method to lighting from the front.

Connect pin

I almost used up the pins of Arduino MEGA2560 that I thought there were many.
This no.2 is running AutoPilot and engine-related Torque and Tachometer. I'm in the process of reorganizing the configuration of the pins I use. The yoke and throttle are not Mobiflight, but are used by programming analog inputs to Arduino Leonardo.