microhelis.de simulation controllers review and discussion

Yogi,

I received my EC-135/145 cyclic and collective today, and everything looks great. I haven't had time to assemble anything, but I noticed that the hat switches on the collective and cyclic seem to press inward, as well as the four ways (up/down/left/right).

The the inward press serve as a button?

@heloguy Probably not, I think this is just due to the construction of the hat switch.

Yeah, my Komodosim collective's hat has the same feel, but no function, but it would be a nice feature to have, since simulators require 'extra' functions, like zoom, or recenter of VR.

Hi heloguy,

the 4-directional stick switch offer this function, but it is not connected.:(

The switch also has an encoder function.

In the EC-135 collective I use a 24 pole cable and 3 are still available/unconnected.

RKJXT1F.PDF

Any chance we can get a collective and/or cyclic modeled after the Ka-50? If not, what would be the closest equivalent? I'm interested in purchasing a set, but held off because I don't have the setup capable of under-mounting them. But the recent 'mount on top' mount that yogi showed piqued my interest.

Hi,

if I can get some good pictures and dimensions from the original grips, why not.

Thanks Yogi, I'm sure I can live without it, just curious.

Hi heloguy,

in your collective box, it should be easy to connect the "center" for the coolies.

here is a color to function table, I try to make for all further controls:

:music_whistling: for the coolies I do not know, whether the directions are correct. I changed to a 5-pole cable for the switch, where the red striped is common!

In some minutes I can give you a picture which pin you have to connect for center.

Awesome, thanks Yogi!

Here comes the coolie switch:pilotfly:

Coolie-3D.pdf

Hey Trip, I just noticed that your pics from the first post are missing now...did you happen to have any showing the wiring process?

the wiring is pretty simple I think.

Button and switches:

black wire is common, simple connect to one of the GND contacts on the BBI

other colors to the numbered B(x) contact.

Colors from the list some posts before.:music_whistling:

Sensors: simply plug the 3-pole contact to the BU Joystick board.

brown = GND

orange = inputs signal/ level

red = +5V

Thanks Yogi

Not really any pics to take on wiring. Ground goes to ground, and all the other button/switch wires just got randomly connected to terminals.

I'm going to fix the pictures, Photobucket just screwed everyone who has been using it for years...

Ya photobucket stock plummeted for sure.

Hey Yogi, are you any closer to releasing a mounting system for your new UH-1 hardware coming out?

This is a CAD drawing of the Ka-50's collective that I found a while back somewhere on this forum:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxrqPThWQpGLd3hxX1RyWVM0dDA

+1 on a KA50 Cyclic/Collective option.

I too would love to see a Ka-50 cyclic and collective, though I must confess I wouldn't be able to afford to add them to my collection of controllers any time soon.

Hi,

 

some impressions.:music_whistling:

[ATTACH]165360[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH]165361[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH]165362[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH]165363[/ATTACH]

Yogi, can we arrange for a target ship date and set up payment?

Yogi, can we arrange for a target ship date and set up payment?

Got your PM. Thanks for prompt response and your attention to detail.

Fixed the images in the OP.

Photobucket, I bite my thumb at you.

Hi folks,

can you please help me to make a shop description, where everyone can understand what parts are needed:cry:?

In my shop the controls can be configured and for every control you can select the control and button boards. Therefore most people think, that every control needs one set of them.:(

you need at least 1 joystick-controller.

The Bodnar BU836A can handle 8 axis and up to 36 button/switch.

Each moving control need one axis, so for a helicopter you need:

2x cyclic

1x collective

1x rudder

1 or 2 throttle

makes 5 or 6 axis. This can be handled by 1 board.

Even pedal-brakes could be added to make the 8 possible axis complete.:music_whistling:

The BBI can only handle switches and buttons.

In my EC-120 cockpit I use 1 joystick-controller for the axis and 1 BBI for the button and switches from the cyclic grip and collective box. At moment I am testing my FTR with a power box, with my boards inside. From this central point I made the connection to the PC.

A 3D printed standalone box for these boards is in development.

At moment all controls are designed to be mounted directly to or under a floor. Next I will offer boxes for mounting above and a complete rig-system. But these parts are still in the designprocess.

And I think, that I will make DCS-Bios based parts to make complete powerpanels and perhaps get my analog instruments connected.

My honest opinion is, it would be much easier for you, and you would receive a lot less support emails about configuration hardware, if you altered your website to reflect one of two ideas.

IDEA #1:

Something similar to a custom computer website; here is an example of what I mean: https://www.sagernotebook.com/customize.php?productid=1316

(NOTE: I am not personally endorsing this brand; I am merely providing an example, it just happens to be the brand of laptop I own).

Do you see how you can select some features and the price is reflected as you select the features? Instead of simply going to a "checkout cart" you can see the price immediately change.

Secondly, only those parts that are compatible are available for selection. In my example I linked, you are configuring options for a 15" laptop. Notice there is no option to get a bigger screen because that is not possible on a 15" laptop, it simply doesn't make sense. I think if you take this concept and apply it to your available hardware then people will only see the options available to them for the specific aircraft they are choosing to build for. The advantage here is that, you can have greater future flexibility should you add more hardware options like your FTR module, different cyclic designs, etc, that all apply to the same aircraft. The user would choose between Fixed Wing and Rotary Wing (like in the example I linked, I had to choose between a 13" laptop, a 15" or a 17 to get to the configuration page").

IDEA #2

This is less flexible than the first idea but essentially you offer your hardware as complete "packages". The user would click on systems, and would be presented with two options; Fixed Wing or Rotary Wing. After they make a selection, they see several more options; “Electrical Components” (boards), “Mounting Systems” (chair and mounts), “Control Inputs” (cyclic, collective, etc), “Other” (screws and what not), “Panels” (self explanatory), and “Complete Systems”. In “Complete Systems” the user has several boxes with the name of the aircraft, a little picture of the aircraft, and a price of all included hardware. Clicking on the picture shows the user all of the hardware that comes with the package by default. This takes the guess work out of it. Just as in Idea #1, there are drops down menus to manually deselect options that, perhaps the user already has". All of these individual hardware options are accessible from the page after choosing which type of aircraft, Fixed Wing or Rotary Wing.

I hope I helped In some way, I understand it would require you to re-code a good deal of your website but I think it would save you a lot of time and headache in the long run, plus help make your hardware more approachable to the less savvy folks. Also, I'm sure this isn't the "description" you were looking for, but I figured these suggestions would give you the best results in the long run. Good Luck Yogi and thanks for continuing work on the mount system, I can't wait. :)

P.S, I'd do it for you but I don't know any PHP or XML. I could probably throw a slide show together to demonstrate the basic layout of what I'm talking about if you'd like.

What Mr.Fenestron suggests would be ideal, but if that is too complex for you to implement I would say you could just have a "What to order" link in the list of options for full scale items, with a simple image to explain the setup.

I will try to make a quick mock-up for you.

Trip

Here is a very rough and sloppy example of what I had in mind:

Thanks for updating the pics, Trip.