Using 28BYJ-48 stepper motors with DCS BIOS

Gents, having got my DCS working with an Arduino so that I can input button presses and output LED indication lights I want to move on to the more tricky part.

As others have done, I want to output data to stepper motors in order to make analogue gauges for (predominantly) the engine and main flight control indications. I have some 28BYJ-48 stepper motors and ULN2003APG stepper bridges, but as the stepper motors are five wire units there does not seem to be anything on the internet about their use.

At the moment I am using a couple of Arduino Uno's as the controllers, but the final versions will have Nano V3.0 units, one for each gauge. The reason for the 28BYJ-48's is that they and their respective bridges came a a set with the Arduinos and using examples they do work.

I'm not married to them, so if the answer is that they can't be used with this application then fine, I can accept it and move on, in which case some suggestions of replacement hardware would be appreciated.

However the fact that they seem simple and freely available leads me to think that they must be able to work. I've tried using sketches cribbed from other sites (like mysimpit.co.uk) but they all refer to different wire counts.

If someone is able to help me to get them working I would be very grateful

Cheers

Les

Hi I never used 28BYJ-48 motors but in my pit I am using 3 types of different of steppers. My advice is go for 4 wires steppers and use easydriver, this combo is 100% working and easy to handle. Examplehere Also I think your steppers will be not fast enough for some gauges ... On which plane are you working????

You can also try

Btw. I am living 40km from Hungarian border (from direction Komarno) :), if you need more help...

Hi I never used 28BYJ-48 motors but in my pit I am using 3 types of different of steppers. My advice is go for 4 wires steppers and use easydriver, this combo is 100% working and easy to handle. Examplehere Also I think your steppers will be not fast enough for some gauges ... On which plane are you working????

You can also try

...

Btw. I am living 40km from Hungarian border (from direction Komarno) :), if you need more help...

I agree Draken, they will not be fast enough. (I used them in the original iterations of OpenHornet's gauges before I discovered they were pretty slow.)

Ok, thanks guys, I will go and get X27 steppers and the Easy Drivers

And Draken, I may just take you up on that offer!

Thanks guys

Cheers

Guys, I have come back to this as I have a few of them and there are some guages such as flap position indicators that don't move far and are not required to move quickly. I've ordered some X27-168 steppers and EasyDriver boards for the main instruments, but to keep the cost down would like to try and use them if possible

Cheers

Les

You could use them for the two hydraulic indicators on top of the fuel gauge. The flaps indicator as you have already suggested. Maybe even the cabin pressure gauge as it tends to move slowly. Everything else moves too fast for those little motors I'm afraid.

Thanks, I did think so. I am still trying to figure out the sketches, I am using a setup found on the Usoyoo site as an example to control the stepper using a potentiometer. Not certain if that will work, but I will look at the sketches for that and see if I can figure something out

Cheers

Les