I’ve had some more time to work on the PCBs and I’ve submitted them for fabrication. I’ve chose to use the ITEADstudio Service, They have got some reasonable reviews and I’ve be getting 10 boards for a fair price. I’ve looked to other fabrication options, but most of them were considerably more expensive.
I’m not doing a full post – just a quick update.
once the Boards are in I’ll write a proper post about the design, assembly and testing..
Can’t wait 🙂
Well After working on the thing for two months, I’ve got a pretty good concept on what I want to achieve.
I started with DED and grew from there.
The first obvious “victim” was the FFI, as it’s “right there”.
followed by the Indexers (again, “they are just there”).
then I just got greedy 🙂
PFL was next to be added – because “it’s basically just another DED”, closly followed by the caution panel “it’s right next to the PFL, and the code is just a bumped up Indexer”
and then I completely lost it..
and glareshield lights and TWP lights were also included on the roadmap and also the CMDS display – because I can.
But I’m pretty sure the Arduino cannot handle all of this – at least the base would be set for floks that would prefer having TWP over caution panel or CMDS over DED/PFL.
but connecting everything is not as trivial, especially in the cockpit environment – and bread board is out of the question of course.. cables are too fiddly.
So I’ve started thinking about a PCB design to accommodate all this and make it somewhat user friendly to assemble – but still maintain some flexibility.
So that would be covered in this post.
A quick rant… Nothing important here 🙂
After setting up all the screens, including the annoying bungee jumping central console screen. My PC started hanging and crashing.. 🙁
My specs (as of July 2014):
I7-2700K & 8GB RAM
GTX570 – main display
And a Seasonic X-series 560W
The cockpit require a shit load of screens, however my GTX570 only supports two displays, and I needed at least 3 more with ability to expand to more in the future. That requires an additional screen.
I chose the GT750 that supports 4 displays.
But that comes with additional power consumption, which I suspect pushes it over the edge and started crashing..