Interfacing real instruments thru CANBus and an intelligent controller

[fsedano]

Hello!

Long time reader from the forum, but did't really wrote much - I'm building a 737-200 cockpit from real aircraft parts (when possible) and using mostly custom electronics and X-Plane.

I use an intelligent controller I made, which reads raw data from X-Plane, runs some LUA scripts and, based on those scripts, drive the instruments over CANBus, which allows me to daisy chain then using a small flat cable.

Wanted to show around some videos using original 737 instruments: Altimeter and ADI:


Altimeter
http://youtu.be/XVgUwCiG_ak?hd=1

ADI
http://youtu.be/WbU3MilHbFg?hd=1

If somebody else is doing a similar work it would be great to be in contact!

[wm873j]

Hello; great job, I'm impressed. The videos pull it altogether
giving me some fresh ideas for the work I've been doing.

I'm interested to know what AC power source you're using. I
have a 400hz transistor oscillator driving a 100 watt stereo
amplifier to yeild 26vac output. I use a step-up transformer
to get to 115vac if needed.

The route I've taken may not be as flexable as yours to maintain.
I've a C++ program communicating with the Flight Simulator
and an external PIC micro. The pic mico drives individual
interfaces (that are custom for each indicator).

I'm very interested in hearing more about the your custom
electronics and in particular the reading back of the current altimeter
setting. The indicators I have (HSI, ADI/Flight Director, Altimeter, etc)
have 3ph input and/or output. I have had to build a number of
Digital-to-Analog converters (using multiplying DACs) to generate
sine & cosine which is then amplified and run through scott-T transformers.

Did you have to reverse engineer your indicators or did you have access
to schematics? I had no pinouts and had to go the reverse engineer route
for HSI, VSI, ADI, etc. If you've got pinouts for a Sperry Altimeter
#4005123-901 or similar unit it would be much appreciated.

Once again, nice work ... Bill