I bought a stack of OpenCockpits cards last monts. 3 MasterCards, 3 Display cards and a USB expantion card. My plan is to use most of them for my overhead. Up until now I have used a single  Pokeys56U card; so I only had 56 inputs and no outputs. Now I have 200+ inputs and almost 120 outputs. Furthermore I have a USB servo card laying around for all the  gauges.

Messy back side of the overhead

It took me a few evenings to wire up all switches on the FWD overhead. Only a few panels are not connected. But at some point I ran out of wire, and now I have to wait a few weeks before a new shipment of dupont-wire arrives from China.

The backside is one big mess at this point. I always have the best intentions. But then the wires are so short it only can run directly, and I kinda forget to get the prototyping board – that I use for each panel group – fastened.

Overhead with working annunciators

Annunciators are also starting to work. You can see from the picture to the right how the annunciators works on the foil. On the backside picture you can see that I have made holes for the annunciators in the foam.

But again progress was brought to a halt when I ran out of yellow LEDs. 🙂

I had doubts about the annunciators. At first I through the foil was too thick for the LEDs to shine through. But using high intensity yellow LEDs in serial connection is sufficient. For the blue/White annunciators I use super bright white LEDs. But no sharing of 5v here between two LEDs. The White LED require a higher voltage and can actually work directy on 5v. Or just with a small resistor (like 100 ohm); that should be enough. But no “2 LEDs in a serial connection” here.  

Flight and landing altitude

Another thing I managed to squeeze in yesterday was the two altitude displays. As always when working with ProSim737 it was Fairly easy to set up – well as easy as SIOC allows. 2 variables for the encoders must be configured and 2 for the displays, and then set up in the SIOC-file.

Neat!