Installing Military Hardware In A Home Flight Simulator

March 9, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 10 Comments

The cockpit of an F-16 Fighting Falcon features a small 3-inch display that monitors and tracks hostile aircraft and missiles, friendlies, and the current target. This Radar Warning Receiver is vitally important to pilots in combat, so [Mike] decided to add one to his homebuilt F-16 simulator that runs Falcon 4.0.

The RWR displays threats as symbols that are usually generated by tens of thousands of dollars worth of military hardware. [Mike] figured a $7 PIC microcontroller would work just as well and set about designing vector graphics that would fit on a single chip.

[Mike] had the graphics displaying correctly on an oscilloscope, but that’s a far cry from the from the surplus RWR display he picked up. Although the display is a simple CRT, the original designers of the radar warning receiver thought it necessary to put the deflection amplifiers in another part of the airplane. After building a pair of 30 Watt amplifiers, [Mike] could finally display more than a single dot on the display.

After all was said and done, [Mike] has a wonderful radar warning display that fits into his F-16 cockpit perfectly. While it’s not quite a 737 in a garage, we’ve got to respect someone who takes surplus avionics and makes them work. Check out [Mike]’s display in action after the break.

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Browser-based Circuit Simulator Boasts A Mountain Of Features

March 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 22 Comments

CircuitLab is an electronics simulator which you can run in a browser. Above you can see one of the example circuits provided to help show the power of the application. You can build your schematic (perhaps you want to try [Jeri’s] psu shut-off timer?) in the editor mode, then switch over to the simulator to get data back from the components. In that mode, your cursor becomes a probe, and clicking on different parts of the circuit will return the calculated input and output voltages for that component. But wait, there’s more. It’s got time and frequency simulation in addition to the voltage simulator. This lets you look at waveforms fed through analog filters, or timing data like in the 555 timer circuit above.

Where does this fantastic tool come from? [Humberto Evans] and [Mike Robbins], the guys behind NerdKits developed this site. We’ve seen a lot of their hacks around here, like milling solenoids and making them play a xylophone. Check out the CircuitLab quick start video they put together after the break. Continue reading “Browser-based Circuit Simulator Boasts A Mountain Of Features” →

Simulating VHDL Of An AVR8 Soft Processor

April 7, 2011 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Okay, now we’re beginning to feel a bit like [Alice]. This tutorial shows you how to simulate VHDL code. This code is intended to run on an FPGA and includes a software-only version of the AVR 8-bit microcontroller core. Essentially, you’ll simulate VHDL code that simulates AVR hardware. Wrap your mind around that!

The code is intended to run on a Papilio Field Programmable Gate Array development board. We saw an early version of this board running the AVR8 core about a year ago. However, you don’t need to have any hardware to follow along and recreate this simulation yourself. It might be a great way to get your feet wet with FPGA programming before making that first hardware buy. Five different screencasts take you through the process of getting the AVR8 code, using an altered Arduino IDE for it, setting up a free version of Xilinx ISE to run the simulation, then setting it free and interpreting the data that the simulator spits out the other end.

Beginner Concepts: 595 Shift Register Simulator

March 14, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Aaron] just finished building an online 595 shift register simulator. These inexpensive chips let you extend the number of devices that can be controlled by a single microcontroller. You see them in quite a few LED multiplexing projects, included the Ping Pong Clock that we recently built. But they can be a bit tricky to fully grasp if you’re not familiar with the hardware.

This simulator gives you a point-and-click interface for the five possible control lines on a 595 shift register. There are three pins that must be manipulated to use the device; the serial in, clock, and latch pins. The other two are for clearing the register, and enabling output and can be considered optional. You can choose to control these with a microcontroller in your own projects for more flexibility, but often they are tied to either VCC or GND (depending on the chip) when these features are unnecessary. Give this simulator a try and then take what you learned over to a solderless breadboard and see if you can write some firmware to produce the same results. If you’re still having trouble you can take a look at this 595 tutorial for further information.

Force Feedback Rig

February 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Strap yourself in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. No really, if you don’t believe us, check out the video after the break of this bouncing and rolling game system. [Shawn McGrath] built it to compliment the gaming experience for Dyad, an indie game for which he is a developer. His wife was kind enough to demonstrate the machine, which utilizes one motor to rotate the display and cockpit, and another to add vibration to the experience. The parts for the system were mostly salvaged, with the addition of a projector for the display and a PlayStation SixAxis controller to sense the motion of the rig. The motors are powered by a 600W computer PSU and controlled by an Arduino. It helps that [Shawn’s] a developer because he was able to add feedback hooks to sync with the gameplay.

It’s not as intricate as the best flight simulators we’ve seen, but it will be fun for that next kegger.

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Logisim: Open Source Digital Logic Simulator

February 9, 2011 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

[Spi Waterwing] wrote in to make sure that we were aware of Logisim, a Java-based open source digital logic simulator. We’ve used Atanua quite a bit in the past but hadn’t heard of this program. It seems to have a pretty big educational following and right off the bat it’s got a feature we’ve always wanted, the ability to build your own ‘black box’ logic devices. That is to say you can build your own circuit out of logic gates and then package it into a part to be plopped into your next design. What it doesn’t have is the series logic chips that we’re used to with Atanua, but you can build your own with the black box feature if you really need that kind of functionality.

So grab a copy and try building that binary calculator project from last month.

Racing Sim Cockpit Stores Inside An Ottoman

November 5, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Lyscho] built a racing simulator cockpit based on a PVC frame but it took up a lot of space when not in use. His second generation is built inside the frame of an ottoman, meaning it can be stored right under your feet.

The pedals are fixed in place, with some padding below to rest your heels on. The cockpit chair and steering wheel are both adjustable to suit different drivers. They use a routed groove along with wing nuts and bolts, making it easy to slide them for adjustments. The ottoman itself is [Lyscho’s] own creation, which just needs power and USB when in use, and has a padded top when not in use.

If you can’t use a real car as the simulator this is fantastic alternative.

[via Make]