Hardware & Technical My button box project

[Viking84]

Hi all,

thought I'd share this "journey" with you guys I play both Elite and flight sims, and have been looking for the perfect controller that would give me enough inputs to control both the navigation and systems buttons in a smaller aircraft as well as be usable with Elite - mainly for VR in both cases.


The controls needed for Elite should be well known to you all, and for the flight sim I basically need dedicated inputs for a cockpit like this - with the navigation equipment being most critical:




Now there are companies that make Garmin G1000 simulators but these have two issues - firstly they cost a fortune (£2000+), and secondly they only work with certain specific flight sims and don't show up as joysticks in Windows for binding with other games like Elite. So I quickly discovered that I have to build my own "button box" to do what I want, which is to emulate the inputs of one G1000 screen for use in VR. Here is my first concept:




I then started searching for components, and this made it clear that this will not be a cheap undertaking regardless... each dual axis rotary encoder costs £30, single axis encoders cost £7. Anyways I found the components I thought I wanted and created this concept:




Thankfully I had the sense to order samples of some of the switches as the buttons I had chosen turned out to be horrible! Long spongy action that required lots of force and gave zero feedback... so, back to the drawing board. Turns out that buttons are like everything else, you get what you pay for. So for panel mounted buttons with a nice clicky action it would seem I need to go with NKK MB2400 series buttons, at £3.20 a pop...! This forced another rethink as the first dual-box layout looked rather odd with round buttons, and would have cost nearly £700 just in parts! So I opted for the controls for a single G1000 panel along with some toggle switches for various system power and lights. Oh and two nice red engine start buttons




And that's where I am at the moment. Being an oil & gas engineer I have done what we always do which is create an impossible spec for the item I want and send it out to various suppliers who have experience with building these things. Currently found one company in the UK (un-named until the project gets the go-ahead) who reckon they can build this for a sensible-ish price! If that falls through I will just have to purchase a bit of tooling and build the thing myself. How hard can it be...?

Update #1 - Concept layout

Update #2 - The box and some buttons have arrived

Update #3 - Test of the printed layout

Update #4 - Test drilling

Update #5 - Buttons mounted!

Update #6 - Final product

 

[Forcit]

Would love to make one of these by myself also.

I almost hope that the company you have contact with tells you no so that you have to make it yourself , just so I can see what kind of stuff goes into it to make it work as a keyboard input.

Good luck with the project, looking forward to see the process.

 

[Para Handy]

Finally a thread which I can subscribe to!

Good luck with the project.

 

[Viking84]

Would love to make one of these by myself also.

I almost hope that the company you have contact with tells you no so that you have to make it yourself , just so I can see what kind of stuff goes into it to make it work as a keyboard input.

Good luck with the project, looking forward to see the process.

Thanks! The goal is actually to have this show up as a joystick. If I end up building it myself then I will go with two of these boards from Leo Bodnar (64 functions on each, there are 94 functions on the current design). It should be fairly straight forward, just solder all the ground terminals to a common ground, and all the input terminals to their respective inputs on the Bodnar boards. Then put everything in a nice aluminium case

Just need to buy a drill press, a glue gun, a soldering iron, and learn to solder. Simples

Finally a thread which I can subscribe to!

Good luck with the project.

Thanks!

 

[Forcit]

Thanks! The goal is actually to have this show up as a joystick. If I end up building it myself then I will go with two of these boards from Leo Bodnar (64 functions on each, there are 94 functions on the current design). It should be fairly straight forward, just solder all the ground terminals to a common ground, and all the input terminals to their respective inputs on the Bodnar boards. Then put everything in a nice aluminium case

Just need to buy a drill press, a glue gun, a soldering iron, and learn to solder. Simples



Thanks!

Thanks for that link!
That just made the list of things I want to do get longer...

But since I want fancy toys when making stuff like this it will have to wait until I can build myself a garage and put a small cnc-router for cutting aluminium there and maybe also a 3d-printer.

Time to start making some money...

 

[Viking84]

Thanks for that link!
That just made the list of things I want to do get longer...

But since I want fancy toys when making stuff like this it will have to wait until I can build myself a garage and put a small cnc-router for cutting aluminium there and maybe also a 3d-printer.

Time to start making some money...

CNC machine and / or 3D printer would be amazing... that would also open up the option of square holes in the faceplate and a whole host of different buttons and switches! Will see what happens, should have a firmer quote from the guys I'm chatting with during this week. Given the tools I have access to I'm sure their lazer cut faceplate will be much neater than what I could make myself

 

[Forcit]

CNC machine and / or 3D printer would be amazing... that would also open up the option of square holes in the faceplate and a whole host of different buttons and switches! Will see what happens, should have a firmer quote from the guys I'm chatting with during this week. Given the tools I have access to I'm sure their lazer cut faceplate will be much neater than what I could make myself

It will probably be a bit faster for them to make it also until you get your own machines .

But my dream is to have the space to have a cnc-router and 3d-printer and make things like this plus other bigger stuff.
But until that happens I gladly follow threads like this and see what other people are able to make and come up with.

Keep us updated as soon as you get the quote from them.

 

[starman]

Better hurry Maplin is about to close

 

[ZeroAi]

Hi all,

thought I'd share this "journey" with you guys I play both Elite and flight sims, and have been looking for the perfect controller that would give me enough inputs to control both the navigation and systems buttons in a smaller aircraft as well as be usable with Elite - mainly for VR in both cases.


The controls needed for Elite should be well known to you all, and for the flight sim I basically need dedicated inputs for a cockpit like this - with the navigation equipment being most critical:




Now there are companies that make Garmin G1000 simulators but these have two issues - firstly they cost a fortune (£2000+), and secondly they only work with certain specific flight sims and don't show up as joysticks in Windows for binding with other games like Elite. So I quickly discovered that I have to build my own "button box" to do what I want, which is to emulate the inputs of one G1000 screen for use in VR. Here is my first concept:




I then started searching for components, and this made it clear that this will not be a cheap undertaking regardless... each dual axis rotary encoder costs £30, single axis encoders cost £7. Anyways I found the components I thought I wanted and created this concept:




Thankfully I had the sense to order samples of some of the switches as the buttons I had chosen turned out to be horrible! Long spongy action that required lots of force and gave zero feedback... so, back to the drawing board. Turns out that buttons are like everything else, you get what you pay for. So for panel mounted buttons with a nice clicky action it would seem I need to go with NKK MB2400 series buttons, at £3.20 a pop...! This forced another rethink as the first dual-box layout looked rather odd with round buttons, and would have cost nearly £700 just in parts! So I opted for the controls for a single G1000 panel along with some toggle switches for various system power and lights. Oh and two nice red engine start buttons




And that's where I am at the moment. Being an oil & gas engineer I have done what we always do which is create an impossible spec for the item I want and send it out to various suppliers who have experience with building these things. Currently found one company in the UK (un-named until the project gets the go-ahead) who reckon they can build this for a sensible-ish price! If that falls through I will just have to purchase a bit of tooling and build the thing myself. How hard can it be...?

+Rep.

Awesome stuff.

But as someone who does a lot with PC base SCADA software, the idea of drilling the holes, mounting the switches, and then wiring everything gives me a headache when I could do that all in software in a few minutes ;-)

Curious, have you considered going with touch panels instead? Might be cheaper and faster!

But yeah, it would lack the authentic airplane feel.

 

[Viking84]

Curious, have you considered going with touch panels instead? Might be cheaper and faster!

But yeah, it would lack the authentic airplane feel.

I've certainly looked into it But for VR the tactile feel of a proper switch just can't be beaten. I've tried mapping the rotary switches to joystick buttons but it just doesn't feel right - so I think at the very least I would need a few of those dual encoders to be happy with any input device. And once I've started down that road I may as well emulate the entire thing As a bonus that gives me tonnes of inputs for various functions in Elite, and I think the rotary encoders may feel pretty cool for use with the menu systems in Elite.

 

[Viking84]

I almost hope that the company you have contact with tells you no so that you have to make it yourself

Did you call them!? Seems I will be building this myself - given the difficulty with sourcing the right buttons and box and the iterative process of creating the right layout I have decided that this is a project that I should do myself. It might not end up with the same millimeter precision as a lazer cut panel but I will have made it myself and won't have anyone else to blame for anything I'm not happy with

I have chosen an enclosure that I think will work - it has a bit more horizontal space than I need, but that just means I can fit more buttons on it 2x64 input Bodnar boards will give me a LOT of options!

So the next step is ordering the enclosure, the boards and encoders from Bodnar, and a selection of switches from mouser.co.uk to see what will work for my project!

 

[Forcit]

I ain't telling you nothing!

This will be awesome, really looking forward to see this project in every step you make. Just so I can copy almost the entire thing once I decide to go down this rabbit hole.

 

[Viking84]

Sounds like a plan I will post all my drawings and experiences here - hopefully someone can learn from my mistakes! One thing that certainly will define how this goes is whether I have to cut the face plate myself (i.e. round holes only as I will be using a drill press) or if I can find somewhere local that can do a lazer cut aluminium plate without it costing a fortune. If I can, then I can go for some square holes which will allow this kind of toggle switch, and these square buttons. Will start researching that part of the build next week!

 

[TorTorden_VR]

+Rep.

Awesome stuff.

But as someone who does a lot with PC base SCADA software, the idea of drilling the holes, mounting the switches, and then wiring everything gives me a headache when I could do that all in software in a few minutes ;-)

Curious, have you considered going with touch panels instead? Might be cheaper and faster!

But yeah, it would lack the authentic airplane feel.

Touch panels are utterly useless in VR.
Or one could have just used power grid or some some such app and an old android tablet.

But most importantly, no tactile feed back either and this is key.

 

[Viking84]

Time for a little update!

Given that I am now building this myself I have ordered in a bunch of stuff which should hopefully arrive next week some time. So far I have ordered the control boards and the rotary encoders (both dual and single) from Leo Bodnar, as well as the box I will be building this in and an assortment of buttons and switches for testing from Mouser

Given that I now know the final dimensions of the faceplate that I will be mounting this into I have done a mockup in photoshop to work out a sensible placement and start on some lines for the markings. All center holes are aligned to an 8x8mm grid with most things being spaced at 16x16mm. Once I have tested that this layout will actually work with the behind-panel spacing of the components I will start labeling all the buttons according to their flight-sim assignments. Pretty happy with this so far!

To explain all the functions briefly:
Bottom Row - 12 function buttons for the G1000
Outer left - One dual rotary and 12 buttons for G1000 Autopilot control
Outer right - One dual and one single rotary, 6 menu buttons and 4 directional buttons for the G1000 FMS (Flight Management System) and range dial
Inner left - Two single and one dual rotary + 1 button, controls G1000 Nav frequencies and heading selection
Inner right - One single and two dual rotaries + 1 button, controls G1000 Com frequencies and Baro
Middle upper - power switches (battery, avionics, pitot heat +++)
Middle second row - light switches (landing, taxi, strobe +++)
Middle third row - engine start panel, two red start buttons and left/right fuel pumps + alternators
Middle fourth row - 4 extra function buttons and one left/right toggle to swap between controlling the PFD and MFD screens

 

[Viking84]

Couldn't help myself, did the labels too. No doubt that I have to make this work somehow, it looks MUCH better with labels!

 

[Forcit]

It's gonna be great. Will look really cool when you make it irl.

 

[Necronaught]

If this works then well done. I will be a customer for this product.

 

[Viking84]

If this works then well done. I will be a customer for this product.

Wish I could turn this idea into a business, but I fear the product will be much too costly for most people, and given that it isn't an accurate replica of the G1000 it will only really appeal to those who fly in VR - a niche within a niche

I will however post a rough guide to what I have done (and any mistakes I make along the way) so that others can attempt to replicate this for themselves

 

[Ulaidian]

I don't even know what some of those labels are for.. but take my money!! Actually.. I'm on Xbox, so probably no use to me