Test rig for CAN-bus testing

Today I made a mount for two gauges to keep them in place while I do CAN-bus testing.
And it is much nicer to watch them when they are not just a pile of electronics on top of spaghetti of cables and wires.
See?
And hiding behind that maple-stained polyurethane finished oak plywood is the brains of the gauges.
Oh yes, this is the "cockpit R&D department" of Dallasin Porkkanasorvaus...


And here comes "dummy demo" showing the operation of both gauges simultaneously.
Tomorrow, I hope, I can test CAN-bus and control there gauges from PC.



Stay tuned. I have feeling that this system is really starting to take shape from now...

Next one coming...

Airspeed indicator in progress.
Again pointer movement is choppy due to video equipment.




I think next I will start integrating the tcp-stack to system.
Or perhaps I will do altimeter. It needs two continuous rotation servos, some kind of position sensing for pointers and some gearing...

Here is an action shot of version 1.0 of the "final" mechanics design of singe pointer gauge.

If you watch carefully, you can say there is about 0.5mm free play in gears...
Movement of the pointer is smooth in real life, my videocameraphonethingamajig makes it look choppy in video.

I think next gauge will be more accurate and I will also add functions to correct slack in software.



Let's see. The current status of project is:

CAN-bus

• Signaling/message sending ok
• Messages need to be defined, 50% done
  

Servo control

• One servo control ok
• Multiple servo control 80% coded
• Continuous rotation modifications for servos studied and tested to be working
  

Rotary encoder

• Reading encoder ok

Continuous rotation sensor (for continuous rotation servo position detection)

• Reading value through AD-conversion coded
• Sensor has about 60degrees where the value is random, needs to figure out how to use two sensors in one axle to get accurate readings.

To Do

• Count how many servos need to be modified for continuous rotation
• Modify servos
• Build mechanics for the rest of gauges
• Draw schematics and layout for gauge control board
• Integrate tcp-stack to master control board sw
• Start designing radio stack
• etc.
  

After long development...

Here you can see my latest, and best so far, contraption for gauge mechanics:


Servo is just a regular non-modified miniservo, rotates 200degrees. 10:1-gearing makes the needle axle rotate 2000degrees (about 5.5 rounds).

Most of the gauges do not need that many rounds (variometer, tachometer, air speed etc.) and some of them do need infinite rotation of the needle (altimeter etc) so I still need to either modify servo for continuous rotation or perhaps I could use small stepper motors (that was the plan earlier in this project).