MobiFlight Community Support

Hi all,

Just finished my first project which was a trim indicator and setting box, it took a little wrangling but I learned a lot. Now I'm thinking about what I want to make next.

Aside from the trim system in MSFS, I've always been annoyed by having to move the camera away from the instruments and exterior view to adjust things like prop and mixture precisely. I don't have a lot of space and I'm a pretty casual flight simmer, so I don't want a "professional" quadrant or really anything that looks like a "real airplane" control; I want something small and easy to store.

What I'm thinking of is a box with three sliders on the top (like a small audio mixing board), prop mixture throttle. I want to be able to select any one or group of engines (up to four) and adjust these, which I envision as four pushbuttons below the sliders with indicators. I want to run this off the Mega in the trim box I made, which also has a separate power jack to drive its displays. I think I could make this logic work with preconditions but I'm not sure.

Doing a little bit of research, I've seen that potentiometers work and that they do not work with Mobiflight. This would be the killer unless there's some other type of micro linear encoder that Mobiflight works with. I would have thought this would have been supported natively with the Arduino but I wanted to check.

If pots work, in terms of pins, I would need a ground bus, +5V bus (which I'd take off the power supply in the trim box), three for each of the pots and one for each button, total of nine. Is there any way to combine the button wires (I think the pots would have to stay individual)? I'd really like to get the number of wires down to the point where I could use i.e. a 6-pin DIN plug to connect the two boxes together. The connection between the two boxes would be fragile if it was hardwired, so I really would want to use a removeable "pluggable" connection here.

Thoughts on whether this is feasible and any links to similar projects/useful information appreciated.

Thanks!

Hi

Interesting Project.... Whatever i not fully understand in case of translation.

Best way to discuss this is our DISCORD https://discord.gg/99vHbK7
Join and talk to me there. Then i can directly support you !

About Questions....
MF support Poti meanwhile. (Since 2 Years i think)

To set 3 Pots you need 3x Data and shared 1x GRD and 1x 5V .
Electrical i´m not sure if you can use a external 5v ... Maybe if the External device is combined with the GRD of the Arduino where pots are set.... But 100% sure pots work fine if both (5v and GRD) comes form the Arduino where you also set the Potis.

If you like to controll "different" things then you need something like a Mode Selector. (Your 4 Buttons). Those will need 4 Pins and one shared GRD.
We could also build this by 1 Pin as a toggle.... So a Button that toggle between mode 0,1,2,3,0,1,2,3, and so on with every press. ( To reduce number of wires as you expect).

The final logic is done in MF ....
You say there ( PRecondition and/or Placeholder logics) that your 3 Potis should do XXXX in Mode0..... YYYY in Mode1 and so on.