I could not purchase a Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel for love or money, so I thought I'd build one myself.
Features:
- appears as a Joystick/Game controller with a single axis;
- spin the wheel up or down to set axis value from -1000 through +1000;
- reset to 0 on button press;
- slide-switch to disable changing input;
These are used by flight-simmers to trim their virtual aircraft so that they do not have to apply constant pressure to the flight yoke or joystick.
Required components:
- an Arduino Leonardo
- DF Robot SEN0230 400 P/R rotary encoder with bracket
- a 8 character 7-Segment LED display with a MAX7219 driver
- a monentary switch and DPST slide switch to suit
- various short jumper leads
- a handful of m3, m5 and m8 nuts, bolts and washers
- rough adhesive tape to enhance grip of the clamp
Use Openscad, your slicer and printer to render and then print one of each object in scad/FauxtekElevatorTrim.scad.
Use Openscad, your slicer and printer to render and then print the scad/wheel-handle.scad.
This project uses Arduino-Makefile to build, flash and test the Arduinos.
On Linux, install Arduino-Makefile then run make upload to flash your Arduino.
Install the Arduino IDE which installs the required drivers.
After installing the drivers and flashing the Arduino, it will appear as a game controller with a single axis and two buttons.
Pre-made bindings are at flightgear/cgspeck/Elevator-Trim-Wheel.xml.