A bit of work has been done.

Although there haven’t been updates here for some time I was still busy doing some things on the sim.

Since the hardware for the panels on the RightConsole has been done, it’s been time to do all the cabling.

The first panel I started with was the AVPWR panel.

Main part of the panel is an MCP23017 I/O Extender, which adds 16 digital I/O ports and communicates through the i2c-protocol with the Arduino.

The nice advantage of this method is that I just need a 4-wire cable between the Arduino and the panel for the i2c Port (+5V, GND, SDA, SDC).

All switches are connected directly to the 23017 verbunden and the 4 communication cables are soldered to the GX12 connector.

Of course everything is labeled neatly so I don’t mess up when connecting everything 😉

At the moment I’m working on the KY-58 panel, the “heart” of the RightConsole – it holds the Arduino ProMicro as main controller.

This panel also has it’s own 23017 to connect all the switches to.

“Internal” cabling is done.

Now it was time to solder all connectors to the other panels with the Arduino.
I made a small distribution panel to for +5V, GND and i2c’s SDA and SDC lines.

There are 2 connectors not soldered on the pictures – the 2-pole was meant to supply external 5V power (but I hopefully wouldn’t need that).
The 5-pole is the USB connector which will get soldered to a MicroUSB connector to the Arduino.

The final panel – already looks like a real airplane avionics part 🙂