Good day,Is there anyone who's is using the Stepper motors to drive instruments? I think these will be better than the servos.Looking forward to hear something.Boy Bruin

Hi,While I am not using FSBUS, I have used stepping motors in simulated instruments. I can't offer any advice about FSBUS, but if you have questions about stepping motors I may be able to help.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com

Hi Mike,It's good to hear that you are using Stepper Motors for your instruments. What kind of interface software/hardware do you use.I would like to know if these motors are better for instruments than the servos.Regards,Boy Bruin

Hi Boy,It depends on the type of instrument. I have used RC servos to build an artifical horizon and a turn coordinator. A 400 step per rev stepping motor works well as a gyro compass, or really any sort of single pointer gauge. Smaller motors with 24 or 48 S/R work well in gauges with gearing arrangements. I built a turbine tach and a concentric, dual pointer gauge that way.The RC servos work well for instruments with limited motion. If you build a servo from scratch you can build just about anything, but the position sensor gets a bit complicated and expensive. Commercial servo based instruments, both flight rated and simulator types, frequently use control transformers ("selsyns") as the sensor. These are a costly even on the surplus market, and few hobbyists use them.The interface hardware is based on PIC16F628 micro controllers. I connect it to the serial port. Since data mostly goes one way, multiple instruments can share a single port. The host code is some pretty rough C++ code talking to FSUIPC. The PIC firmware was written in assembly using the free IDE from Microchip.There are pictures of the projects on my site.Mikewww.mikesflightdeck.com