paulpenney

At your guys suggestions I added an nice photo of it bare as the main photo.

Thanks everyone for the feedback - Frank, I can whip something up for you if you would like me to. Please let me know and send me a DM if you're interested.

Hey guys, Just wanted to let you know that I have designed and produced a batch of clip boards for the Honeycomb Alpha flight controls. its 100mm wide x 175 mm tall, comes assembled with a clip and is foam padded to not mess up the finish on the Alpha. It was made in part using 3D scanning to get the exact contours of the yoke, so it fits in place and stays there - doesn't add any weight either. Please see the link below: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/765550937/honeycomb-aeronautical-alpha-yoke

I plugged it into the arduino IDE and the AVRISP spit out some information on the chip, but I couldn’t write to to it. Probably a matter of having the right board setup

Hey guys, I know this is a new product and it may be improved somehow by firmware updates from the manufacturer - but I could not wait on this and I know many as well will want better performance out of the box from the axis controller in the Alpha. It appears that to many this product has a large firmware dead zone - and at the very least, it did to me. For those who want a guide on how to slave the X and Y axis controls to an Arduino due please see my video below. I did put a lot of work into this so I would appreciate if it stayed up. The first video is a demonstration of the behavior, and the second is the modification video to fix it.

Dave, Sorry to say but I have already modified my Yoke to alleviate the issue. I created a guide for others that want to do so in the second video below. In the first video below the issue is clearly demonstrated and I did confirm it in both the windows calibration screen and using JoyTester before the modification. The result of the modification is absolutely zero deadzone and great performance now.

Correct its the firmware. The firmware's raw output has a large dead zone. Hopefully they can release an update as it appears the microcontroller is programmable via the USB.

Yeah, like seriously - how much more can a higher resolution converter be? The answer is probably not that much.

The problem overall is caused by the software in the onboard joystick controller for the honeycomb. For some reason they thought it was a great idea to install a huge dead zone - which isn't necessary as the pots are clear as a bell with no noise, and overall the deadzone is massive. At least allow us to configure the deadzone? Either way the resolution is only 8-bit 127 which isn't spectacular to begin with. As I said I just installed an Arduino DUE in my unit and wired it up - zero deadzone exists now and the added resolution certainly makes a difference. I only have it running at a resolution of 10 bits but it is much, much better and I can finally control my 172 with light 'fingertip' pressure adjustments just as I do in real life. makes a huge difference in the circuit or a high speed cruise. Now this hardware is perfect for me. I'll be posting a how-to on youtube tomorrow for others that want to do the conversion.

I have a fix to the problem guys that I will be posting a video tutorial on tomorrow. Basically I have installed an arduino DUE as a 16 bit controller for just the X and Y axis. Works smoothly as heck now and no dead zone whatsoever.

Hey guys, Well I couldn't resist cracking open the yoke to investigate this issue as it is something that I have been dealing with as well - my yoke has a pretty large deadzone that makes fine motor controls on my A2A cessna 172 very difficult at times. After investigating the windows software side I couldn't find any issues so I took a look at the internal hardware. What I discovered was the hardware is solid in terms of the actual potentiometers and bungee system, and there is no "slop" or physical issues causing the dead zone - it is literally all software that is causing the issues. You can see in my video below the raw output from the yoke as perceived by windows and how much I can move the axis without any sort of input appearing on the windows joystick calibration: Looks like the only solution to this will be on the software update side from the manufacturer, OR integrating our own 10 or 12 bit controller on just the X and Y axis. Does anyone know if a 10 or 12 bit controller will show up with more resolution in windows?

Thanks again, yes that is correct - no joysticks plugged in causes the behavior. Also, I wiped FSUIPC of joystick settings to see if that made a difference and it didn't.

Scott, You are a true saint, you know that? Thanks for offering such prompt response on a free product. I fixed the problem by plugging in a joystick. It appears that without a joystick, Linda gets stuck in a loop after determining "HIDConfigReload Unsuccessful" Thanks for all your help Paul

Latest version of FSUIPC 5, PREPAR3D V4.3v. Linda 3.0.7 Title says it all.. when Linda is synced to sim, the GUI jumps to the summary page. When I try and click to tracer, it stays there for a second and then shifts back on its own to summery. Doesn’t matter what page I try and go on. I was on 3.0.3 and this behaviour started after I upgraded. Any ideas? I tried switching aircraft type with no effect, and had no additional luas running. Paul

Any noticeable performance increases? FTX seems to slow down 2.1 quite a bit from the stock scenery.