Welcome at my Homepage about cockpitbuilding.
Tired of using your keyboard or mouse? Ever thought about building a real cockpit? On this site I will show you what I build till now and give information about my current project.
After I made a little Cessna like panel I wanted to go for the real thing. I studied many sites on the Internet and decided to try to make a cockpit based on the Boeing 777.I already finished my throttle quadrant , yoke, FMC, MIP, center pedestal, seats and overheadpanel. I have made and tested al the input/output controller boards (FSBUS). In fact the simulator is now for > 80% functional. Next project will be to build the shell and finally interfacing the overhead panel. Another 2 years to finish everything (probably more).
Present status:
FSBUS
As interface between the software and the hardware I use FSBUS. Many info is available on other sites (see links). Till now I have build FSCom, FSKey and FSLed. Recently I made the FSBUSNG boards. The NG boards are on the right.
CNC Machine
I bought a cnc machine to be able to make panels completely to my own design.
MCP
This is the most important part of my cockpit. The MCP from Aerosoft, together with the EFIS/EICAS panels. I have been in doubt a long time between this product and the EPIC card. In contrary to the EPIC card this MCP does not need any programming skills and is relatively cheap, and most important it is expandable. It has 4 gameports on the backside (16 potmeters and 16 buttons) and 4 25 pin expansion ports. In short time expansion boards will be released to wire all kinds of electronics to this device such as LED's, 7 segment LED's and all kind of switches and even rotary encoders. You can wire about 250 switches to this beautiful device and many many LED's. This hardware is specially developed to be used together with the Project Magenta software.
If you want to build expansionboards yourself (Aerosoft is out of business) look here. 
Project Magenta
Another important part op my pit is the Project Magenta software. It is made for a computer network. I run the PFD and ND and my first client PC and the EICAS and FMC on the second client. The (software)MCP works together with the hardware MCP. So now I can use all autopilot modes that are not provided in FS2002 itself like ALT SEL, ALT HOLD, HDG SEL, HDG HOLD, LNAV, VNAV and FL CH to name just a few.
My first project
Here you see what I made with a keyboardcontroller, a ch-yoke and some switches. It was my first project. You don't need the keyboard anymore. About 100 functions are accesable via this console (as much as there are buttons on the keyboard). You want further onformation about this ? See the first panel page.
