A side trip to engine gauges…

I’ve recently been working on getting the six engine gauges for the F-15 put together.  Since I’m not going to be using real instruments, I needed to scratch build them.  Last year I did a short demo that shows how I’m using a small OLED display to emulate the “odometer” style display that’s used in the Fuel Flow, Temperature and RPM gauges.  I finally got around to doing the software integration and did a short video that shows both the air core and the OLED display working together:

Some weeks later, the boards I ordered from Osh Park arrived and I got the first one soldered up.

This is the top of the new interface board.  The chip in the center is an LM293DD dual h-bridge chip.  This is the surface mount version of the LM293D that I bread-boarded the circuit on.  The header on the right goes to the OLED interface.

The bottom of the board has a four pin connector that will go to the air core motor.

This is what the final assembly looks like after the Arduino Nano has been mounted.

The USB connector is at the back end of the board and will be accessed through an opening in the back of the instrument.  I’m still working on the design for the instrument core, so I don’t have much else to show yet.

More soon!