FPV (first-person view) setups revolutionized the hobbies of RC airplane and drone piloting, as they provide you a view from contained in the plane. However that’s solely visible — you’ll be able to see from the drone’s standpoint, however you aren’t absolutely experiencing the flight. The identical is true while you play a flight sim on a console or PC with typical controls. Final 12 months, Michael Rechtin constructed a DIY “actual life” flight simulator rig that adjustments all of that and now he’s releasing the recordsdata it’s essential to construct your individual.
Rechtin’s first video about this mission, which we lined on the time, now has about 1,000,000 views on YouTube. That’s actually spectacular and it’s simple to see why it was so in style: this rig is each hobbyist’s dream. It’s, primarily, a motorized chair that may tilt to match the roll and pitch of the goal plane. Rechtin designed it to be used with drones, however now it really works with digital plane in flight simulators, too. Both a TV mounted in entrance of the chair or FPV goggles give the person a first-person perspective whereas they really feel the movement of the plane by the chair.
As a part of his efforts to make this entire factor extra accessible, Rechtin streamlined the electronics and so they’re most likely less complicated than you assume. A Raspberry Pi 4 Mannequin B single-board laptop coordinates every part. Underneath its path, a Teensy 4.0 growth board controls the motors that transfer the chair. These are beefy steppers paired with gearboxes and managed by closed-loop drivers. The pilot’s controls are off-the-shelf USB units (customary fare for flight sims) that connect with the Raspberry Pi. It then outputs a PPM sign to the “coach” enter of any appropriate RC transmitter to ship instructions to the plane.
On the plane (a drone, RC airplane, or anything), an MPU6050 gyroscope/accelerometer measures orientation and motion. That knowledge goes again to the Raspberry Pi by a standard transmitter/receiver, so it might probably transfer the chair to match.
And within the occasion that you simply crash your drone and new propellers aren’t going to reach within the mail for a number of days, you should use this rig with digital plane in Microsoft Flight Simulator and several other different sims. Simply join the USB cables from the controls and the Teensy to your PC. As soon as configured, the conduct would be the identical as with a drone, however with a car fabricated from ones and zeroes.
Rechtin is even promoting a PCB on Amazon, which is able to make it simple to wire up every part to the Teensy.
