I ordered a bunch of small (10x16mm) LED lights to build an annunciator panel with.  The colored plastic covers can be popped off and labels can be placed underneath to indicate the condition that is being annunciated.

I stopped by the hobby shop tonight and picked up some small 4-40 threaded rod and some threaded clevis ends to connect the flap arm to the Ray Allen position sensor that will feed the flap position to the VP-X.  I stole the dimensions from Mike Bullock’s site and they worked perfectly.

I fabricated a small clip that bolts to the adel clamp to connect the clevis to the flap rod.  I used a piece of 0.063″ angle with one leg mostly cut off.  This wraps around the side of the adel clamp flange and will prevent it from rotating.

Here’s the other end.  I didn’t tighten the nut fully since it interferes with the nut on the clevis.

I turned the screw around on the clevis and tightened it more fully.  I ended up also having to use one of these tiny lock nuts to provide clearance from the clevis screw.

The SkyView DB37 connector comes with a long USB cable with a type A female end on it.  The other end connects to pins 16-19 on the DB37 connector.  This cable is kind of useless as the female end can’t be mounted to anything.

I extracted these pins from the DB37 connector so I can replace it with a more appropriate connector.

I picked up this 18″ USB 2.0 A M/F panel mount cable.  I could have just connected this to the preinstalled SkyView USB cable, but it won’t have been extremely long and would have just ended up coiled up behind the panel.  I clipped off the male end and crimped on some d-sub sockets.

I then reassembled the connector.  I really wish Dynon had just installed this sort of cable in the first place.

Here you can see that the cable is long enough to reach anywhere near the SkyView screen.  To confirm everything was working correctly, I upgraded the SkyView to 2.6 using the USB thumb drive plugged into this cable.  I’ll install an identical cable on the other SkyView screen once I order it.

While I had my electrical tools out, I went ahead and soldered some lead wires to the controls that will be installed in the control stick grips.

Before I can install the controls into the stick for good, I wanted to put a couple of coats of tung oil on the grips.

After soldering all the wires to the control stick switches, I slipped some expandable sleeving and finished the end with heat shrink.  This is the copilot’s PTT button.

The copilot’s stick is removable, so the PTT switch needs a connector in it at the joint in the stick.  I’m using a small 0.062″ 2 circuit plug.  The wire will exit between the rod ends at the bottom of the stick.  I added a layer of heat shrink around the sleeving where it passes between the rod ends to provide an extra measure of abrasion resistance.

I drilled both control stick grips and epoxied in some small 8-32 t-nuts.

I then installed some 1/4″ long socket head set screws that will be used to anchor the grips to the sticks.

With all of the wire soldered on the switches and buttons, I installed them in the grips.

I slipped some sleeving over the nine wires coming out of the pilot’s grip and then installed it on the pilot stick.  Just like on the copilot’s side, I routed the wires out through the bottom of the stick.  Many builders drill a hole in the side of the stick near the pivot point to avoid routing the wires near the moving parts, but Van’s recommends against this as it will weaken the stick.

Just like on the copilot’s side, I installed a length of heat shrink where the wire bundle passes between the rod end bearings.

I’m planning on having 7 or 8 annunciator lights.  Some will be triggered when a signal is pulled to ground and others when a signal is pulled to 12V.  I also wanted a button to test all of the lights and a dimmer so I can reduce the brightness for night flight.  I couldn’t find an off the shelf controller that I liked, so I decided to dust off the old EE degree and design a simple circuit that did what I want.  I prototyped a two light version of the circuit below.  You can sort of see the two lights (red and yellow) near the top center of the picture.  The left switch at the bottom simulates the push-to-test button.  When thrown, both lights should light up.  The right switch simulates one of the circuits that should light an annunciator light when pulled to ground.  This circuit doesn’t handle signals pulled to high because I didn’t have any diodes on hand to do that portion of the circuit.

Here’s the push-to-test switch thrown.  You can see both lights are on.

Here’s the single signal light illuminated.  The lights only require 20mA at 12V, so a simple 2N2222A TO-92 NPN transistor can handle this without even warming up.  The end circuit only needs one diode, one resistor, and one transistor per light.  There’s one additional resistor in the circuit to handle one edge case that could blow a diode if one of the high signal pins were pulled to ground accidentally.

I’ve spent the last couple of days refining the annunciator light circuit and laying out a PCB that I’m going to have fabricated by expresspcb.com.  They require a minimum order of three boards, so I’ll have a couple of extra if anyone wants to buy them.  Email me at the address in the left bar if you want one.

I also designed a couple of other simple PCBs to replace the SkyView splitters as well as the interconnect between the SkyView and the other avionics.  I’ll post pictures of the boards when I get them.

Unfortunately, the PCB design software only runs on Windows and is really shitty.  I haven’t had to use Windows this much in almost 10 years, but it was just as bad as I remember.

I ordered three of the solid state dimmer circuits from Perihelion Design.  They’re completely self contained and use a LM317T chip to regulate the voltage to the lights.

The zig-zag trace that connects the outer two pads regulates the minimum voltage.  With this short, the dimmer puts out 1.3V at the low end.  This is too low for the annunciator and cabin lights I’m using.

I broke this connection so that I could solder a more appropriate resistor in place of this trace.

The cabin light needs a 330Ω resistor to set the low end of the voltage range to 5V.  Below that, the cabin light I’m using shuts off, so there’s no point in letting the dimmer go below that voltage.

The dimmer that controls the annunciator lights needs a 150Ω resistor to set the low end of the voltage range to 3V.  The third dimmer will be used to dim the lights that go under the glareshield.

Here’s where I mounted the light.  It’s basically as far forward as I could mount it without interfering with the roll bar.  This is still low enough that it illuminates the whole panel, but far enough forward that I can illuminate my lap reasonably well.  This can also be turned left-to-right as well as angled up and down.  I’ll most likely wire this directly to the battery bus so that I can use it to illuminate the cabin and baggage area when loading/unloading the plane.