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My DIY home cockpit for Elite Dangerous (version 2) (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 6 months ago by bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de to c/elitedangerous@lemmy.world
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o7 CMDRs, made a tiny demo video show-casing the SimPit in Elite Dangerous 🙃

Pick your poison:

https://tube.tchncs.de/w/1nokGf66oWj34EdMvxYbSn / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXofGR4GRLk

Just slaughtering pirates (wasn't in the cockpit for months) but you get to see it from a first person perspective this time because I strapped the camera to my headphones 🙃

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[-] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago

Utterly butterly brilliant. Even my partner said “ooooh buttons” looking over my shoulder.

What’s your setup here? I’d love to augment my HOTAS and Stream Deck with some more gizmos.

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 6 months ago

Heh, yeah I'm like that too: "oooh buttons" 🤓 It's completely homebrew beside the X52 Pro. Some parts are salvaged form old electronics. What part interests you most? I wrote some details here before: https://SimPit.dev/version-2/

[-] fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

Nuts! So is effectively a small, secondary monitor with a custom surround you’ve added buttons to?

Do the buttons connect to a keyboard controller or something different?

What software are you running on the monitor? Is it touch screen?

Do you have mappings for all the buttons or are some/many just for looks?

What’s the general layout of the buttons (i.e. what do you have mapped and where)? I think I counted 71 buttons/lights/switches!

Again, insanely cool setup. I’ve been making do with a large Stream Deck with a bunch of folders for everything and a plugin to update button states based on game state. It’s incredibly functional but nowhere remotely as immersive as yours.

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 months ago

Yes, the monitor is a separate entity but some of the buttons at the bottom are used to control it's OSD menu. It's not a touchscreen because it's salvaged from a very old laptop (and I despise touchscreens :D). It's software is a home brew React app basically as described for the old version here: https://simpit.dev/version-1/mfd-software/

I have a list for the buttons yes. All buttons are connected. I'm working on a write-up of the wiring. Some can not be read by ED due to button limits. I work around this by remapping them to keyboard presses (AntiMicroX). It's really so much that I can hardly showcase all in one little video 🤓 Some are currently not even in use and are crammed below the contraption. There's also a total of 17 status indicators which can display various states. That's a NeoPixel so it can be extended if needed. It's all driven and organized by an Arduino Mega. It's daemon is a Rust program that also raises a virtual joystick with the system.

Thanks :-)

[-] BangersAndMash@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago

Do Games like this have the ability to control the status indicators? It's not a feature I've seen before but very cool if it can be done. I love this whole thing and will definitely be reading your write-up... Even though I don't have a gaming rig, time to play any games or the money for any of it!

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago

Some offer continuous ship telemetry, but that's mostly games that are more simulation focused and thus more grounded in reality - think flight sim. A few notable exceptions exist, like Fly Dangerous, that serves everything on a silver platter.

ED is a mixed bag. Some information is available in the JSON files it dumps regularly, where they can be consumed by various 3rd party apps, or your own. I've a writeup and a demo video of this specific part in an early state at simpit.dev/version-1/plumbing/

ED is however not very detailed and only dumps information if a certain threshold is reached. We get for example no airspeed in the files but we get latitude and longitude on a planetary and with the radius of the planet (yes, a game made me do Maths!11eleven) we can calculate some missing data to feed e.g. a primary flight display (the one that is stuck in the video - it does operate on a planetary ;-))

[-] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

Your setup is the kind that every 10 year old at an arcade would get in line to have a try at, with all the colourful buttons. Nice job.

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago

ty - also yeah my kids love it too - including the toddler :D

[-] Bloodyhog@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

You, sir, have my deep respect! Awesome setup. I wish I could do something like that...

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

What's stopping you? :)

[-] Bloodyhog@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

Largely laziness. But also lack of all the necessary skills )

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

Hm… wait, both boil down to laziness :P If you ever feel like it read up on the [humble] beginnings. All the things I learned on this journey 🤪

[-] Bloodyhog@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Unfortunately the excitement from E:D also wore off after a couple thousand hours. Did not start it for about a year already. It feels like the necessary programming skills would be a big hurdle for me. Physical assembly will take a lot of time, but is manageable . Learning all the software things however would be a killer. I have no other use for these (

[-] bekopharm@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

Woah, doubt I'll ever reach thousand hours in this game at all 🤓

Trick is I play any space pew pew I can get my hands on with this 🙃 …even some flight sim :)

Also yes, the display may be total overkill but there are decent companion apps out there already that basically do the same.

The rest may look fancy but is in it's core just a dumb button box. These can be assembled without soldering or programming skills whatsoever.

[-] Bloodyhog@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

ED is the game from ye olden days for me - I was mesmerized with its grandmother on ZX Spectrum back when it was a thing. So when I discovered the current gen I was immediately hooked. These hours where spent across ps4 and PC over 5 or so years, so probably nothing like the real monsters of the game )

You are right re companion apps, a simple tablet can do similar things with much less effort on my side, and the buttons can probably be married to the PC with some magic that handles various hotas setups.

Sounds reeeeallly tempting, if and when I could cut some slack from family duties.

Your site bookmarked!

this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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