Hardware
Repairing Saitek Pro Flight Switch Panel with Arduino
The Saitek Pro Flight Panels were awesome. I bought all of them years ago and they worked great… with Windows 7 and USB 2. Unfortunately when I upgraded my computer everything stopped working due to Windows 10 and all USB3 ports. I have followed every guide, every driver, every bios setting I could find and I can’t get any of the panels to function. I’ve been able to get the radio panel and multi panel working with Spad.NEXT but the switch panel refuses to function. I can only assume something on the circuit board has gone bad. Now that Logitech has bought Saitek this thing is basically a brick with no support. Really without Spad.NEXT all three would be bricks as the Logitech software does not work at all. I really want my simulator to work again so I set off to figure out how to fix switch panel.
TL:DNR – Check out my video of it in action and view the code on github
Read on to see how I did this.
3D Printing a Proton Pack! Plus Lights and Sounds
What started as just the Neutrino Wand has turned into building a full pack for my son this Halloween. The goals were pretty simple. Replicate the movie pack as best as I could, keep it low weight, and give him some stuff to play with. Here is what I came up with…
The result is about 80% scale, around 8 pounds on the back, and completely mirrored as my son is left handed. The pack is 3D printed using a PVC backpack frame and some other odds and ends to finish it off. The lights and sounds are based off an Arduino Nano that is controlling a bunch of Neopixel LED’s and an Adafruit Audio FX Board. The entire code, models, and PC boards used can be found on github here:
ASUS MeMO Pad HD 7 Review (Updated 8/21/13)
While building the latest version of FlightMap which targets 7 inch tablets I learned that there are several different aspect ratios for 7 inch tablets. This made supporting them that much more difficult as they would be harder to test. I did my best with the Android simulator but that thing is so slow and I can’t actually use google maps in it so I needed to find another tablet to test with. After the disaster that was the ASUS MeMO Pad ME172V I was a little hesitant to pick up another Asus MeMO Pad. The specs looked really good though and most other reviewers said it has the same screen as the original Nexus 7 (2012) so I decided to try them again.
ASUS MeMO Pad ME172V Review
I originally bought an ASUS MeMO Pad ME172V-A1-GR 7.0-Inch 16 GB Tablet to do some extra testing of FlightMap with. Amazon was having what looked like an amazing deal on the tablet for only $80 so I thought how bad could it be right? Asus, the maker of the Nexus 7, makes it so it can’t be to bad. It had good enough reviews so I picked one up.
Google Nexus 7 (2013) Review
In my quest to test FlightMap on as many devices as I can I just had to pick up the latest Nexus tablet. My previous 7 inch tablet, an early Archos 7 tablet with Android 2.3, was not a fun form factor to use. The resolution was so bad that browsing the web was painful and Android 2.3 was just not ready for tablets. Due to that experience I thought 7 inch tablets were not for me so I’ve stuck to 10 inch tablets until now. Boy was I wrong.
VINE RIPE SOFTWARE™ 