This weekend I built up the first panel for XL609. I'm a long way off being able to install it into the cockpit but as I had all the parts and some time to kill I thought it would be a good weekend project.
The undercarriage switch had seen better days so after a good clean with some ISO and very fine wet and dry paper I did a quick repair, replacing the broken bakelite with some 'milliput' putty. Once that had dried I spent a little time mixing up some acrylic paint to get a colour match - bakelite is not a uniform colour but after some experimenting I found that a mix of black primer, a red leather model paint and some good old Games Workshop 'Balthasar Gold' (a brassy coloured metallic) gave me something I was happy with. I painted the red 'EM' button using 'plasticote' and then repainted lettering on all three buttons using a light grey model acrylic.
Wiring was pretty straight forward; using a multimeter in ohms (continuity mode) it was easy to figure out which pins did what. The gear switch was simple - just three push buttons that need to function as a 'momentary' switch (up, down and emergency lower) however the flaps control has nine(!) different positions but after some brain storming (and a quick consultation with ChatGPT) I had some code that would recognise each position and provide an up/down signal as appropriate. Once uploaded to the arduino and hooked up I was able to test it as a 'Human Interface Device' in windows and it worked first time!
I shot a quick video demonstrating the controls with the VSN Hunter mod in DCS World - I'm running a 'test' version of the Hunter and for some reason the flaps controls are only 'Up' and 'Up/Down Toggle' so they don't quite work as expected but I'm sure that'll get ironed out in the software - my hardware is working as expected!