Author Archives: Glen

A video of my hardware and software controlling the pointer and counter on a 747 fuel quantity indicator. In this post, I disassemble a 747 fuel quantity indicator and reverse engineer the electromechanical parts of the indicator. I then apply … Continue reading →

A video demonstrating the play back of a descent from a recent mountain bike ride on the vintage aircraft altitude indicator.. In this project, I use a Python script and an updated version of my digital-to-synchro project to replay my … Continue reading →

A video showing the Kollsman electric tachometer indicator ramping from 0% to 100% then 105%, 120%, back down to 100% then to 50%, 25%, and 5% then finally back down to 0%. At 100%, the three-phase, four-pole AC synchronous motor … Continue reading →

In the last project, I built a synchro-to-digital converter to display a synchro’s shaft angle on a small OLED display. In this project, I reverse the process and build a digital-to-synchro converter that sets a synchro’s shaft to the angle … Continue reading →

This project uses modern data acquisition hardware to track the shaft angle of a synchro transmitter as the shaft is turned through various angles. How difficult could it be to get the absolute angle of a position sensor from the … Continue reading →

In this project, I convert a WW2-era landing gear and flaps indicator into a USB peripheral using a Raspberry Pi Pico development board and eight channels of programmable current sources. This project is similar to my WW2-era engine cowl flaps … Continue reading →

In this project, I convert a WW2-era engine cowl flaps indicator into a USB peripheral using a Microchip PIC16F1459 microcontroller and four Microchip MCP41HV31-502 digital potentiometers. This project is reminiscent of my USB analog panel meters project but the drive … Continue reading →

Tired of editing XML and JSON files to store configuration settings for your hardware or software? What if we could go back to using DIP switches for configuration settings? Well, with the DIP switch USB stick, you can! No more … Continue reading →

I first saw a Scramblepad on the door of an office building I worked at while in high school in the late ’80s. I always wanted to own one or to make my own based on seven-segment LED displays but … Continue reading →