Category Archives: Uncategorized

Controlling 5 out of 6 Ustellar GemBand Smart Flood Lights with WLED

In my my last post, I looked at four different sets of inexpensive LED flood lights to see which could be controlled using WLED. While they all could be controlled with WLED to some extent, only some could take advantage … Continue reading

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Controlling Inexpensive LED Lights with WLED

I’m always looking for new LED lights for Halloween, Christmas, and just general tinkering. My preference is for lights that can be modified to be controlled locally by WLED. Controlling the lights locally lets me integrate the lights into larger … Continue reading

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Cracking Open and Controlling a 747 Fuel Gauge

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

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Relive Your Best Mountain Bike Descents on a Vintage Aircraft Altitude Indicator

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

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The Kollsman Electric Tachometer Indicator

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

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Positioning a Synchro Receiver’s Shaft from a Terminal Window

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

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Resolving a Synchro Shaft Angle Using Modern Hardware

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

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Converting a WW2-era Landing Gear and Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral

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

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Converting a WW2-era Engine Cowl Flaps Indicator into a USB Peripheral

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

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Building a DIP Switch USB Stick Using the Microchip PIC16F1459

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

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