Life, The Universe and ... Everything!

A few months back I started organizing my shelves. I standardised on IKEA TJENA boxes to keep my stuff in, and filled up a few shelves with them. IKEA touts the smaller TJENA boxes as being able to fit inside a BILLY book case, because they are 26cm deep, and you can stack up to three of them on a shelf, assuming you divide the shelves evenly within the cabinet. Which is true ... however, their widths mean that there is often a lot of wasted space. Here are the small TJENA boxes in a regular...

I've not been happy with the keycaps on my 737 FMC. I've tried a few methods of printing them: printing the letters recessed on black filament, and then using a fine tipped paintbrush, filling in the recessed parts with white acrylic paint. This method was ok for single letters, but for keys with multiple characters such as "EXEC", my hand painting skills were not up to the task.Printing a blank keycap with white filament, and then printing the label on 2 layers of transparency sheets. This i...

Finally have some time to breathe and so it is time to play with my flight sim ... but instead of launching X-Plane 11, I fired up the X-Plane World Editor and spent a few hours adding ground traffic routes to WMKK KL International Airport. Now we have baggage carts, trucks and other ground vehicles moving about. I also played with the new Terminal Kit and KLIA2 finally has a Skybridge! I will upload to the X-Plane Scenery Gateway soon. KLIA2 Skybridge Taxi Routes in WED Debugging Taxi...

My Overhead Panel project has been stagnant for quite a while ... I did not touch it at all throughout 2017. There are the usual excuses (work, other projects, etc) but deep down I believe my lack of enthusiasm was due to the fact that was not happy with the design. Mostly this is a result of overthinking and trying to be "systematic", when for most DIY projects, sometimes it is better to go with a design that is "complex but easy" instead of "simple but tedious", as we are all lazy at hea...

A few people have asked me how to order the PCB for the FMC CDU, so I've decided to write up a guide. To begin with, the design is available for free. I used EasyEDA.com to make the schematic and PCB design available. If you are into electronics design, you can make a copy of the schematics and PCB design and make whatever changes you like, provided you comply to the license terms. Please do read through them as there are some restrictions that apply. If you just want to buy a ready-made PC...

There appears to be quite a bit of updates going on with the ExtPlane plugin source code in the last few months, and it turned out some of these are needed to fix some of the bugs I am facing when using it. Unfortunately, to get the latest and greatest version, you have to compile it yourself. Here are my notes on how to go about compiling the plugin on Linux and Windows. Note: If you are using my Pi-XPlane-FMC-CDU, you can just use the pre-compiled binaries linked to in my post here. This ...

Finally ... after a long hard battle ... my Pi-Xplane-FMC-CDU is now working with the Zibo 737. You will need to upgrade your ExtPlane plugin and also the software on the Pi FMC. Update Your Pi You should have already got your Pi FMC software running using the instructions in my earlier post here: http://blog.shahada.abubakar.net/post/installing-pixplanefmccdu-software. In the latest version, I've removed the hacks and workarounds I had implemented earlier to try and get ExtPlane workin...

This is my fully 3D printed design for a Dual Concentric Rotary Encoder with Push Button. It's useful for making the knobs for flight-sim radio panels, where there is an outer knob to set the smaller digits, and an inner knob to set the larger digits. It's inspired by a design I found on Youtube, where the designer, Theo Deckers, CNC'd a bracket to hold two regular rotary encoders together. I don't have access to a CNC machine or the parts that Theo uses, so I decided to design one purely ...

The agent said she had arrived, so I went down to the Shell station at Taman Connaught this evening to fetch my new house maid. Yes I have decided I need some help around the house. Although her responsibilities will only be to vacuum and mop the floor, she will be a live-in maid. As I've converted my spare room into a workshop, I've decided she will just have to sleep under the kitchen counter. She comes from what used to be a small fishing village in China. Unfortunately she only speaks ...

I've been stumped for the last few weeks with getting my Raspberry Pi FMC to work with Zibo's 737. I used the ExtPlane plugin to interface my code on the Pi with the simulator, and it works well for almost all FMCs except Zibo's. The symptoms would be missing or truncated data updates, causing the screen on the Pi to get messed up. Since I'm only working on the Pi end, it's hard to tell whether the problem is with ExtPlane or Zibo. The AirFMC iPad app, which comes with its own plugin, is ab...