Elevator Trim Wheel

I could not purchase a Saitek Cessna Trim Wheel for love or money, so I thought I'd build one myself.

Features:

• appears as a Joystick/Game controller with a single axis;
• spin the wheel up or down to set axis value from -1000 through +1000;
• reset to 0 on button press;
• slide-switch to disable changing input;

These are used by flight-simmers to trim their virtual aircraft so that they do not have to apply constant pressure to the flight yoke or joystick.

Required components:

• an Arduino Leonardo
• DF Robot SEN0230 400 P/R rotary encoder with bracket
• a 8 character 7-Segment LED display with a MAX7219 driver
• a monentary switch and DPST slide switch to suit
• various short jumper leads
• a handful of m3, m5 and m8 nuts, bolts and washers
• rough adhesive tape to enhance grip of the clamp

3D Prints

Use Openscad, your slicer and printer to render and then print one of each object in scad/FauxtekElevatorTrim.scad.

Use Openscad, your slicer and printer to render and then print the scad/wheel-handle.scad.

Arduino Firmware

This project uses Arduino-Makefile to build, flash and test the Arduinos.

On Linux, install Arduino-Makefile then run make upload to flash your Arduino.

Windows

Install the Arduino IDE which installs the required drivers.

After installing the drivers and flashing the Arduino, it will appear as a game controller with a single axis and two buttons.

FlightGear

Pre-made bindings are at flightgear/cgspeck/Elevator-Trim-Wheel.xml.