My Learjet 45 Home Cockpit

All my tests on the USB output card ended so now it's time to start thinking to the input interface, for switches and buttons.

Taking inspiration from a good idea of Dave, I tried to transform an USB keyboard to an input interface. Essentially, disassembling the keyboard, I get the little circuit and with some connections and solders I am able to build an interface to connect switches and buttons.

Shorting any couple of pins I simulate a keypress (every combination is a different key). With a lot of patience, using an old flat cable (restored from an old IDE Hard Disk) I connect every single pin of the keyboard circuit to the breadboard. It has been a long and hard work because of pins are very small and closer each others.

Here is the achieved result:

Flat calbe soldered to the keyboard circuit:


The other edge of flat cable linked to the breadboard:


After a lot of attempts to get the right combinations, I mapped all the sim's commands through FSUIPC library. By this way, connecting switches / buttons to the breadboard I can control the sim. So, I made some tests using switches:



Mapped all the commands, now it's time to buy and connect real buttons.