PCB Instrument Panel project

PCB Instrument Panel

I designed an instrument panel to be used with Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This "instrument panel" displays flight data like speed, heading, and altitude on different 7-segment displays.

Additionally, there are cockpit switches and rotary dials for user input.

-Utilizes an ARM Cortex M4 on the Tiva C Launchpad development board

-All seven segment displays are multiplexed by the microcontroller

-Displays are controlled through MCP23017 port expanders, which communicates with the mcu on an I²C bus.

-All LEDs are supplied current through a 74HC541N line driver, in series with 330Ω resistors.

-Microcontroller communicates with a PC client over UART

-PC client utilizes SimConnect SDK to interact with flight simulator.

-In each UART packet, the first 3 bits identify the data being sent, and the last 5 bits represent the data (some data is split in 2 parts)

-Switch data is sent upon edge-triggered interrupts, and flight data is read with a polling mechanism.

-MCU code is written in C, whereas PC client code is written in C++.