feedback control loader, control loading, actuator, FAA Level D, flight controls, simulation, simulator

CRJ Simulator Rehab – Part 4

Last time, we figured out that the phidgets controlled everything and that there were all of these phidget files… sigh… (If you haven’t been reading this series on the CRJ, please read 1 thru 3 please.) Return of the Phidgets Rick (my lovely programming engineer) wrote a small but significant program that allowed us to…

Motion Base Platforms and the Flight Simulation Industry

Motion Base Platforms have been apart of the flight simulation industry for a very long time. Longer than one might think… The simulation industry is relatively old (almost 100 years!), but not quite as old as planes have been in the sky. The follow article is an except from wikipedia in regards to the history of…

6DOF, Motion base platforms, Vr, Virtual reality, Racing sim, Driving sim, Entertainment rides, Gaming

Checking in on one of our older installations

In 2015, we visited Harris Corp in Melbourne, Florida to inspect a high-angle six-axis motion base platform system that we had installed back in 2003. The system was used to test Sea State 6 antennas for shipboard communications. The customer reported that the system was still functioning well and had been in constant use for…

6DOF, Motion base platforms, Vr, Virtual reality, Racing sim, Driving sim, Entertainment rides, Gaming

Frequency Response of a Servos & Simulation Motion Base Platform

Over the past decades, Servos & Simulation has produced hundreds of motion bases. Most of them custom… most of them last decades. Recently, we were asked to build a custom motion base with a very specific set of criteria. It needed to be a six axis motion base platform, the CG was offset 40″ from…

CRJ Simulator Rehab – Part 3

Once again in our ongoing segment on how to bring a trainer back to life… we begin where we left off… with nothing in the simulator (buttons, switches and the like) except the glass working….Step 7 – Phidget and Project Magenta LandSo here we were and not a switch or button to be working… I…

2DOF, Motion base platforms, Vr, Virtual reality, Racing sim, Driving sim, Entertainment rides, Gaming

Florida Institute of Technology mentions Servos in published Article

Last week, FIT’s Human Spaceflight Lab had an article written about what they were doing. A few years ago, Mr. Doule came to us with an idea… an idea of something that he required, but wasn’t quite sure as to how to get there. Take a look at the article and how Servos helped them…

3DOF, Motion base platforms, Vr, Virtual reality, Racing sim, Driving sim, Entertainment rides, Gaming

The Ultimate Checklist for Buying a Motion Platform

What should one look for when purchasing a Motion Platform… Here’s a short list. How long has the manufacturer been in business? Does the manufacturer actually do their own in-house engineering or are they reselling the system (this matters)? What does the motion platform use for moving the axis? Is it hydraulic, electric, pneumatic or…

feedback control loader, control loading, actuator, FAA Level D, flight controls, simulation, simulator

CRJ Simulator Rehab – Part 2

So getting back to the CRJ refurb…The buyer decided to get it working again…Step 3 – Reverse engineering the whole system (hindsight being 20/20, the overhead panel was the best place to start)Starting with the overhead panel, I wanted to see what parts were used to make it work. It was the easiest piece to…

feedback control loader, control loading, actuator, FAA Level D, flight controls, simulation, simulator

CRJ Simulator Rehab – Part 1

So a few months ago, we took on a project to rehab a CRJ-700 simulator that was dead… like dead dead. None of the computers worked…but… So a business associate contacted me about this CRJ system and that he had a buyer for it. Sight unseen, I said sure, it should be fixable. So said business…

Is Virtual Reality (VR) Finally A “Reality” Or Not?

Virtual Reality (VR) has been around for a relatively long time. The first one that I can remember working on was back in 1993 or so. We built a gimbal that a person sat in and put a very large and clunky helmet on their head with a pair of screens inside to see the…