I would love for some company to do a basic overhead usb plug in that would work for four engines and two engines together that would cover all aircraft and have light up toggle buttons and cost not a lot of money (not cost over 500 dollars)
Moved to #self-service:home-cockpit-builders as Wishlist is for core changes to the sim code and features only.
That may be a lot to ask for. I only fly single engine GA aircraft with steam gauges so I don’t know how much “stuff” goes into an overhead panel but they look pretty complex. I have about $200 just in the hardware for my button box and throttle and it’ just switches, encoders, buttons, and pots. Not to mention the design, building, and programming time in it. I think $500 would be a reasonable DIY project price for something as complex as an overhead.
Have a look at mobiflight and arduino boards- not a plug and play solution but with a bit of time you could easily knock something up to control sim variables via some switches. Hispa panels sell all of the OH parts to help achieve the look
Check out the boards and components over at LeoBodnar. These things have actually become pretty accessible and affordable.
Sim kit/peripherals like the thing you have described are never going to be manufactured commercially at a reasonable price but could probably be put together yourself for a fraction of the price you are thinking of.
Something like this u mean
Than start with this link
It for sure got me ontrack, altough i made one with 2 Leo Bodnar cards altough i havent got it fully working for programming al these switches is a lot of work and by asobo they Hussel still to much with te profiles and this would cost to much time for the moment. But its there and usefull for now for some basic stuff like Light, apu, magneto and avionics controlling.
I was looking at something more like the a380 overhead panel might try finding one of those eventually because I noticed most of the default airliners are going to be airbus compatible especially when the atr comes and a lot of airbus aircraft overheads are based of the a380’s overhead
Here is a nice link to use a build reference. You could buy the poster and add switches to it a little at a time. Cockpit Posters by Flightvectors | Airbus A380
My plan for a cockpit build was to also build an dc6 engineering panel so I could put all the extra switches on that for the other aircraft and put it on the side wall behind my pc and modern style a380 overhead panel above me for a custom sim build was my plan so I could fly pretty much any aircraft