What to use for Radio / Nav Knobs in VR, Honeycomb Bravo or X-Touch Mini

General Discussion & Community Support Tech Talk
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What do you use to dial in frequencies in VR?

Looking for hardware with knobs to interact with radios, coms, G1000, Nav/Com/GPS/ etc. Using the mouse to dial in a frequency is tedious. Would love to find out what everyone is using/doing to change frequencies. I Only fly in VR

Current setup
Honeycomb Alpha yoke
Logitech Throttle quadrant
Logitech rudder pedals

Considering the following,

  1. X-Touch Mini -
    Pros - Light and easy to mount. Knobs and buttons.
    Cons - no native drivers/support. msfs support via 3rd party devs
  2. Honeycomb Bravo -
    Pros - Good build quality, has two knobs. Great looking throttle with trim wheel
    Cons - Bulky, Heavy (~13 pounds) Mounting on my rig will be an issue.

Not considering atm:
Logitech Saitek Flight Panels (but open to revisiting)
- Dont fly 2D so will never use the LED display, and build quality is as expected.
Knobster - too expensive for just the knobs

Thanks

2

Might try Axair Mili or miap. Relatively inexpensive and compact

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Thanks these looks interesting. Have you used any of these?

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For around £30 it’s possible to make an Arduino with MobiFlight software, left encoder is map zoom, 3 way rocker switch selects FMS - ADF - VLOC/Com.

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Both. Do a search And you’ll find previous discussions.

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Hey Tony
This looks interesting!

Did you print the box or buy that?
Which Arduino do you recommend for this with Mobiflight?
Are you using the Dual Encoder Kit w/switch from propwash? which knobs do you recommend?

Thanks

7

I bought the box and encoder knobs (I’m based in UK), I took inspiration from this channel and MobiFlight Discord super helpful. I used a pro micro, and yesterday dual encoder has push button. I’ve since added 3 micro switches Enter, Clear (short and long press works), and Direct. Discord

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Or there’s the Knobster

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I fly exclusively in VR and I always have used the mouse (a Kensington trackball in my case).
Imho preferable to any Knobster and the likes, becaue with the mouse pointer I “reach” for the knobs in their true (simulated) position, instead of fumbling with a device that will always be in the same place. I think that is more of an immersion breaker than the mouse pointer….

Just my opinion - and of course I’m eagerly awaiting a workable haptic gloves solution!

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Bravo is great for activating nav functions and rotary encoder for AP values (altitude, VS, IAS, heading, CRS, etc., but I use a Logitech Radio Panel to set radio frequencies, XPNDR, ADF, DME, etc.

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sorry…I re-read the comment…changes what I said
I use the Logitech Radio panel for all radio/comms…excellent and easy. However I also the X-touch as it provides 8 knobs x 2 layers = 16 avail knobs. I have eng starts, (cabin) light controls, baro, elevation, auto brakes and many more mapped to these knobs. And this device gives you about 48 press button functions too - most of which I have mapped. I don’t fly in VR though, so not sure how these would go…

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