Integrated Display Controller — one embedded controller for a full-flight simulator’s visual system.
A simulator engineering company was building two A320-214 full-flight simulators for Air Arabia in Sharjah. We were engaged as the embedded engineering subcontractor for the visual system, and delivered the controller that drives the projectors, the blinders and the alignment routines, holds the calibration for each time of day state, and gives technicians local and remote access to all of it.
A visual system that had to behave as one.
A simulator’s visual system is several machines — projectors, blinders, alignment hardware and the optical and control equipment around them — that a crew has to experience as one continuous image. The controller had to hold that system together and stay reachable by technicians during installation, alignment, calibration and service.
The requirement went further than sending commands to projectors. Alignment, system status, calibration data, time of day profiles, local control and maintenance access all had to arrive in one place: a wall-mounted controller with its own touch panel, installed at the simulator.
Several display components. One maintenance workflow.
Settings and calibration data have to stay coordinated across every channel, while any single projector can still be taken out and adjusted on its own. Those two requirements pull against each other, and the controller is where they are reconciled.
It also has to run continuously inside the simulator, hold its configuration through a power cycle, and offer a separate maintenance interface without depending on the technician’s laptop being connected during normal training.
The image also has to stay right, not just start right. As the simulated environment moves through the day, the settings that hold the image together have to move with it, on every channel, without a technician in the loop.
And what the technician sees matters as much as what the system does. Projector status, system health and calibration state have to be readable from inside the simulator and from the maintenance workstation — and the two views have to agree.
One controller was developed to sit between the projectors, the blinders, the alignment hardware, the host system and the maintenance application: our own embedded control software, a local touchscreen on the panel, stored calibration for every time of day state, and a maintenance path that stays out of the way during training.
Underneath all six, the controller keeps watching. Temperatures, fan speeds, connectivity and diagnostic state are monitored continuously and reported to both interfaces; projector hours are tracked for maintenance planning; abnormal conditions can be notified rather than discovered. Projectors can be dropped into standby when the simulated eye point has not moved for a set period, and a warning from the power system begins a controlled shutdown.
Two simulators. One control architecture.