4 Feet 3DOF Ethercat System

Did some research on what system to be used for my motion platform, studied SFX-100, Arduino, Thanos, Canbus, Ethercat, etc… end up go with ethercat due to chatgtp recommends it is the best among all system due to latency and synchronised motion which able to provide best experience and accuracy. After a year of work finally have the prototype completed and now in progress of making fine adjustments aim to further improve the following:

1. Reducing aggressive movement during a crash while maintain minimal latency.
2. When exit assetto corsa session, the rig will jump. Believe it is due to sudden change of position setpoint.
3. Further improving latency as this is why i go with ethercat. Fine PID tuning and Flypt mover filtering still hard to breakthrough.
4. Still findings best solution for the actuator feet (the interface between actuators arm and hard floor. Currently using neoprene rubber… )

My setup specification:
Game: Assetto Corsa + flypt mover (started with 3.5 now using 3.7 version)
Ethercat Master: Ethercat PLC at 1ms cyclic time
Drive: Ethercat capable drive
Motor: 240vac servo motor with brake and 19bits absolute encoder
Screen: Triple 32” 1000R 2k curved monitor (do not work well in Aesstto Corsa due to the curve, the setup look cool thou.)
Computer CPU: Ryzen 5800, CPU run more than 50% load in flypt high accuracy calculation mode, 1ms output)
Graphic card: RTX 4080 (graphic run smooth at high settings)
RAM: 32gb DDR4

I am living in Malaysia, the cost of the Ethercat drive, PLC, motors, actuators plus some accessories around MYR10000, approximately EUR2200.

This is the first I've heard of people building a Sim with a plc. Can you provide us more information on that?

Ethercat system requires a master controller to synchronize and control all servo motor, it can be done using an ethercat compatible PLC as master device, then ethercat drives as slave. This is industrial machines for very high accuracy motion control.

Hello @noorbeast & @cfischer, I try to explain in simple way and do let me know if yous need more info.

Flypt mover process motion telemetry from Assetto Corsa then send the actuator position to PLC via UDP, PLC communicates with slave drives to control servo motor movement in sychronised way.

Here is the PLC frame i built and running. I am new and trying to figure out how upload a video here. I will post the video soon.

Great setup you’ve got there!

About a year ago I also discovered that EtherCAT could be the key to driving our motion simulators. It’s becoming more and more attractive price-wise as well—especially for us here in Europe.

That’s why I decided to extend the Motion4Sim controller with dual Lan that’s essentially plug-and-play with EtherCat servo. It’s been working extremely well so far.

Here’s also a video where I demonstrate hybrid operation EtherCAt together with conventional AASD servos.



official it Support only A6 EC Servos from Stepperonline but also other Systems are working already
The system is still under development, but we’re continuously working on supporting more EtherCAT servos.

By the way—how do you program your PLC? Which systems are you using? As far as I understand, this still has to be done more or less manually.

Are you working with TwinCAT, CODESYS, or some kind of custom PC-based solution ?

I also see you are using industrial actuators, i also waiting for my order coming next weeks

what brand is your actuators and are you satisfied with the quality?


will also try to setup a 3dof cornering Rig

Hello there, nice to hear that i am not alone!

I use Codesys, TwinCat from Beckhoff is just too expensive for first trial rig. Some reputable brands in China have the similar function and seems works well for my rig so far, at quarter of the cost. Using these PLC requires support from PLC manufacturers if not familiar due to some technical topics requires expert's help.

Programming is 100% manual, use ST or ladder diagram whichever easier for you. The UI also has to be from a separate HMI panel.

YKD from China, so far so good, never has problem, still survive from serious jerk during code development.

Yours from Europe or China? Interest in the pricing

YKD brand actuator from China. Interested to know where @Motion4Sim got the actuator from.

Here are some videos on my rig in action: