Showroom 12v Winch Motor Driving Simpit

No Worries mate, 5 turn was nearly 100% of pot , 10 turn will use about 50 % will work as a start, but recommend checking what turn you will need. Closer to 100% better but free play at the ends can be a good safety factor if arms overshot when you come to the setting up the Jrk Stage.

I would trial the existing motors, on Jrks at 12v feed them 30-40amps and check ya results before adapting to winches.
The Jrks might push hard enough. If not , no loss and upgrade to winches.

I recall somewhere back on the thread that he would need to extend the angle of the arms at the back though.

Yes, I need to move the motor mounts back about 7 inches to get the correct angle. I was going to get that done as soon as I had good motion out of the motors.

As for putting the JRKs on the old motors, I don't think I want to chance it. The motors have been the same once since I started trying to get motion several years ago. Each attempt ended with smoke. Different controller boards, different power sources, different micro controllers, etc.

The winch motors are on their way, I will absolutely do a continuity check on them to make sure they are not grounded through the casing as you and Dave suggest. I have already done this to the current motors and they are ok but I wonder if for some reason they just have amp spikes that I am not seeing.

Cool winches will have caps on the terminals to body, pretty standard thing worldwide, blew me away when Aldoz bought the same unit, on the other side of the world, jess its a small world.

Ok your aold motors might have a cap. or simular item inside them to increase starting torque, or as a soft start setup, will cause problem for most controllers.

Winches it is then.

I think winches might be the better choice anyway. I am a pretty big guy and the winches will get me moving, where I have always been in doubt of the 24v motors.

I did get the Arduino/Pololu combo to work. Many thinks to RacingMat for the sketch and advice. Unfortunately the motors are far too weak on 12v and I doubt they will be any better on 24v (need bigger fuses, pops 15a fuses on 24v). I doubt they would move a seat alone with any force.

So, the project has transformed from an enclosed racepit, to a steel platform with big motors to steel platform with winch motors.

Hopefully, from what I have seen the winches are moving platforms heavier than mine (even with me on it, lol).

Rob and Aldoz have proved what the winches and JRKS can do.
They really do give F.... ME! motion.

Yeah,i have been drooling over Aldoz's 3dof rig. I think my platform will eventually resemble his.

I need to read up on your JRK posts to prep for my new parts.

lol , Jrk will feel like childs play, after the Ard they are quiet easy so wire and setup.

I am actually glad that I started with the Arduino route, even though it doesnt seem to be sufficient in my case I am sure that with better motors and a lighter pilot it would be great; Mat has shown that it does work. But messing around with the Arduino has taught me a great deal about the device and how to use it. I am going to keep it and perhaps use it for other aspects of my build. The wind motor sounds like a cool (pun intended) idea and of course it would work great for a traction loss setup.

Rob, I remember reading some of your first posts on the JrK 12v12 and winch motor setup three or four years ago, I had a feeling that eventually that would be the way that I went with my project, lol.

When weight is in concern they have proved themselves, just wish a quieter version was available.
I m using big worm gear units now but looking in to planetary gear drive at the moment but will continue to use the big worm drives on seat movers,
Hang on to the motors and controller for another sim build for mate where its a pure seat mover.
Matt has my congratulations for his Ard code now beta tested by yourself +1 to the available drivers for Sims.

Yes, I do owe a huge thank you to Mat for his help and advice on the Ard/Pololu combination. Saving that setup for a buddy is a good idea (course I have to have a buddy first, lol. I live deep in farm country where if you mention something like this to anyone around here you get a funny look).

I do have a question about the noise though; would it be advisable to create an enclosure for the winches to reduce the amount of sound? Would there be heat issues? A slot opening at the top with rubber or fiber layers for arm movement would need to be done and I was thinking a cutout facing the floor to allow a fan to feed cooler air in might help. What do you think?

David

Picture update:

I applied some heat sinks to the Pololu 755s, replaced the 15amp fuses with 20amp units and connected 24v to the motors. Night and Day difference between 12v and 24v. The platform jumps! (literally)

I am using standard 270degree pots so there is about 10degrees of lash at the center....shakes the poop out of the entire structure lol. Doesnt seem to overheat the motors though, everything was functioning well except that the motion is entirely too quick, too much force.

Because of a defect in my Ardiuno I cannot edit the sketch to reduce the motor power (as Mat kindly pointed out that I could). So I am going to try to do so in SimTools instead. I reduced the axis assignment power setting to 25% but when I started Race07 the whole thing wanted to jump from one side of the shop to the other! Didnt hurt anything, but it was exciting for a minute (no I was to chicken to actually try to sit on it during these tests and a good thing too).

I am going to read up on Simtool settings and see what I can do. I will also replace the standard pots with 10 turn pots (only thing that I have around right now but I will order 5 turn pots as well).

My Arduino/Pololu box:



An experiment station that I created for the back of the rig:

My winches and Pololu package showed up yesterday!!! Yeah! And my heli gears showed up today! Yeah! I opened the package of Pololu JRKs and found that instead of 12v12 (that I paid for) they shipped two 12v3 units to me

Now I have to wait for them to receive the return package and ship the correct items. I should have bought them directly from Pololu instead of through Amazon.com

The winches are torn down, I used the winch handles as lever arms and welded them to the gear (as per Rob's pictures). I also removed the large loose wire guards on the inside, they cause the clanging noise noticeable in some videos of winch use. Nothing I can do about the growling that the gears themselves create though. Still thinking about building enclosures.

I am still debating using hall effect sensors; it would not be that hard to install them, nor connect them (I have built hall effect sensors into several custom joysticks) but I do already have the heli gears so I might just go with 10 turn pots (because I have them laying around).

that sucks about shipping mistake.

Yes, I was very much looking forward to playing around with them.

But, I have to say that the Arduino/Pololu755 solution works very well with the winch motors as well.

I have not had time to actually mount them to the framework yet but they are converted and ready to be mounted. I only have one problem yet to figure out.

I am using standard 270 degree pots right now as the 10 turn pots short the arduino out for some reason. There seems to be a short in the pots themselves, not sure why. They work perfectly with the Teensy++2.0 as joystick axis. Here is the problem with the 270degree pots:

I can only get about 10 degrees of movement on the winches. Which makes sense when you think about it as the motor itself is moving the full movement of the sliders but of course that movement is greatly geared down by the time it reaches the lever arm. Is there a way to multiply the movement of the pot as far as the Arduino is concerned? Or can this be done in SimTools somewhere?

Even if I do replace the standard pots with hall effect sensors they will still have about the same swing area (hall effects read the magnetic orbit so no more than 360 degrees rotation). So I will need to figure out how to tell either the Arduino or Simtools to assume that any movement is much larger than it is reading (or do I have that backward?).

Anyway, here are my winch motors converted for motion use:

Success!!!!

I figured out why my 10 turn pots were shorting the Arduino...er...I wired them wrong

With that sorted out I mounted the winches and fired up the computer.

I tested everything out, got Grid2 working great (failed with Race07 and Unlimited Rollercoaster...not sure why).

After playing around for a while I convinced my daughter to try it out, although I did get a video of her driving (mostly crashing) she refused to allow me to post it on youtube!

So I just posted a clip of the winches in action here:

Groovy, good to see its working.
I wouldnt also be the first to wire the pots wrong, it sent me into a wtf? moment until the idiot soldering the wires was the actual problem. :rofl:

I still need some help understanding the differences between surge, pitch, roll, sway, etc.

I added a 3rd dof; surge. This gave me the accelleration, etc that I wanted, and roll seems to be working for the side to side g-force that I want. Not sure what any of the other provide other than Yaw and I am still thinking of how to add another axis to provide traction loss and so use Yaw.

Is there any way to adjust these live without exiting the game? I had thought there was but it seems you must be using two PCs rather than running everything off of one PC.

Should I be asking these things in a new thread in the Simtools section?

Roll is more actual angle of track, sway is actual body roll of car. A bit of yaw would be more a sway/roll feeling I think, but could add to the effect.
Surge is braking and acceleration , pitch is angle of track up and down hills.

Yes you can change values and forces live, yes ask in simtools section.

Best way is to check each force/feeling separately, get them right, write down what each is, then mix them all up at the end of testing.
Thanks Eaorobbie for the tip.