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Showroom Exercise Bike Driven 2DOF Racing SIM

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by Sam MAHENDRA, Jul 27, 2020.

  1. Sam MAHENDRA

    Sam MAHENDRA mahentheman

    Joined:
    Jun 24, 2019
    Messages:
    59
    Occupation:
    Electrical Engineer
    Location:
    Sydney Australia
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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino, Motion platform, 6DOF
    Here I present my Exercise Bike Driven Racing 2DOF SIM.

    After being bored with an Exercise bike and my 2DOF+TC Racing SIM, I came up with the idea of marrying both of them!

    The concept is simple.
    A magnet attached to the exercise bike’s wheel triggers the Hall Effect Sensor.
    An Arduino Nano counts the pulses and converts it to RPM and thence to Servo position.
    The Servo is mechanically linked to a potentiometer wired to the Steering Wheel Controller.
    I have used the accelerator potentiometer removed from the Pedal of the PXN-VIII Steering Wheel (very cheap!).

    (Note: An Arduino analogue output cannot be directly used for speed control as it is not a true analogue DC voltage. Rather it’s a PWM voltage. I could have used a DAC, but I have more control by using the Servo. And in the Arduino sketch for the Servo, I have used the VarspeedServo.h instead of the standard Servo.h library.)

    My initial post on this can be found in this link. “https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/cycling-motion-sim-has-anyone-done-it.14917/

    Having successfully built this, I salvaged all the motion gear from my first 2DOF Sim “https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...-arduino-uno-wiper-motor2-ibt_2-bridge.39730/” and built a compact 2DOF Sim with the provision to attach the Steering Wheel to the DOF Sim.

    The modular approach consisting of (1) Exercise Bike cum RPM to potentiometer position controller, (2) 2DOF Sim and (3) the Steering Wheel attachment gives me much flexibility wrt handling and storage.
    ThreeModules.jpg

    I have tested my rig with the likes of AC, CCD, R3RE, Dirt, LFS and they all worked to my racing/exercising satisfaction.

    Soon I will upload a video of someone/me exercising & playing a car racing game on You Tube and post the link in this conversation.

    For those of you who are interested in building a similar one, I have posted the Arduino sketch and several photos of my rig.

    Please note that I have included many comments in the Arduino sketch to help you get the best performance wrt to the pedaling speed and the acceleration of the car.

    Note that there is no need for any software mods as we are simply substituting the actuation of the acceleration potentiometer with that derived from the pedaling speed/Servo from the Arduino.

    In fact, you don’t even need to remove the accelerator pedal potentiometer from your expensive Steering Wheel. Just wire another similar potentiometer and have a change-over switch to select between the Steering Wheel’s potentiometer or the bike’s RPM driven potentiometer.

    My next project is to make this as a self-powered (ie: no mains power) for the motors and other electrical devices!
    ExcerciseBikePedal2Game.jpg

    I am planning to use a car alternator with a battery as the power source. I am working on coupling the alternator to the exercise bike’s wheel to generate power to charge the battery. The battery will provide all the power to the motion sim. Hopefully, I should be able to generate enough Wh to charge the battery while exercising!

    (My back of the envelop calculations show that an hour of exercising on the bike generates around 450 Cal, equal to 520 Wh and at 12V it’s equal to 43Ah.)

    Attached Files:

    • Creative Creative x 1