Showroom Finally Building My Motion Simulator - 2DOF to 3DOF

I've been lurking long enough here and I'm finally ready to start building my own motion simulator. Big thanks to everyone here for all the inspiration and ideas. A special thanks to Halloween2Go and his DMAX YouTube Series!

I'll start by sharing how my rig has evolved as I've added to it and tinkered with it over the years... I hope you enjoy.

I welded up a static rig with an old movie theatre seat to start out:


Added the Logitech G920 wheel, pedals and shifter. I inverted and painted the pedals for a more realistic look:


I upgraded the seat to a 2004 Acura RSX seat from a junkyard and added triple screens by welding up an adjustable bracket to be able to adjust my FOV as needed:



I 3D printed a magnetic bracket for the paddle shifters:


I wired up a button box with an arduino, butons/switches and miles of wire, haha:



I also made an LED bar for RPMs/flags, a wind simulator, four mini bass shakers (pucks), and pedal rumbles (that I can't find good pictures of at the moment).


Tinkering with this and trying to increase the immersion is almost as much fun as driving on this thing. I picked up a VR headset and I'll be removing the triple screens for my motion simulator.

I hope you enjoy this build. I want to contribute to this forum as a thank you to everyone involved for curating such great content and ideas! I'll be posting my progress as I go.

I made a template for the motor mounts last night out of wood. Now I need to source some metal. My work fabricates metal industrial equipment so I'll take a look in the scrap bin to see if I can find something there.

I found a piece of sheet metal at my work, but now I need to find time to make the bracket. Maybe this weekend.

I cut out the motor mounts from the sheet metal and then welded up an assembly to start testing. The sheet metal was thinner than I anticipated after removing all the layers of paint so I needed to strengthen it. I think this should be good.




I cut out some pieces for the motor arms. I notched a spot for the key, but there's some play in the fit since my drill bit wasn't exactly the same size as the motor. I'll eventually weld it when I finish testing.

Made a little more progress today. I bought the bolts and nuts to secure the motos to the mounts. Then I got some of the wiring done. I have two 24v power supplies, one for each motor. I wired the IBT-2's in and added a terminal block to make the connections easier at the motors. Next, I'll wire up the arduino and the potentiometers. It's starting to get real now!

I mounted the potentiometers and wired everything up this weekend.




This is my messy components box that I will straighten up after I do my testing. I added a 24v fan to help keep things cool.


I'm off to test it with SMC3 to see if I can get any motion out of it. Wish me luck!

SUCCESS!!!

Within a couple of weeks I hope. My father's friend has a driveshaft that I can use the U joint from. I might be able to pick it up this week.

The drive shaft I got only had one yoke so I had to make my own. I was surprised at how well it came out on my first try! This will work.

I welded up the mid frame and started laying things out this weekend.


Last night I tacked together the top frame to mid frame mount. I decided to bolt them together to be able to disassemble if needed. I offset the pivot point a little higher than the bottom of the top frame to get the rotation as close to the seat as possible. I'll finish the welds and cut some of the excess metal to clean things up.

This is the 3D model I set up to help make decisions in what I'm doing. It's crude, but it works for me, haha.

I'm getting close now! I cleaned up the seat mount and love the way it come out.




I made the tie rods that connect the motor arm to the upper frame. I added bolts to each connection point to help with and needed adjustability.



I also made some mounts at the corners of the mid frame for my four Dayton Bass Pucks. These aren't pretty, but they'll do.


Here are the upper frame and the mid frame. Time to bring them into my basement for assembly and testing!


Does anyone know if I can apply for the sim tool software now?

Thanks @noorbeast! I've been a member for over a year now so once I connect everything and run SMC3 again, I'll post a video to show that I'm ready. I can't believe I've finally made this!

I was able to get movement from the rig using SMC3 to test it.

I got the rig working with SimTools. I tested it with LFS and it worked great! I downloaded the Assetto Corsa Plugin, patched it successfully, but when I try to start a race using Content Manager, I get an error that says 'RACE CANCELLED'. Am I missing a step? Do I need to change any settings in Content Manager? I'm trying to run it in VR as I usually do without motion, but it doesn't work for me with the motion. I'm pretty bummed

I figured it out. Steam wasn't starting correctly so I had Assetto Corsa trying to start up in the background. While I was starting the race with Content Manager, it was already trying to open the game. I closed out of everything and tried again and it worked! Sorry for jumping the gun.

I'm running into a problem with one of my motors. It seems to shut off under load at times. Where do I begin to diagnose this? When I shut off the motors and restart them, it's fine. In SMC3, it happens, but it doesn't change the motor from 'ON' to 'OFF' so I don't think it's to do with the max and/or clipping. It's getting late here so I think I'll go to bed and try again tomorrow. It is so fun while it works though!