Formula 3 simulator :)

I guess you could use it to coach your son as well, but you did say - 'The long term plan is to use them as training simulators with a professional driver who logs in to advise the students' and English is your first language.. It's not that anyone has an issue with people building commercial products and talking about them on this site, but we are very black on anyone who 'tries' to make out they are DIY, when they are not. This has happened many times in the past, members are not a free R&D arm for commercial products - and members IP is just that - their IP - be aware.

I am not interested in building these things to sell etc - i doubt i would find another F3 tub anytime soon! i wouldn't be building one myself to run a commercial business.

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I had a look at the motioncontrol prodcuts web site - it says there is a minimum order of 25 parts !! - does anyone on here sell them ?

i spoke to a guy today who explained those motors from motion control are used in mobility scooters and wheelchairs

a simple solution would be to use a mobility scooter transaxle and hold one end so it cant move - the transaxle is a gearbox and would allow a arm to be mounted where the wheel used to be.

i will see if i can find out the gear ratios for a scooter transaxle

I got a pair of powerful cheelchair motors 50:1 gearbox

I have ordered a 600w 24v transformer

what are the best potentiometers to use ? can i get them online or from say maplins ?

will order the UV for under the seat shortly

See for example here:
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/what-are-potentiometers-used-for.9260/#post-117215
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/what-are-potentiometers-used-for.9260/#post-117245

Time for an update, i have got potentiometers, wheelchair motors, motordrivers, 24v power supply and most parts so the project has begun.

A friend has welded up a frame using some old steel i had lying about and a cv joint from a steering column.

Some pics attached. Hope to get the motors fitted tomorrow

i am curius to know if they are backlash with these motors ?

the motors have a gearbox on the end with heavy duty gears, there appears to be no backlash in the design - there is also a magnetic brake - not sure if i am going to use it yet or not

A bit of progress was made recently

The rig is nearly ready for testing, i need to remove the brakes on the motors and wire them up.

So the next steps are all software related

1. Where do i find the correct arduino sketch ?

2. Do i need 2 computers ? One to control the rig and one to run the sim software ?

3. Is there software i can download to test the rig ?

Some pics

Hey Gadget
1. There are a number of options here. I believe the most popular are the code provided by Racing Matt and the SMC3 software(not sure who to credit for this one)
The SMC3 software can be found here: https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/
As for Racing Matt's code, I haven't been on the forums for a while so I don't where you could get it.
2. No, you do not need two computers. The software and game will run perfectly on one.
3. Simtools is the interface between the game and your rig. It also has options to test each axis and each effect. It can be found on the downloads page.
Hope this helps. Good luck with your rig!

Thanks for the information - this is getting exciting now !

i am only using 2 motors - do i just ignore the 3rd one ?

is the 3rd one used for moving the rear of the rig left to right ?

i will get a video posted up of the thing moving ASAP

So today i found some time to test out the motors and i was amazed at how powerful the rig is.

It turned it on and the motor went into a full spin cycle and shook the whole sim up and down at high speed ! Eventually the small weld broke off and the sim came to a stop when i pulled the power plug ! It looked pretty dangerous thank god nobody was in it.

I investigated and tried very small pid numbers and the sim was going in the wrong direction but not back again. I swapped the power and found inhad the wrong motor driver set in the arduino code.

Next test was succesful

I used p 4 i 1 d 1 and there was a bit of lag

I turned i up to 4 to increase speed and the rig traced the sine wave perfectly.

However it was quite jumpy

I will try a larger p and a smaller i number next test

I will upload video shortly

not been able to load a video it is too big.

i have got both motors working

the left motor goes up and down using the sine Output fine

the right motor is working but moving up when it should be down and down when it should be up - do i need to reverse the direction of the power and also the wires to the pot ? (seems likely the correct thing to do)

how do most of you guys load up a video ? using youtube ?

it tried reversing the voltage and gnd on the pot and it would not even work - the pot uses a hall sensor not a wiper on a pot

is there a way to adjust direction using the simtools software so far i have only used the smc3 software - time to get the sim software installed

Yes you can do manual movement tests with Simtools, Works off the DEFAULT profile (so requires a setup/baseline) to function properly.

vid from yesterday here