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SimCalc by Tim McGuire

Discussion in 'Electronic and hardware generally' started by Tim McGuire, Jan 13, 2017.

  1. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor
    Finally got the chance to try out 2.0 on the rig. I can't tell if it's placebo or somehow the new software outputs motion data with less latency than the old one, but it feels more responsive (I don't know if @yobuddy can comment on this or not).

    I've also got a rough prototype GUI of the calculator app in progress. It's coming slowly now that I'm back in school and have work. but it's coming along. The math for the geometry calculations is proving to be much more complicated than I thought it would be :confused:

    Capture.PNG

    NEWEST VERSION HERE FOR DOWNLOAD:
    https://www.xsimulator.net/community/marketplace/simcalc.184/
    • Like Like x 4
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    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 10, 2017
  2. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    It is not your imagination, SimTools 2.0 is more responsive, it feels like your sim gets a motor upgrade.
    • Agree Agree x 2
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  3. Nick Moxley

    Nick Moxley Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, 3DOF, DC motor, JRK
    Agreed, it was an INSTANT "hey that feels MUCH better" And I was even able to remove All my duty cycle limits on my JRK's which were previously there to keep any EMF spikes or back current issues at bay. 2.0 has a MUCH more stable connection than 1.3 did. All around its leaps and bounds better. Im just grateful to be part of such an awesome group of guys who make this a reality.
    • Agree Agree x 3
  4. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor
    Some quick updates. University this semester is proving to be absolutely brutal, so progress has been slow. I've gotten some good work done on the calculator though, and all of the underlying math and programming is done. I just need to make some diagrams, improve robustness, test to make sure that all of the calculations are returning reasonable results, and find out how to turn a script into an executable, then I should be good to release a test version :confused: (these always seem to be way more work than they seem like they should be).

    Capture2.PNG

    As of right now, it's capable of calculating pitch and roll efficiency, total sim travel both linear and angle, pitch and roll force at the rod mounting point, and equivalent pitch and roll torque at the pivot point. Once I get a beta version out I'll move this to its own thread.
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  5. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Nice preview @Tim McGuire, your work is going to assist a lot of future DIY sim builders.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. Nick Moxley

    Nick Moxley Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    You Rock Tim. Keep it up. :thumbs:thumbs:cheers
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • Friendly Friendly x 1
  7. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    So unfortunately my main hard drive catastrophically failed the other day. I have backups of some of my work, but I'm gonna have to do a bit of a rebuild as far as the app goes... :confused:

    School's also been absolutely killer, which hasn't helped much either :p
  8. yobuddy

    yobuddy Well-Known Member Staff Member Moderator SimAxe Beta Tester SimTools Developer Gold Contributor

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    Sorry to hear that @Tim McGuire,
    But v2 always comes out better anyway!
    yobuddy
    • Agree Agree x 2
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  9. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    That sucks, but you will bounce back and it is such a valuable concept!

    Perhaps it is time to look at something like Bitbucket for dev work.

    Personally I use Perforce locally for convenient versioning, on a separate drive.
    • Like Like x 1
  10. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    I'll definitely have to look into some of those!

    Sneak peak: I've got the alpha version just about done now. It's still very rough around the edges, and I'm not comfortable releasing it until I've triple checked that all of my math is correct, and that it's spitting out reasonable answers, but hey, at least it's progress!
    Capture.PNG
    Capture2.PNG

    Lessons learned: Writing a GUI is tedious, debugging will always take twice as long as you expect, finishing a feature will always take three times as long as you expect, you will stare at code for hours and hours missing that one little obvious mistake.

    On another note, I've been asked to bring the simulator in to a VR technology showcase that the university is hosting. Demos will be free, and entirely for educational purposes. I should be covered under the professional license for this, correct?
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  11. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Glad to see you bounced back and have advanced what will likely become an invaluable tool :thumbs
    • Like Like x 1
  12. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Ah the joys of working with the public - OH&S:). Not trying to be an alarmist, but as you will be having Joy Public riding on your rig, just make sure you do a risk assessment (we call them a Safety Case at work) and have cures/procedures in place to remove/manage all risks to an acceptable level. It is such a litigious world :rolleyes:.
    • Agree Agree x 1
  13. yobuddy

    yobuddy Well-Known Member Staff Member Moderator SimAxe Beta Tester SimTools Developer Gold Contributor

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    I second this statement! lol
    • Like Like x 1
  14. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor
    Alright, doubts be damned, I think I can give you guys what I have so far, it seems to be spitting out reasonable results as far as I can tell.

    Obligatory warning: Take everything that this tells you with a LARGE grain of salt. There may still be bugs in the calculations, this is still a very early version of the software. I'm not responsible for any mistakes that you may make. If it spits a number at you that makes no sense, go with your gut. Please feel free to message me if you find any bugs/things that could use improvement:

    DOWNLOAD HERE:
    https://www.dropbox.com/s/h7rbg81awg7crx8/SimCalcV0.1_BETA.zip?dl=0
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzhRFaoNUIWEMl9yV21IZVE5OUk/view?usp=sharing

    On another note, I'm going to fork off another thread dedicated to this application, where would be the best sub-forum to post it?
    • Like Like x 5
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    Last edited: May 30, 2017
  15. Pit

    Pit - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Thank you for sharing your app, it can be very helpful. I suggest to open a new thread here:

    https://www.xsimulator.net/community/#programmers-corner.42
    • Agree Agree x 1
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2017
  16. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
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  17. SilentChill

    SilentChill Problem Maker

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    My Motion Simulator:
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    Awesome work ! Whens the 6DOF version coming out ;) :D
    • Agree Agree x 2
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  18. Tim McGuire

    Tim McGuire "Forever a work in progress"

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor
    When I decide to start building a 6DOF ;) haha
    • Like Like x 2
  19. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor, JRK
    I have an issue where the program canvas is not rescaling.

    ScaleIssue.jpg
  20. judges

    judges New Member

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    Nice tool, thx for that! But I wanna see 6DOF as well.. :p

    One thing you should do, and what is really easy to implement: re-calc from imperial to metric units and vice versa. E.g. CTC length (in) = "2.5" (in imperial) becomes CTC length (mm) = "63.5". It's just an "on-click" event when you change from imperial (and vice versa).