Simple sequential shifter.

I have admired the lengths some people will go to for realism in their racing sim cockpits. However, I must do things that are cheap and easy.

I just bought a Logitech G29 wheel and pedal set, and discovered that since the wheel can turn 900° lock-to-lock the paddle shift gear levers are often NOT where I expect them when I need them. So I figured I needed a sequential shifter lever. But I didn't want to buy Logitech's, nor did I want to go to a lot of trouble to make one.

Fortunately, I had picked up a Mad Catz PS2 racing wheel from the local recycling shop for $AU2.50. It had an attached sequential shifter. I cut it off.

I wired the two switches to a Teensy USB development board, and programmed it to act like a gamepad and treat the switches as buttons 1 and 2. Teensys are small, easily configured as gamepads or joysticks and programmable using the Arduino development software.

All this was very easy, but in testing I found that the parts were not held together firmly enough, since cutting the sequential shift unit off the main game control weakened it. One final, extremely technical solution was needed. I used a small Coke can to hold the sequential shift unit together. It works well. It may not feel like a real sequential shift gear lever, but it was cheap and does the job.

The lever is firmly attached to the rig, is easily found by your hand while you are concentrating on the screen and only requires the lightest jab to do it's job.

At the moment, the only "job" the Teensy does is providing the sequential shift data to the computer, but I have plans to make it also support a handbrake, and an intrument panel.

I too use the teensy (++ 2.0) for my sim rig. It is a great little board with huge potential

Unfortunately the plastic sequential shift lever keeps failing. So I have started on a replacement using whatever scraps I have lying around. OK, actually I spent $14.00 on the right springs to put in it to give it a firm action. Here is a picture of the old and the new. The new one is still a work in progress. It will re-use the micro-switches from the old one.

Here is a video of a test of the new lever. Test done using DiRT 3. I was a bit agitated and drove aggressively because the Steam server was playing up and I couldn't do my first test on Pikes Peak in DiRT Rally.