Showroom Talkwrench DIY Budget 2 DOF Story

Morning Fella's,

I thought it was about time I shared my project as I've been lurking here for a long time. As a petrol head and lifetime gamer I naturally gravitate towards racing titles and occasionally flight sims as I work in that industry and have a general interest in things that fly. Everything spiralled out of control when I decided to leave the world of gaming consoles behind and join the master race and purchased a high spec PC, happy whiling the hours away playing first person shooters I eventually yearned for some driving action, I pulled the trigger on an oculus rift and was instantly blown away, this obviously wasn't enough to start virtual racing so I purchased a used fanatec CSR kit off eBay to see what all the fuss was about...........



And even though the wheel and pedals were a bit crap I loved every second of it! The bug had truly bitten me and it wasn't long before even more of my savings were spent on goodies. I read all the reviews of the various bits of hardware available and set my heart on some high end hardware, this wasn't gonna work on my make shift gaming corner and office chair so before you know it I was pencilling some designs for a sim chassis and during my research I came across this forum and my mind went into warp drive.

Now determined to build myself a 2 DOF motion rig I started to acquire the parts I would need, as my confidence to actually get the rig working wasn't that high I didn't want to spend too much on the motion rig components, I knew I could build a decent static chassis if the motion rig failed so i was happy to buy the high end steering & pedal components. So over the next few months I slowly gathered up the basics.....





So as you can see, I got lucky on eBay and scored some bargains. I didn't waste anytime making a start on the frame, I had lots of steel box section & timber in the garage and an arsenal of equipment to build the rig, so I broke out the grinder & fired up the TIG welder and started to create.....

First off, make a flat base on the bottom of the seat to build off.....



Which swiftly turned into a full frame with my brand spanking new small Mige OSW wheel mounted with my old OMP steering wheel and HE pedal set fitted



Obviously I had to test out the ergonomics of the set up much to my wife's delight I can't wait for my son to move into his bedroom and the nursery can become my gaming room once again.



WOW! what humongous difference from the old Fanatec CSR kit, it's flippin fantastic. This obviously then slowed the progress on the build cause all i wanted to do was drive.

The next step was to build the base, I had managed to score another eBay bargain and grabbed and UJ of an old land rover for £6 so I set about putting it all together....




I have modified the two PSU's to make a single 24V supply following some of the information here:-

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1292514-How-to-convert-Server-Power-Supplies

Sadly I didn't take any pictures of my determining the balance point of the rig, I basically stacked my weightlifting plates on the seat to replicate my weight and moved the rig around a bar suspended off the ground by two large blocks until it was obviously balanced and marked the chassis, i then swiftly removed all the parts and stuck it all together with the MIG welder...



So that's the easy bit taken care of, now to mount the two 180 degree hall sensor Pot's (part number 6127V1A180L.5) and lever arms. First thing was first, remove the gearboxes off the motors and mount them in the lathe, I need to firstly chuck the shaft so I could turn the bearing boss on the rear of the gearbox housing so it was concentric with the shaft...



I could then mount that in the chuck and it would concentric with the shaft so I could drill the end of the shaft bang on in the middle...

Drilled out to 4mm I could then drive in a 4mm shear pin to mount the flexible shaft coupling to it. Job done. Next up was making and mounting the lever arms, It seemed a shame to not utilise what I already had so I made use of the wheelchair wheels that came with the motors as spacers for the rather long output shafts, the wheels also had some nice locking nuts and tabs I wanted to make use of. So I chopped the centre of wheels out...


And then made them look a bit prettier in the lathe..


And wallah, once I parted them in half and made a small amount of clearance for my levers to sit in job was a good'an


All mounted up and refitted I think we can call that done.



And apart from the adding the spherical bearings and threaded bar it is mechanically complete and taking centre stage in our living room



The eagle eyed amongst you might even notice the addition of the Mclaren GT3 Fanatec wheel converted for OSW.

Now that's the mechanical bit taken care off, now for the bit I am not too sure about, the electronics . I have opted to use the Sabertooth & Arduino approach after all the things I've read about Monster Moto's being unreliable. So many thanks to BlazinH and his amazing work in this thread :-

https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...ket-serial-pid-motor-driver-w-softstart.9277/

He has made it very easy for us mere mortals to get over the hardest hurdle, as of this morning I now have a rig that moves after following his excellent instructions, big thanks for that

So that's it, up to date and hopefully covered in enough detail it might help someone else? I realise it's not a total budget build as some of the parts are very expensive (OSW & Pedals) but they could be substituted for whatever you have, I estimate the total build cost me less than £140 All it needs now is tidy the wiring and start to fine tune it and one day paint it, I haven't configured the Simtools bit yet so i'll have a play with that this afternoon, I'll let you know how I get on.

I would also just like to thank everyone who contributes on this forum as I have most likely read your threads and builds at some point, so of which a few times over. Without you I would never have got this far and I can't wait to finally test drive this thing and I'll probably need a lot of help getting there.

So after a few hours tinkering the rig is alive, such a great feeling to see it actually move

Although only with the SMC3 utility software, when I try and get the rig to respond to output testing with the Simtools game engine it doesn't do anything. I've read a number of guides and I can't see where im going wrong. Here are some snips of my settings, I have patched LFS in the game manager and obviously installed it for testing purposes I just cant make the rig move







Please help

Ahh OK I can repatch LFS but no it does not respond to the output testing in Simtools, the TX / RX LEDS don't do anything once the SMC3 is closed.

Currently just windows defender, I can try and disable it for testing purposes and see if it helps. Thanks man

bloody firewall was blocking it! Thanks dude, much appreciated.