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Ultra-Cheap Budget 6DOF Project

Discussion in 'DIY Motion Simulator Projects' started by vigilante397, Mar 12, 2020.

  1. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

    Joined:
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    Balance:
    87Coins
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    +3 / 2 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    Hi everyone, I've been following the forum for a couple weeks now and finally decided to register.

    I watched that video a while ago of the dad putting his kid in a laundry basket while moving it around with a roller coaster video on the tv, and I thought how cool it would be to build a motorized setup that worked like that for my kids (and for me). A quick google search later I found this forum and I'm hooked :p

    After reading through a few project posts, most notably FlyPT's amazing 6DOF build, I decided I want to try something similar, with a much more limited function, and with a budget of under $500. My goal is to build a cheap prototype with cheap prototype, then after the kids fall in love with it I can pitch the idea to my boss (wife) for more funding for a better setup later.

    So I found a cheap ($60) linear actuator on Amazon and ordered one for testing purposes. It's only a 12" stroke and it only moves 30mm/s, but that should be enough travel and fast enough for a proof of concept. Obviously the biggest snag is that it doesn't have feedback, but it does have limit switches, so I'm going to see if I can get away with using pure time-based positioning. I'm an electrical engineer, not mechanical, so building my own actuator is intimidating, but wiring everything and writing the code should be pretty easy for me.

    For the frame I'm planning to use a typical hexpod setup, and eventually the goal is to use aluminum t-slot, but for starters I'm going to try 2x4's.

    My first actuator just showed up today, so I don't have a lot to write yet, but I wanted to start this thread as a way of motivating myself to actually do this. I have a lot of ideas for neat projects, but actually writing them down for people to see makes it feel more real, like I really have to do it.

    Is this going to be the easiest way to do things? No way. Is it going to be as functional as the other builds on here? Not even close. But will it keep me busy for a while and entertain my kids forever? Hell yes it will.
    • Optimistic Optimistic x 1
  2. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    Well this was sooner than I was planning on the first update, but the motor was delivered today so I swung by during my lunch break to pick it up and check it out. I knew 30mm/s wasn't fast, but I was surprised at how severely slow this thing is! I may be modifying my plans sooner than I thought. :p
    • Funny Funny x 1
  3. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

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    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor, JRK
  4. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    I thought about doing something like this, and I think it would be appreciated briefly, but knowing my kids (aged 1, 3, and 6) they would play with it for an hour or two and never touch it again. I think they would be more engaged with something they could physically "fly," especially if they could be involved with building it.

    I made a discovery though, the speed I was seeing was nowhere near 30mm/s, it was much slower. I've been playing with the input voltage, as a higher voltage is giving a faster speed, but even at 24V (it's a 12V actuator) it's only going 26mm/s. At 12V it's only 10mm/s! Unfortunately since I got it on Amazon I can't find a real datasheet for it so I don't know what it can handle without getting ruined, but if I could run it at 24V I think it would be enough for the kids to have some fun with it. I would probably modify the design to 3DOF and drop the load so it's strictly for kids, which would be a bummer for my inner child :rolleyes:
  5. Gadget999

    Gadget999 Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino, 6DOF
    your $500 needs a rethink - or maybe you should consider a 2dof
    • Agree Agree x 1
  6. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    AC motor, Motion platform
    Rabbit hole entered ... good luck :D.
    • Agree Agree x 3
  7. RacingMat

    RacingMat Well-Known Member Gold Contributor

    Joined:
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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    check the service factor/duty cycle of the actuator you buy

    most of them are not suitable for continuous use!
    • Like Like x 1
    • Agree Agree x 1
  8. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    It's definitely not rated for continuous use, it's 10% duty cycle. Obviously not the kind of thing you use on a serious rig for driving/racing, but for a gentle flying simulator I think I can get away with it if it's not being used for long periods of time.

    I plugged it in with the Arduino over the weekend to do some load and speed testing, and it looks like with my beefy 24V power supply I can get pretty close to the advertised speed of 30mm/s. I had the kids help me rig up a load test where we strapped random household objects to the actuator to see how fast it could lift them, they got a kick out of seeing the "robot" pick things up. My oldest kid is about 42 lbs, so a pair of 20 lb weights gave a reasonable picture of how fast I can make it go.

    I know this still isn't going to be a real rig, but switching to 3 motors instead of 6 brings my budget closer to $200 for a large child's toy, but compared to the iPad she asked for I'm more than happy to spend $200 on a toy, especially if it gets her excited about engineering.

    Needless to say I've already ordered the two additional motors I need for my current plan, and I'm hoping to get started building this weekend.
  9. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

    Joined:
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    +3 / 2 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    Alright, been a little while since I've updated. I got the two other motors I had ordered, and they were significantly faster than the first despite being the same model from the same manufacturer, so I sent back the first one for a replacement, hoping to get all three the same speed. But before I sent the one back I went ahead and built my frame. The lower section is 2x4's, the upper section is just some pine I had lying around (ultra-cheap budget). I milled some brackets to hold the actuators to the frame and they fit great. It's not as sturdy as it would have been with a 6-motor stewart platform, but obviously it's half the cost, and pretty much all my cost right now is the motors, so if I bought 3 more motors and built a bigger frame I wouldn't be throwing away a bunch of money. Since the motors are really only rated for child-sized passengers my wife suggested strapping a car seat to the platform as a quick and easy way to get a good seat with a decent harness.

    I also got the PCBs I designed for the motor controller. I couldn't find anything ready to go that could drive a DC motor at 24V, so I made an Arduino shield using a bunch of relays I had around and that's the brain. It's ancient technology, but it's fast enough for my purposes, it's cheap, and I love the satisfying "click" when it switches on and off. I hacked apart an analog joystick and fed that into the Arduino for controls, and because of how simply I'm doing it the code only took about an hour to write. My power supply adjusts from about 19V - 40V, and with a 40 lb child sitting on the platform I'm getting 40mm/s out of the motors at 19V. I can get it up to 60mm/s or so, but it freaks out the kids, so I'm leaving it at 40.

    The new motor won't be here until Wednesday but it should be an easy drop-in and ready to go as soon as it arrives. For now I just have a clamp holding it so I can work on teh frame without the front falling down. So this is how it looks for now, and how it will look until Wednesday:

    [​IMG]
  10. RacingMat

    RacingMat Well-Known Member Gold Contributor

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    My Motion Simulator:
    2DOF, DC motor, Arduino
    What's new? Did you get your motors?
    It would be really cool to see a video :popcorn
  11. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

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    +3 / 2 / -0
    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    Right, totally forgot to update everyone. So the good news is I got the replacement motor and everything worked great. For about an hour :roll These motors really don't like being on a flight simulator. I had them overheat to the point where they wouldn't work until they cooled down several times, but eventually one of them got to the point where it just wouldn't go period. Whoops. 10% duty cycle is 10% duty cycle. But the kids had fun with it while it lasted. I got a couple videos of some tests I was doing with the Arduino, but I only really got one video with the thing moving, and unfortunately I didn't have the seat strapped down tight enough in the video so my daughter had a bit of a scare :p Anyway, here's the first trial run with my brave test pilot:



    While I was waiting for the new motor to show up I was in the process of designing a fancy cockpit display for the kids to play with including a little OLED display that plays nicely with the Arduino. Here's a couple videos I shot of what I had it doing. And the clicking you hear in the background is the relays switching. Love that old-fashioned sound :p







    I learned a ton, and the kids really did have a good time. After the motor fried (fortunately I was still able to get a full refund from Amazon) I had a talk with the kids, and they agreed that swapping a motor once or twice a week wasn't worth it, so the project was dismantled, and the two remaining good motors will be put to use as automatic gate openers on the side of the house. We agreed that it was fun enough to do something like this again, but we're going to wait until we can afford a much bigger budget. I've been looking around getting quotes and the cheapest actuators I'm seeing that would actually do a good job are about $300 each, whereas this whole build was right around $200. Could happen in the future, but probably not super soon.

    What did I learn?

    - $60 motors won't cut it. They aren't fast enough, and they don't have feedback, meaning all positioning has to be time-based, making it inaccurate.
    - the Arduino Uno is looking like it won't cut it. Maybe it was the way I wrote the code, but when I was running the OLED screen giving position information and I changed directions too fast it would lock up and restart (as seen in the first video above)
    - Relays? Seriously? If I were doing it for real I would use solid-state motor controllers instead of relays. The only reason I used them was that they worked okay and I already had a box of 8 lying around from another project.
    - Maybe less DIY. Doing everything from scratch was fun, but I would love to have a rig that I could connect to a computer and run games and simulators like the serious builds I see on here. Doing that with a scratch hardware/firmware build isn't impossible, but with all the stuff already available out there it would make sense to look at commercially available controllers to take advantage of what's already been done.

    Anyway, I had fun, hopefully you had fun watching and reading this. I don't regret building it the way I did this time as a first "hello world" into motion simulators, but I treated this more like a toy from the get-go, the next time around will be a bit more intense ;)
    • Like Like x 2
    • Dislike Dislike x 1
  12. SeatTime

    SeatTime Well-Known Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    AC motor, Motion platform
    Shows that guys just like building stuff :). I like this 'Ultra Cheap Budget 6DOF'.
  13. vigilante397

    vigilante397 New Member

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    My Motion Simulator:
    Arduino, 6DOF
    Lol, that's literally what gave me the idea. After doing that multiple times with each of my 3 kids I started to think, is there a more convenient way to do this? :p
  14. noorbeast

    noorbeast VR Tassie Devil Staff Member Moderator Race Director

    Joined:
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    Innovative tech specialist for NGOs
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    St Helens, Tasmania, Australia
    Balance:
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    Ratings:
    +10,741 / 52 / -2
    My Motion Simulator:
    3DOF, DC motor, JRK
    As an alternative you can always hot rod an electric kiddie car: