Showroom Building Journey of "Crate" Racing Cockpit

Ok, here is some video of the rig in action. Only Sway and Surge are in use. I drive two laps in Silverstone International with Skip Barber, game is iRacing.



Man, it feels pretty intense with Rift! Maybe too much sway at the moment for my liking. But now this project is in dangerous phase, because I should disassemble the rig for painting and install remaining parts (switches, sensors, fans, lcd, etc...). I just don't want to, I want to drive with it!

Its looking good, maybe not so much movement is needed with the rift as you are more disconnected from your surrounding, so the sim 'mind trick' would be stronger even without movement.

Thanks SeatTime, now I have movement for iRacing spot on and spiced with simvibe the experience is awesome.

How ever, I have a major problem! I cannot get motion with Assetto Corsa, which I just bought and even Live for Speed is a no go. I've tried to find answer here on the forum and tried both games countless of times but no luck.

Simtools does not see these games, no data comes to the tuning center. What I'm missing here?

Was the patching in GameManager successful. ?
I run both games specially AC, heaps of fun on the sim.

Yes, message says that game is patched and then I press OK. I open game engine and game manager, choose profile, manager says connected. But in game, nothing. And with iRacing axis settings are grayed out (not editable) when game is on and motion working, but with AC and LFS they are editable, like engine were not in use at all...

Ok they are not connecting to the process file, (exe) , have you renamed them, my AC works fine same as LFS which I actually use to test changes in SimTools, as it was the first game we got it all running on.
This is the location to run AC as its now a steam application , C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\assettocorsa please check that you have patched the right location, and beware it doesn't actually connect unless you are in a car and on the track, while in menus the SimTools is disconnected, a little different than most of our plugins. Caught me out first time I used it.

Ok, thank you for quick response, I'll try your tips as soon as I can.

Sorry, I knew there was something obvious I was missing... I remembered that after using pluginpatcher that's it and motion is on... Was a bit tired yesterday, so did not even try to manually add game folder in game manager to apply patch that way... Working now, thank you very much all the same

Call me a liar if Lotus 49 in AC isn't the funniest thing on earth to drive in sim

Heat is the problem, it's almost 30 degrees celcius inside our house, computer room naturally more with all this stuff running. Added fan to both motors and started to build that switch/displaypanel so I would know what is going on during driving. Also added 15A fuse before H-bridge. So I know motors haven't drawn together over 15 amps by now, that is comforting and surprise actually. My PSU is just 30A, it drives two motors and I was planning to use a car battery with it to be sure, but it holds without it!

Fans installed


Added fuse box, no monitoring connections yet


Control panel


Edit. I think I opened this thread at the wrong section at the beginning... Is it possible to move this thread to the projects section?

Finally gathered enough courage to return to track with other iRacers, on practice session, though... Haven't driven Okayama in MX-5 for a long time, and haven't raced at all during this building process, but it was a good session. I broke my personal best and was 7th among 20 drivers, very happy camper now! I'm almost ready to think that motion may actually improve performance along with immersion.

Ok, I'm a little short of time with simracing and this project at the moment, but I have couple of full evenings of iRacing with the rig under my belt now, and I'm not doing too well Well, I think it's not the motion part I need to get used to, I just SUCK After a couple of months away from iRacing, I just can't perform at the level I was, races with Strenght of Field of about 2000. But the rig works fine and I'm loving the new dimension of motion. I'm preparing to take the rig apart for the last time for painting and finalizing.

Well, there actually WAS one problem: I'm not sure what is causing it, but two times my right motor has died for a couple of seconds but comes back to life and works rest of the session (hours) like nothing happened. At both times there wasn't particularly harsh situation, no big moves. I see my peak amps and temps from the lcd, max amps were about 12A on the right motor and 9A on the left. Temps about 31 celcius on the surface of both motors (room temp) and 41 celcius under the H-bridge.

About the amps, I'm really surprised that motors are not drawing more, compared to what I've been reading here on xsimulator. And I actually put 15A fuse before H-bridge and 10A fuses between H-bridge and motors, none have blown yet. And I'm driving both motors with cheap 360W ledstripdriver. Without a car battery. Maybe that has something to do with the problem, maybe H-bridge shuts down the right channel when PSU cannot supply enough volts or something? I see volts fluctuating when rig is in use.

The reason I use a DC battery in conjunction with a psu is that the Jrks (Monster Moto has the same H Bridge on it) will feed back the current generated when the motor goes into freewheel ( On a down stroke ) back to the battery with just a psu (an unprotected) I found the psu not liking the voltage being feed back to it. But a lot don't use one too, so might not be your problem, Motors not getting hot, brushes in motors still good ?

Thanks @eaorobbie for your response. Motors get warm, but not hot. I may need to open them and check brushes.

Problematic right motor feels actually more "solid" than the other one, it is stiffer to rotate by hand and feels newer than the other one. But both have same speed and they sound the same. Sidenote: I actually really like the sound of them rig sounds like a robot from anime movie

If possible I would be looking for another wiper to test, and another issue a few have found that the Chinese copies of the Sparkfun Monstor Motor board can have faults too and some have had no issues with them, luck of the draw, I buy genuine only sometimes not worth the headaches another note V1 of Sparkfuns board had pin outs labelled incorrectly, I know this because I got one and blew up one side of it. Are you using a fan over it too, Jrks play up after about 10min if no fan present. Truth theses boards and not entirely designed to do what we do with them hence good heatsinking and cooling is a must. Beware heatsinks can not touch each other too, cant tell from photo. Check all your connections too, maybe a wire getting hot which will show a short is happening somewhere.

Sorry that's about all I can think of that could be causing the issue , look for the simple thing , normally the one causing the issue.

Thanks again very much for your help. I check everything thoroughly when building rig for the final time.

Hi, it has been a while. Had a great summervacation but no time for computers and gaming.

But now I have finally started the "final phase". Painting and finalizing everything. Trying to make it look good I will post pictures when ever it is ready.

Yup, after about a half a year the rig is ready (are they never). Little things need yo be done here and there, but overall, it is ready.



This has been a hell of a journey. In a most positive way possible. I've learned so much during the process and had so much fun.

Again, Racingmat, bsft, Historiker, eaorobbie, SeatTime and all the others I forgot to mention and feel guilty about it in the whole xsimulator community, I thank you for making this possible.

I am actually thrilled to realize that now I have my own motion simulator in my home! It was just a dream half a year ago...

well done, looks great

Thanks bsft!