Simulated Wind using MonsterMoto and ArduinoUno

He didn't reverse the polarity, he's pretty skilled with electronics. He replaced the transistors on the motoshield and everything is working fine now

hébergement gratuit

Richard's solution is probably better, but here's a fanholder i made for a 80mm fan which you can slide sideways on his control box if you already have a printed one

herbergeur d image

I turned off all my lights to see what my little controller box looks like.

It looks pretty awesome with the light kicking out the sides and through the fan. A pity I will never see it because Oculus Rift

OH YES HE DID !!! only reason a cap would blow like that. Never ever have I had a cap blow on any of the MM's even all the bad ones on its own, only when I accidentally had the 12v polarity reversed.

But whatever he says sure but I know what really happened

A little update on my Wind Simulator.

FYI, if you CBF using 3Dhubs to print one of my controller boxes then I can print them and send them to you for a cost, I have been printing quite a few for the guys on the iRacing forums.. Another batch went out today.



BTW, if you are ordering 3D printed boxes from me I can ship them with the fan installed and with the heatsinks if you like.



Back to my wind simulator.

I finally got around to making the mounting plate for my fans and controller. It is made from sheet metal and uses rivnut.



I also installed rivnuts in to the frame of my rig,



The plate fits in like the firewall on a car.



I will be running ducting up to above the wheel



I swapped the lid of my controller box over to my fan lid because I will be running the TMC blowers and they NEED active cooling.



Last week I was testing the TMC blowers on my test bench wind simulator and I was seeing a lot faster wind speeds. So as a test on my main wind simulator I connected one Seaflo (on the left) and one TMC (on the right)



The two blowers are visually almost identical, all the dimensions are exactly the same except their specs are different. The Seaflo is 6A and it claims to be 270CFM and the TMC is 10A but it only claims to be 230CFM, although the TMC is much faster.

I did a side by side test on the same MM and it confirms the results I was seeing from my test bench. With the Seaflo blowers I am seeing around 65KPH wind speed but with the TMC I am seeing around 80KPH. So a 15KPH speed difference.

Now this speed comes at a cost and that is heat on the MM. Because the TMC is 10A vs 6A it generates a lot more heat. So much so that a heatsink alone is not enough to cool it, you need to run a fan with it. This is why I designed the lid with the 50mm fan for my controller boxes. Without the fan I stopped my test at 80c, with the fan then it stays at 32c. In comparison the Seaflo would run around 40-45c without a fan. You can run the Seaflo with just the heatsink but there is no way you can run the TMC without a fan, it just draws too much. Even with the Seaflo I would personally run a fan anyway, 45c is fine but just for piece of mind I would run the fan. I haven't done testing yet but I suspect you would be getting in the 20's with the fan and the Seaflo blowers.

Now a word of warning, I don't know if I can fully recommend the TMC yet. On my test bench I did see some weird problems. Sometimes one of the fans would turn for half a rotation and then would stop and there would be no status light on the MM for that blower. The other blower would work fine, unplugging the power and USB would clear it but I think it was tripping out one of the protection systems, maybe the overcurrent (it shouldn't do because the peak allowed current on the MM is 30A). I also suspect that it might be a faulty MM because I can't repeat the results yet when running the TMC on my main rig. I am rebuilding my test bench simulator with a new MM and Seaflo blowers just to be on the safe side.

I will do some more testing with running two TMC blowers on my main rig and see if they play ball.

I will report back with my findings, but for now I still recommend the Seaflo blowers because we know they work reliably. If you do want to try the TMC blowers then make sure you run an active cooling fan and heatsinks because they do run hot.

I recorded a video showcasing the speed difference in the fans.

Looking forward to the final results Richard

How's the noise level of the TMC compaired to the seaflow and does it also have the coilwine?

At first I thought they sounded louder but I tested it with a Db app on my phone and both my Seaflo rig and my TMC rig were 89 Db. So I think it might have been placebo

Now that I have a Seaflo and a TMC running side by side I will see if I can spot the difference.

Coil whine is still there at low speed. Again, I will test it side by side to see if it is any better or worse.

Thx

Hi guys.

To follow up on yesterday's video, here is a video on the current (Amp draw) comparison between the TMC blowers and the Seaflo blowers.

Both blowers run under their rated Amperage and the TMC does draw more Amps, 7A for the TMC (Rated at 10A) and 4.5A for the Seaflo (Rated at 6A).

Two TMC blowers will draw 14A so you would need a 20A power supply and two Seaflo blowers will draw 9A so you will need a 15A power supply.

Because the TMC blowers are drawing more you will NEED to run a heatsink and fan because they will overheat without one.

I tested the Seaflo blowers in my fan case and the MM was running at 27c. without the fan it is around 45c with the heatsink alone.

The ambient room temperature was 22c so they were only running 5c above ambient, frosty

I don't think this is fan related. I had the same problem after I rebuilt my test bench rig with a new MM and the Seaflo fans.

It only happens in testing if I manually set the fan speed to max in the iRacing wind simulator software. I think the instant zero to full speed is too much for the MM. If you set speed at half speed or ramp up then it is fine. It is not a problem for racing because you would always be ramping up with the car speed.

So yeah, avoid setting the fans manually to full speed as it can cause this problem.

Another shipment of my boxes and air straighteners ready to go out tomorrow.



Back to my own wind simulator.

Finished the mounting of my TMC blowers and controller box, finished the last bit of tidying the wires. still need to run the ducting





Connected up my USB hub to the bottom of the firewall where my blowers are mounted.



Wired the wind simulator back to my battery bank



Just using piggy back terminals to connect everything.



Connected up a 25A inline blade fuse with an LED that lights up when the fuse is blown or missing



I got a nice bump in speed going up to the 13.8V that my battery bank runs at. You get in the mid to high 70's running at 12V and 85KPH running at 13.8V. The MM can run at up to 16V and the blowers are designed to work off battery on a boat which could be up around 14V while the batteries are charging. Most 12V PSU's have a voltage adjustment so you could try "overclocking" your fans by upping your voltage but do this at your own risk.



I also connected everything up with quick connects so I can swap out fans quickly like you saw in my Seaflo vs TMC videos.

Always neat work @Avenga76 - I really enjoy looking at your updates.

Nice Fan boxes as well. 3D printed I am assuming?

Thanks.

Yes, the fan box is 3D printed. It is a new lid for my original controller box which can take a 50x50x15mm fan.

More details about the original box here https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...ermoto-and-arduinouno.6876/page-7#post-113598 and the fan lid here https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...ermoto-and-arduinouno.6876/page-9#post-114368

Hey Rich, I think we could improve that first layer, Looks a little "liney". Whats your noozle height ? and have you managed to get nice smooth top/bottom layers ?

Hey Nick.

Any tips on improving my bottom layer would be much appreciated

I need to print it in this orientation so all the supports and everything print okay



This means that the side you see is actually the bottom layers



The top layer is totally smooth, which is a shame because it is inside the box where no one will ever see it.







My initial nozzle height from the bed is 0.1mm and I print in 0.2mm layer height. I have tried it in 0.1mm layer height and the same thing. I lowered my bed temp down from 50c to 40c and that helped with the ripples you sometimes see but I haven't been able to get rid on the lines on the bottom.

Hey guys.

I have been building a wind simulator for ISRTV and I thought I would share some photos



BTW I love these first two photos, done completely in camera using my tiled floor and a Telephoto L series lens



























I also did some ISRTV branded air straighteners.

Whats Slicer are you using ? And whats your First layer width ? Are you going less then 100% to get "more bed adhesion" Thats one place where i found a big difference in the first layer quality. Next would be the overall Noozle height, I'm assuming you dont have a 'adjust live Z" like i do with my Mk2 do you ? Next would be the extrusion rate. Whats your filament measure up at ? Exactly 1.75 ?

Assuming this is all PLA your printing ?

PS awesome job on the logo printing/painting. Top notch quality man. Im sure darrin and crew will appreciate that and PS if you need any State side printing done for a customer, lmk

Thanks.

I am so rusty on painting. I used to paint Warhammer 40K miniatures and I used to win tons of paint competitions.

Since I had all my camera gear out I figured it would be fun to see how bad my painted is now days. These were painted around 2002, about 14 years ago. The nut beside it is half inch for scale.