Question Homemade 2 DOF motion simulator

Hi guys,

I am making my own 2 DOF motion simulator as a school project. I don't have any experience in making a motion simulator, so any help or advice would be nice I have already made my own seat and base to put all the components on.


This is the seat I will be using. It can tilt in 2 different positions, so I can sit like in an F1 position or a GT position. ( thanks you Baj on the isrtv.com threat for the inspiration)
The steering wheel adaptor still need to be added on the seat.

The seat will be placed on a wooden board which will be connected with an other (floor)plate where the following parts are placed on to control the sim

The parts that I am using:
Arduino UNO



2x vnh2sp30 single moto monster driver shield


10K linear pot (2X)


power supply (AC input: 230V, DC output: 12V 50A)


12V DC wiper motors (2X)


I have chosen these parts because a lot of other people use them to and I do not want to spend too much money. (My simulator is based on the one Racingmatt (https://www.x-sim.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1617), but I changed the type of seat)

Thank u noorbeast for replying to my question, the tips were very helpful .
While I was working on my sim today I was confronted with another problem. When I give the command, R7FL7F, to put the simulator in a horizontal position. One of the motors just keeps jittering when nothing actually has to happen. Is this problem caused by the motor itself or is this because of the potentiometer that doesn't give good feedback?

In this case in order to make a diagnostic, you have to swap things:
if you wire the left motor + pot on the right, is it the same behaviour or pb changed side?
swap left and right wires on arduino,
swap the potentiometers, etc...
but only 1 at a time

you'll find where is the problem!

Indeed! At first I didn't see it but now I do. Thanks for the tip!

cool, what was your problem? it could be interesting to know for other members

Hi RacingMat,
I had a busy week, so I didn't have a lot of time to respond.
I started to swap the wires on my Arduino, one at a time and then I found 1 of the wires on my pot got detached. So that would have probably been the issue. Now I fixed this problem, I am going to do some more tests to see if there aren't any problems anymore.

Cool trestle bed. There are many wooden parts in the construction. How much weight does it have?
Looks heavy.
If the driver's seat changes the incline in 2 different positions (lying and sitting), then the center of gravity for one of the positions will definitely change. How are you going to implement this?

The seat weighs about 20kg, so yeah it is quite heavy. For the moment I am only going to use the F1 position. When I sit in this position the center of gravity is exactly above the universal joint. Normally the center of gravity doesn't change that much when I put the seat in the Gt position. That's because the front of the seat is much lighter than the sitting area of the seat.
But like you said I will probably have to adjust a few things, to make sure the center of gravity is on the exact same positions at all times.
A good tip can always be very helpful. And also thanks for replying .

Hi!
Nice to see F1 style project!
I was thinking maybe its better to use g-seat concept like early_m has done.
It´s easier to make work in both positions.
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/diy-g-seat.9848/
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/diy-g-seat-from-concept-to-final.11669/

Hi mrbeginner!
The g-seat concept definitely looks really nice . It will certainly be something I want do add to my sim in the future. But for moment I'll stay with my concept. My next step is to make the system work fluently, without any niggles. At the moment the motors aren't always responding in the correct way, when I am using Live for Speed. I'll give you an example to give you a better image. When I turn to left the motors don't react instantly. There is always a little delay before they respond. Aside this issue, they sometimes only respond when I drive over a curbstone. So it's very unclear to me what I should do now.
(If there is anyone who has encountered this issue before, please let me know )

These are the settings I am using. I've put the percentage on 60% for one of the motors, so they would rotate equally. (pwmmax in smc3 utils is 120)

Hi noorbeast,
This is a photo of the tuning center while the game is running.

I made some changes in my axis assignment settings. I decided to switch this because the simulator did not respond when I was using pitch and roll. After you said I had posted a picture of the tuning center, I saw there was nothing happening in the tuning center. So after I made these changes everything was working very well. I only need to do some further testing.


Thanks for replying.

have you use SMC3 to adjust motors and if so what kind settings you have put there?

Hi mrbeginner,
Yes I've used SMC3. I just followed the tutorial (https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/), so I haven't done anything special in my settings.
These are the numbers that I've changed to setup the motors.
Kp= 400
Max inputs= 255
Clip input = 255
PWMmax = 120

Here are my settings. Its good to test several versions and not settle the first one. I test many versions and forget to put same settings to second motor and after testing i afraid i was broke the motor. But it was only wrong setting. Have you get both motors work? Was the problem in pot?

Hi!
The issues I encoutered the most were due to a not functioning output of one of the motomonsters. It did happen twice that one of the pot did not work either, but after a lot of testing I finally managed to get everything working properly.