Showroom 2 DOF motion simulator - school project

Hi guys,

I am a 17 years old, student industrial sciences and I am making my own 2 DOF motion simulator. I have always liked motorsport, but it's quiet hard to finance this hobby. So I switched to sim racing instead. A couple of years ago I was gifted a Logitech G27 which up to the present day is still my steering wheel. There was only one thing that I was missing, when I was racing online, namely a little bit of movement. So this year, I got the opportunity to make my own motion simulator as my last years project in middle school.

Apart from the steering wheel and pedals I'll be making the seat and structure by myself.
I started with making some 3d drawings of the seat before I started making it in reality. The rest of the structure will basically be 2 wooden plates, which are connected by a universal joint and 2 connection rots.


The dimensions of the seat are based my own, so the seat fits perfectly for me.
I also added another feature on the seat so it could tilt forward (F1 position -> GT position). You can see it on the following picture.


Now the seat is roughly finished, I started connecting all of the parts that I am using to create motion.
Parts I am using:
Arduino UNO

vnh2sp30 single moto monster driver shield (2x)

10K potentiometer (2x)

12V DC wiper motor (2x)

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

Like I already mentioned I placed all of these components on a wooden plate which is forming the base of the whole structure.

I don't have a good picture of this, but if you look up the 2 DOF motion simulator of Racingmatt, you will find the exact same positioning of these components. One other thing I didn't make myself is the Arduino code. I also copied this from Racingmatt. Here is the link to his project (https://www.xsimulator.net/2dof-motion-simulator-truck-wiper-motor-playseat/).



At the moment, I am testing the whole system. But there are a few issues. I think it's due to the potentiometers which aren't giving enough feedback, which causes the motors to not completely return to the neutral position. Sometimes they even start jittering. So if there is anyone who knows how to fix this, please tell me .

99% cases for me issue would be with cheap pots or bad solder job, but also you would need to take into account that wormgear motors will have some slack, so its always in between with small jitter(depending on gear ratio, more or less)
I've build 2dof using wiper motors with cheap pots, so press link below.
You may have a peak into my build which hats lots of issues and lots of solutions (press on this)

are you using smc3 ?

what are your settings ?

Thanks for replying! I'll definitely take a look at your project .

Thank you noorbeast for giving me these helpful tips! I think I definitely need to check if my rig is correctly balanced (this is such an easy and important step that I almost forgot to do this ) and the Hall sensors you mentioned are also something I really need to look at. They would probably help me a lot.

Hi Gadget999, for the moment I don't use smc3. Can I gain a lot of benefit if I would use this?

lots of people use it - it has a utility that allows you to adjust the motor settings and is useful for diagnosing problems

Sounds very interesting . I'll definitely take a look at it and see if I am going to integrate it into my sim.

Hi guys,
It's been a while since my last post. So I'll give some updates to you guys, from what I've been doing in the last 2 weeks.
I made the switch to smc3, thanks to Gadget999. Smc3 is a much better then the program I was using before. It helped me a lot to set up the motors and find the the origin of some problems. Now this was all going very well I began to do some tests with Simtools.

This are the settings I am using (The ComPort isn't assigned because at the time I took these screenshots, the Arduino wasn't plugged in).





At first one of the motors responded and the other one didn't. The problem there was that the potentiometer wasn't working of the not responding motor. So I changed the potentiometer and also a motomonster, because the output wasn't working like it should have.

The issue I am having now is that the motors don't respond when I am testing them. I have no clue what I am doing wrong. Even when my anti-virus (maybe it blocked something) was turned off it didn't respond. So if there is anyone who has had this issue before, please let me know. It would be very helpful .

Can you get the smc3 utils program to work ?

The smc3 utils do there job very well. I only use it to put the motors in there central position and also to check if the potentiometers are responding. I followed the steps in this tutorial: https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/.
Do I need to keep de smc3 utils running while I am using Simtools?

No

It sounds like you have not got simtool configured correctly

You need it to set axis a not b

Thanks for replying Gadget999. I assigned the axis wrong, just like you said.

So now I solved the problem with Simtools, the system is working. It only needs some finetuning.
Thanks a lot to everyone who is giving me these helpful tips. They were really useful to me .
(More updates coming soon)

Hi guys,
I finally managed to make my sim work the way I wanted it to be. In my earlier post I mentioned that my sim was already working, but the movements weren't that smooth. So I made some adjustments in my axis assignment settings. I changed roll and pitch to sway and surge. I saw that there were some other people using these settings to, so I also gave it a go. While testing I immediatly saw a big improvement in the way my sim was moving.
(I also wanted to add a video of my test setup, but I don't now how to do this . Is there anyone who could help me with this?)

You can insert a Youtube video into a post like this: https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/insert-a-video-into-a-post.257/

BR
Chris

Thanks Christian Doehl

Hi guys,
Recently I've replaced my motors with stronger ones and I am having an issue now. When I start to do some output testing the motors start shaking heavily. And I don't know how to stop this. Does anyone know how to stop this? (these are my settings)