Low-Budget Direct Drive Steering Wheel Project

Hello everyone,

I'm working on building a budget-friendly direct drive steering wheel and wanted to share my current setup and seek some advice. Here's what I have so far:

Stepper Motor: Nema 23 2.2 Nm (Model: 57HS22)

Motor Driver: DM556 stepper motor driver

Encoder: 600 PPR, 5-24V Omron optical rotary encoder


Additionally, I'm considering using a hoverboard motor as an alternative option for this project.

One of the challenges I'm facing is deciding on a suitable controller board to manage the driver. I know some projects use boards like OpenFFBoard or Simucube, but these options are out of my budget range. My budget for this project is around $150-$200.

I also prefer not to use an Arduino as I've found them to be less durable and not fully capable of meeting my requirements.

Any suggestions or guidance on a cost-effective control board that could work well for my project would be greatly appreciated!

Feel free to share your thoughts or add any recommendations you might have.

Thanks in advance!​

Using a stepper motor driver like the DM556 directly won't work. It applies a constant current to the motor coils and you can only command a certain position, not a force or torque.

To control force or torque you need direct control over the current. This is much easier with a DC motor as the mechanical commutator takes care of the commutation (switching the current to the correct windings) so you only need to control one current instead of a vector.

You don't even need an encoder if your driver controls current and not voltage. What would work is to recycle the power stage of an MD556 driver and control it with a different circuit or different software. I already explained it here but unfortunatelly nobody understood it I fear.

Thank you for your detailed response, Aerosmith. Your explanation clarified a lot regarding the limitations of using a stepper motor driver like the DM556 for direct force or torque control.

To better understand your suggestion, I have a few follow-up questions:

1. Could you elaborate on how exactly the power stage of the DM556 could be recycled and controlled with a different circuit or software? If you have any documentation or previous explanations on this, it would be helpful.


2. If using a DC motor makes force and torque control simpler, do you have any specific recommendations for budget-friendly DC motors that could work well in this setup?


3. I’m also considering using a hoverboard motor as an alternative. Would your approach to controlling current directly apply to this type of motor as well? Any insights into integrating such a motor would be greatly appreciated.

Ok, step by step... To understand how a stepper driver works I'd recommend reading the data sheet of the good-old L297 and L298 ICs. Nobody still uses them, today, but they are built very simple and the basics work the same for any stepper motor.

To drive a DC motor with controlled current the same power stage could be used but without stepping. Instead you could control the nominal current by modulating the voltage at the Vref pin of the L297.

Sorry, I'm not an expert for DC motors and steering wheels. But you could ask @Eyadserry . I think his FFB wheel is working quite well.