Resolved 600 watt heave motor issues

Hey all! Its been a while since I posted in here. I am currently doing some modifications on my 3DOF rig (2 DOF and traction loss)

I am interested in adding a 4th motor to handle heave. I am doing something similar to what noorbeast did on his rig with a motor under the seat to move me vertically. My question for this post is about the wiring of the 4th motor.
I followed this to wire my rig origonally:
https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/

Its all the wiring diagrams and instructions to add 3 motors. I see there are available ports on the same arduino that I could add in a 4th motor, but do I need different software added to the arduino or need to change it in anyway in order to get a 4th motor to function and show up in the SMC3 Utility?
If so can anyone point me to any of the other resources I might need in order to make those changes?
Thanks so much!

@noorbeast were you able to use the same SMC3.ino program that is in those instructions that I linked on both of the arduinos? Or did you have to upload something different?

ok i see, thank you!
One last question @noorbeast, did you decide to seperate the motors into 2 arduino boards just for keeping the wiring clean or was there some other concern about putting them all on one board?

ahh! ok thanks so much for the advice! I will divide mine up into 2 boards, 2 per board

So I am having a lot of issues with getting my heave motor to move the weight properly. I am trying to determine if I have a poor configuration for getting max power from it.

I notice in this example of using a heave motor it appears that the idel position is not 90 degrees. Is it better to have the arm fully extended in the idle position in this case and then when at max "heave" have it be at 90 degrees?

@noorbeast Sorry for being pedantic... But you mentioned that "torque utilisation" quite often, now. Actually, what I would call "torque utilisation" = force output devided by torque input is worst at 90°. You get a lot more force at the upper and lower dead-point where the crank arm and the pushrod are aligned near 0 and 180°. You just don't get much linear speed, there. (a knee lever press takes advantage of that)

But I know, that's theoretical quibbling... We all agree that the best operating point is at 90°. So maybe we should just call it different. Best power utilisation or best transmission... ?

Thanks @noorbeast

I am having a bit of an issue with my new wiring set up now. So I now have 4 motors. I put 2 motors on one Arduino, and 2 on another one. 3 of the motors seem to be working well, but one of them is acting odd in SMC3. I can set all the values in SMC3 to 0 and slowlty increase the pwnMax until i get motion, and it works as you would expect mostly. But sometimes if Iopen SMC3, the motor are will shake back and forth rapidly with lots of feedback noise, and the the motor are will turn quickly all the way out of range. This seems to happen everytime I open SMC3 now after having the pwn set. I need to styart with 0 for those values again in order for it not to happen. I looked at all my wiring and everything seems clean. I am also using brand new IBT2s for this motor with the issue.
I dont seem to have this issue with Simtools, when I open that up i havent yet seen this happen with this motor. Does anyone have any ideas of what I can try. It seems like a wiring or gound issue but I tripple checked my wiring. Im not sure what it could be thats causing it.
I am assuming I need to use SMC3 to configre my motors arduino sketch. @noorbeast you mentioned you dont use SMC3, how did you configure all those values if you dont us it?

Thanks!

Ok so I think I figured out the issue with the motor going out of range. Even though the IBT2's I am using were brand new, it seems like one of them might have been faulty. I removed one and now its working as expected.

So I moved on to testing the new 4th "heave" motor in game using EA WRC and Assetto Corsa (with some rally cars and tracks) and now I have a new problem.

So, when I run SMC3 utility and set it to "Motion" it works like a charm (here is a screen shot), and i can sit there all day with it moving me up and down randomly.
But as soon as I start playing a game and use Simtools, the heave works for a minute, then cuts out for a minute, then works then cuts out, over and over.

I dont think the problem is tripping my PSU limits because like I mentioned, it works fine in SMC3.
I tried making some SMC3 ajustments like changing the max limits to what you see here and also inscreasing the PWMmin from 10 up to 50. I tried lower and higher PWMmax values as well. BUt in game is still shutting down and coming back on.

I also tried making adjustments in Simtools:
- axis limiting down to 30 percent.
- reducing the heave amount down to 50 from 100
- adjusting the min and max limits from 0.5 all the way up to 30

No matter what I have tried it cuts in and out in game. I touched the IBT2s after playing for a while and they were cool (and I am using active cooling on them) so I dont think they are over heating.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what might be happening?
The fact that heave motion works without issue in SMC3 is that it making it so baffeling to me.
Thanks all!

ok, thanks for the help @noorbeast
I tried the 25 Fpwn but it didn't change the issue I am having. Also as for the cercumstances, I have been specifically using rally stages to test because there are so many bumps and hills. The issue seems to happen after about 30 seconds of driving regardless of if I am going over big bumps. I get heave motion for about 30 seconds, then it shuts off for maybe 30-45 seconds, then this repeats.

I have everything else turned off completely in Simtools and ONLY have heave activated. I have one motor specfic for heave.
I have 2 arduinos, each with 2 motors. Pitch and roll on one, and the other arduino has the traction loss and the heave (the problem) motors.

Here are all my settings in simtools. I have 2 interfaces, the second one if the one that has the problem motor.,
Also it might be worth noting that this new heave motor is not the same as the other 3 motors. Its more powerful, is higher wattage, and lower rpm then the other ones.

Again, I dont have any shut down issues when simulating motion in SMC3 though.
Thanks for taking a look!

Oh and no, there was no pop ups or error messages like you mentioned. And it continues to work, just after 30 seconds to a minute. It’s very odd

The new motor is apparently 600 watts 60:1. My other 3 motors are only 50:1, and maybe 200watts.
im using 2 - 600 watt power supplies. 2 motors on each. I don’t think im hitting the upper range on the psu though. I also am using 2 IBTs daisy chained together for the motor so it shouldn’t be hitting a bottle neck there.
When I am in game, the motion seems to be very jittery for heave, even with a really high number for my min and max values. Not sure if that’s normal.

I have gone up to 30 for the min and max value. I also tried axis limiting as well but it didn’t seem to make a difference.

When you say thermal @noorbeast , are you suggesting the ibt2 are overheating? Or the motor itself?