Showroom Building Journey of "Crate" Racing Cockpit

Yup, I might end up using JRK's in the long run... But I'm curious with the Arduino also, so trying that way first.

I completelly and utterly forgot these


The cheap bass shakers I ordered. I'm definitelly going to try these out, but how I should install them? I mean, should it be firmly attached agains the plywood, or do I need to leave a gap by putting some washers or something under the mounting holes? Or do I need to drill big hole to the plywood? Maybe I just start testing...

What is sure is that I'm going to put the other under the pedal base and other under the seat base.

Pedal base and seat base is a really good location choice!

I have the same ;-)

It has to be really firmly attached to transmit vibration!

Hi RacingMat! Thanks for the info. Are you using Simvibe? I'm going to test these with just normal audio...

RacingMat posted a "How To" on using a separate sound card for transducers which in essence just copies the sound from the default card to an auxiliary card. Mat, can you post a link to that? I cannot remember where it was.

The SimTools Developers are working on Bass Shaker support right now, no idea when it will come to fruition but it will be worth the wait (and much much cheaper).

I know this was a question to Mat, but I do have SimVibe and while it is a great piece of software for transducer support it is focused mostly on mainstream driving games. Great support for rFactor and iRacing but none for flight sims (except XPlane 10), nor games such as EuroTruckSimulator2 (ETS2), man I love that game...having my platform shake like a real Rig is awesome.

Yeah! Thanks Historiker for your reply, I can hapily wait Simtools support for these, because even with normal audio this thing is awesome! It's allready somewhat working!

I drilled holes through my pedalbaseplate


Cut some rubber stripes for partially separating plate from the frame




Installed shaker, there are rubber washers between the shaker and plate, I Googled this kind of installation, but might change rubber to steel. There needs to be gap, because this is actually just the "insides" of the shaker, and otherwise it won't move properly. More expensive shakers are in nice casing where they are free to move, and they are ment to be tightened firmly in the base.


I'm driving shaker with this old Pioneer, and driving it heavy... I would not be suprised if this is killing the amp. I'm hearing the game sound from the pedalbase very clearly, it is working like a speaker.


I happen to have this mixer, which is very handy to route audio for multiple locations (from multiple sources) with ease. Was usefull with this also. I also have two soundcards installed, so that will come handy when Simtools have support for bass shakers.


All in all, vibration is not very strong, but the first impression is still very good. I can feel engine revs, curbs and bumps under my feet and it's cool! Next I need to install the other one under the seat, which is a little more challenging. And THEN I take a break with this project

Edit. By the way Historiker, I liked first ETS very much, but haven't tried the second one, maybe I should give it a try!

I have seen them mounted over a hole bored in the wood, allowing the center to freely move up and down. That might work better than shims.

Yes, you really should check out ETS2, it is a great game and the motion plugin for SimTools works very well.

Just noticed the early Christmas present Historiker, sorry I failed to see it earlier! Thank you very much, those 200 coins will come handy!

Agreed, big hole in the center is propably the best solution. Will continue modifying the pedalbase and installing other shaker later, now that the rig is inside the house I cannot make any loud noises this late since my wife is allready sleeping. But sound of the shaker is not audible outside this room, which is quite unexpected.

Well, I just could not help my self and bought two wiper motors from the scrapyard. Even if I don't need them anytime soon, I just wanted to get my hands on them and see what they are about. So, these are from Mitsubishi Lancer, don't know anything else.


First I removed the grounding to the case.


Wanted to see insides. Looks pretty good to me.


Here is, I think, the mechanism and contacts that changes the direction at certain point. I was curious and briefly tried to make sens of it with a multimeter, but all in all, we don't need this...


So I cut the wires going there and left just the ones going to the motor.

Testing!


So it works, nice! Before I put the case back together I removed the stopper from the gear that would move now obsolete mechanism and also from the other side just to make sure.




Enclose the case and we have modded wiper motor ready! Now the same to the other one

Yesterday I modified bass shaker mounting like Historiker advice


Actually did not notice much difference, but it looks neat! I also added shaker under the seat and that is something else! Feeling the Skip Barber engine idling when I started iRacing first time was sooo cool.
Wooden prototype is now ready. Now I just enjoy racing with it and keep tools away for awhile... Until I feel ready to start welding together the real deal.

This is were we got at "Stage1"

Just a quick one, you did test with a multimeter that the case of the motor is now isolated from the ground, normally contain more than one earthing.
And don't load the motors up with too much weight or the steel gearing will strip the big white plastic one.
A controller and H bridge next, I think, and ya off and racing.

Good notes earobbie, thanks for your post. I did check that the case was actually isolated from the ground wire with multimeter after I removed that outer wire. What comes to the workload, I try to keep it reasonable, just going to move the seat with rather short levers pulling/pushing long arms attached to the shoulder level. Still, if/when gearing wears out, I look for something more durable. Not expecting these motors to last for years.

Oh well, I swear I was not planning to do this, but I bought Simvibe to get a feeling what the fuzz is about.

First test behind and...

I think it's Epic!

I thought the same thing about simvibe UNTIL

I got my motion all hooked up! Your in for a big treat.

Check out these profiles for iRacing, most are chassis mode but a couple are extension mode, they are fantastic.

http://www.isrtv.com/forums/topic/11302-simvibe-profile-sharing-thread/

Thanks for the link Historiker, I'll check the extension profiles. And jem45472, I have a hard time to wait the moment I have all set up for motion... Still so long way to go...

Visited a friend and he had this arduino project with cheap temperature sensors. Just had an idea of using a second arduino as monitoring device, I would use it to show temperature, voltage and current from specific points of the system in a small lcd screen. Maybe loud alarm with piezo if anything is to go wrong. Parts are so cheap that even if it has little or no real practical value, it would be worth it to have a nice blue screen showing hmmm... something! Just a welcome text when starting up would be nice, for example. I'm the kind of person who loves blinking leds and stuff, so while I'm not building a dashboard cockpit (because of Oculus Rift), there still must be something visual happening when rig fires up

Still waiting the h-bridge, but searched my storage, and found some cheap 10k pots and microswitches. Going to use switches to cut current to the motors if they run out of bounds.

Oh, and got my harness

Scraped together a testbench out of some wood, polymorph (very nice stuff for prototyping) and small gearmotors to try Simtools with Adafruit motorshield, but realized I don´t have the skills to adapt RacingMat's code made for motomonster to adafruit. Adafruit uses own library and it is very easy to program, but you MUST use the library. I'll just wait for motomonster, using this testbench with that then.

I would wait I recently had a play with the same card, got it to run but noticeable lag in motor position and timings.
Came down to the card, too clumber some of a library, takes too long to work things out.
Wait for the Monstor Moto, will run on the test rig and will power the full sim , ++.

YES, we have some motion, in small scale, but motion still!

First, I cannot thank you guys enough for your work here and all the information and software you share and thank you so much RacingMat for your arduino code, instructions and Simtools settings! This thing fired up at very first try following your instructions, no smoke, no bugs, nothing. Just plain workingness (not a word...)!

Not bad has the typical Ard twitch.