Showroom 12v Winch Motor Driving Simpit

@speedy a long time ago I had a faulty MM (overheating or overcurrent shutting down issue, dunno) which was shutting down regularly after a few minutes driving. By unplugging and replugging the Ard it could be waked up again. Same results when starting SMC3

@Pit I will give it a check tonight

@Pit " let's Technically Agree to Disagree " ...
First I agree , I guess in your setup the MMs are digitally powered from the Arduino so "unplug/plug " it resets the MMs too .... and that is the result not the cause ...
what I say is upon error ... the MM's are not shutting down or giving any feed back to the Arduino " I guess they only halt themselves " so is the Pololu ...

Although there is a few information but it may point to something :

let's wait for more details from @Historiker and see the results after all .

Ummm...can you both be right?

I reduced the axis max outputs in Simtools (from 100 to 50) and it worked perfectly!

However, after a couple of hours gameplay (iRacing and EuroTruck Simulator 2) I decided to switch to Dirt Rally. I was not happy with the amount of throw on the motors so I turned the axis max up to 75%. After 10 minutes of gameplay motor 1 stopped again and this time no amount of resetting would bring it back. Disassembled my motor drivers and bench testing showed that the original motor driver is dead. The other driver works perfectly on the bench though.

I made my linkages too short in the first place (3" radius) which is why I was not happy with the amount of throw so I welded on some extension tonight. Just finished moving a driver from Motor 3 to Motor 1 and will connect it again in a bit.

You are very much correct @noorbeast , I should not have been cluttering up that thread after I realized that it was not an SMC3 issue

I am DONE....this thread will never be updated because I have decided that I am just not worthy. After seeing the awe inspiring work that @Pit has done I just do not think that anything that I come up with will compare!

Pit I am so impressed with your results that I had to post in my own thread about how great it is! WELL DONE!

If any of you have not yet seen it, look here:

Scroll down, watch the video: be inspired.


http://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/3070w-6dof-seat-mover-wip-surge_sway-table.5276/page-18

build it anyway.....

@Historiker thank you for the compliments, of course there will not be the same rig again but my work should be understood as an inspiration that there is no limit if you want to go your route. I have spent time and money (there are less expensive possibilities) but I had my ideas and I "knew" that it can be done. Honestly I don't expect that you are done

No, of course I am not

After a very long hiatus I have motion again. Unfortunately it took going back to my old winch motors to do it

The new winches had far too much slop in them and the gearing was very very coarse. I could feel (on by backside) every click of the gears. Because of the slop, and the gear ratio that I was using the pots at, I was getting horrible bounce (oscillation) at the center. Far more than SMC3 could compensate for. Sometimes, the cheapest motors are not a good deal.

In other news:

One of my 32" LCD TVs died. Would you believe it had nothing to do with being bounced around?! I was using it static and it just up and died one day. I checked the power board, tested the caps, and found that the main board was dead. The cost for a replacement was more than I paid for the TV (yeah, I got it really cheap). So I started to look for a replacement. I found a 43" Sceptre 4K (60hz) TV for 250.00 (Walmart) to replace all three! I like having the single monitor much more than the triples as I get nearly as much width and twice the height. I also use TrackIR headtracking so I never notice that the view is not as wide. I may or may not repair the 32" and put the 4K on my flight simpit when it is ready.

We are drywalling and painting the basement man-cave so when it is done I will put up some pictures of it in it's new lair. Not much has changed on it, but the lair is cool as...well, you get the idea.

I use a 55" TV* and it works pretty well, although my PC's graphics card is not quite powerful enough to run sim games at a decent frame rate in UltraHiDef mode. The TV is capable of 30Hz in UltraHiDef mode. It's a cheap TV, and any resolution LESS than UltraHiDef looks like a Commodore 64 to me. The gaming PC also does duty as the TV receiver. I found that when TV image is displayed at UltraHiDef resolution it is dithered by the GPU and looks a hell of a lot better than HiDef picture. I plan to upgrade the graphics card. And then the TV. The only HDMI socket on it that will take a UltraHiDef signal is HDMI 1.4. And in the end, THAT is the bottleneck.
*Subject to the approval of the management. This is also the reason my sim rig has to be light and [trans]portable. It's in the living room.

HDMI is technically Not a bottleneck, Yes DP/DVI is faster but You can still run upwards of 4k No problem through HDMI. Remember its not really the cable itself, but rather whats at either end of the cable...meaning the GPU and the Monitor/TV.

currently waiting on my 3rd screen to show up, here's what i got for now till next week.

Then I think we actually are in complete agreement, although maybe I wasn't clear enough. There is only one HDMI input socket on my TV that will accept UltraHiDef input, but it implements HDMI 1.4 specifications, which means at full 4K resolution, it is limited to 24Hz. At UltraHiDef resolution it will do 3oHz. I was disappointed to find this out after purchasing the TV. So while the computer GPU can barely deliver 30fps in games like Dirt Rally, even if I upgrade to a top-of-the-line GPU I can't get a higher frame rate than 30fps on my current TV.

Correct, Big Screen's are Very sketchy as far as "little while lies" when it comes to refresh rates and what not. Sorry but its Funny when a guy wonder's why he cant select 600hz from his Nvidia/AMD control panel on his fancy 600hz plasma/UHD/ect ect


here's a Super handy site which actually tests the Important #'s were after. Granted anything with very low #'s will set you back a pretty penny. Granted there are a few diamonds in the rough. Plus its only a matter of time until Tv's start to ship with real 2.0 hdmi boards which will then boost the current 4k experience to a Very acceptable 4K@50/60 2160p

http://www.rtings.com/

Yes, I was surprised that such a cheap 4K TV as mine was very up front about being 60hz where it seems all the others advertise theirs as 120hz even though they are not truly in that range. Mine does mention that it will do "MEMC 120" I get a kick out of the adver-speak (yes, I made that word up) for "Mimic".

Ya My original 47" LG's 120 is called "true motion"....more like truly shi* motion, Looks like garbage in certain circumstances.

the Toshiba 43's I picked up on Boxing day are listed as 60hz but what got me happy was the Response time being listed at 8ms, Ya sure its not a 2ms monitor, but its sure as heck alot better than some of the current crop of Big screens out there. Another bonus is they are IPS panels plus they have a whopping 10mm wide bezel (might experiment with de bezeling the side screens) Next would be the potential to overclock to Higher than 60hz, My LG would actually go up to 75hz....I have yet to test the 43's but will promptly do that once i get the third installed and up and running to see what i can really extract from them.

To be honest, all modern monitors/TVs look pretty darned good to me. I grew up with 14-19" black and white TV's which required me (as the youngest kid) to wet my fingers, touch the left (never the right, mind you) ear of the antenna and point my other arm in a generally northerly direction so my dad could watch his shows.

It wasn't all that long ago that I was ogling my shiny new ultra-modern 15" LCD monitor.

No way in hell am I going to complain about a 43" 4k TV that I only paid 250.00 for, lol.

The Simpit has a new home!

Last week my wife and I completed the Man Cave, I spent the rest of the time setting up my motion pit.


My gaming table area. I will add several floor to ceiling book cases eventually, and this area will be carpeted. I am also thinking of adding a peninsula bar to further separate the gaming area.




Added an enclosure for the motors and boots for the actuator shafts.










The power strips are mounted next to the seat to allow me to turn everything on at once (including the PC)







Behind the door is my electronics bench, very convenient for the simpit. There is plenty of room next to the driving pit for my flight sim pit as well.












The enclosure greatly reduces the noise of the winches. The 3/4" foam board helps a great deal. The bottom is open allowing cooler air into the box and there are 120mm fans in the front of the box pushing hot air out.
One of these days I will clean up my wiring....maybe The plywood cabinet allows me to stack my PSUs (I installed one for each winch just in case).






I do need to clean the PC cabinet, that thing looks dusty.








Video's to follow (no, really I will post a few). I will work on them tonight.

What a great space to play with You could build hmmmmm I'd say about 7 simulators down there and still have space for a bar

I did like the rig with 3 screens, 1 screen looks kinda lonely on the front of it