First Motion Sim - 2DOF Seat Mover With DIY Peripherals

SMC3 Arduino 3DOF Motor Driver and Windows Utilities

Thanks for taking the time to reply in the other thread.

After getting my sim working today with simtools and live for speed I decided I needed to ditch the monster motos and go with a sabertooth. The sim worked great... when it worked at all. Multiple times the drivers stopped responding until I performed the workaround manually in the SMC3 utility to get them moving again.

Not too big of a hit as the drivers were pretty cheap from china but I know that if the sim doesn't "just work" when it's finished I won't use it half as much. Kind of crappy as the whole layout of my sim is symmetrical and based on having two separate drivers. moving to a single is going to botch up the wire routing. Oh well...

The only store in Canada that sells sabertooth drivers (robotshop.ca) happens to have an ebay storefront and today ebay has a 15% off everything coupon so I pulled the trigger on it tonight. I've got to re-fabricate part of my u-joint anyways which will take at least a week so the shipping time for the driver won't be a big deal.

On a positive note, those 50:1 motors can really throw you around when you turn them up.

The model Sabertooth that you are going to use may affect some of your settings.
By that I mean if you went with a 2X25 V2 it has a different baud rate than the other Sabertooths like the more common 2X30's.

I think it only affects the baud rate setting in your sketch's Arduino code and that is where the 2X25 is the oddball version as it uses 38,400 as max baud rate .

Thanks for the heads up. I'm going to use the 2x32. I've got to read through the large thread here on the sabertooth's but it seems a lot of others have used this one with success.

I got the Sabertooth 2x25 v2 working OK with lots of help from BlazinH and many others
I am using Tutorial - SMC3-SPS Sabertooth Packet Serial PID motor driver w/SoftStart on a 2Dof Sim

Yeah, that's the thread I need to read through. After testing for a bit with the stock SMC3 software I'm also looking forward to the "soft start" feature.

Any updates on your motion rig?

Would love to see or hear about the finished result.

Not really. I had to wait for a replacement gearbox which I only got last week and now I'm still setting up game profiles or trying to.
I have also got it in bits to re-grease my CV joint which has some play and that is being amplified by the motion.
I'm just assuming that when I welded the joint to the mountings that heat has melted what grease was inside, but I have another few spares if I need another one.
Once that is fixed it will going up for sale as I am done with sims, time for my next project whatever that maybe.

Just got it working today. Was waiting on an bridge rectifier which I'm using as a massive diode to prevent the regenerative braking current from tripping the protection on my power supplies. They still can't do 100% power but at 50% they seem to work fine. Honestly, 50% seems to be fine in vr. Any more may actually be uncomfortable. I'm also testing in Dirt Rally which is likely to be the worst case that I'll ever put the simulator through.

I'm going to keep playing with it over the weekend and hopefully get some good video at which point I'll update with pictures, video and electrical diagrams.

After that there's only two other things to finish:
-Test the bass shakers working in tandem with the motion. (They were working last time I tried so this should be easy)
-Fix my DIY throttle pedal. The spring tension I have it set up with is too light for the load cell. The output has poor resolution and is really wonky. I'm going to move to a potentiometer for the throttle only.

That's great news, glad to hear you've got it rockin'!!!
I agree that less is more when in VR, or even just with a 2D monitor as well.
On YouTube I see all these videos of people with crazy wild movements, and knowing what I know now, I can't help but feel that it would be more distracting that immersive.

Still loving mine, I found a great deal on DiRT Rally 2.0 ($41 CAD), so I'm looking forward to playing it next Tuesday with motion + TrackIR....and then in VR once they add it during the Summer.

Looking forward to seeing the pic's/video's & schematics of your rig.

Finally got around to taking the video and editing it. The editing portion was a little more work than I thought it would be. Simulator is fully working now and in its final resting place in my vr mancave. Really loving it so far. Still some small things to do:

• Fix the backlash I have in the way I connect the through-shaft to the motor output
• Give the steering wheel some way to adjust front to back.
• Get the soft start working on SMC3 (not working for some reason so when I power it on it's a little jarring)
• Maybe an F1 or GT3 wheel?

Well anyways, here's the video:

Motors need power before the arduino is powered on or reset to assure it works properly.

Yep, and this his how I was testing it. Even in this case where I have power to the sabertooth before plugging the USB of the arduino it still violently moves to the rest position as soon as the arduino boots. I'm going to have to look if I altered the SMC sketch incorrectly.