Showroom 2 dof flight & race build

Hello everyone,

I’ve been thinking about a simulator build for almost a year.
Love to play MS flight simulator , Elite dangerous and some racing games mostly in VR (Samsung odyssey+)

I Looked at buying a dof reality or a yaw 2 system until I found this forum.
After gathering information for a couple of months.(thanks everyone for the replies to my questions)
I made the decision to build my own rig, maybe not the easiest way but love the challenge.

As a first time builder, It will be a 2 dof system.

Inspiration for the build are:

Scruck race sim design

https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/my-finished-2dof-project-videotutorial.16214/

Ronan design flight sim

https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...-rig-msfs-smc3-flypt-mover-transducers.16245/

It will hopefully become a good hybrid .
mainly used for flight sim but also adjustable to do some racing.


Split the building process in different parts:

· The frame

· Electronics

· Software

The frame design:

The frame base made out of 40x40 profile , I added a wooden board to place the electronic stuff on


the universal joint:
I bought a second hand universal/cardan joint from a land rover and welded a plate to it.
not the most beautiful thing but it can hold my weight.


Then I added the base for the seat , had some alu profile lying around that I could use for that.


The Chair :
Because flying will be the main application , I don’t need a race seat.
So I bought a second hand Mini cooper seat for only 20 euro.
It is not heavy and feels great as a pilot chair.


I had to put some extra alu supports on the pedal part , the joints are not strong enough to stay in place.

It needs some finishing but the basics are there.
Next up is the electronics , will post update soon.

Thx Noorbeast,

Electronics
I got most of the parts in, same as Scruck used in his build.

250W 24V 75rpm low speed brush motors
ibt-2 motor driver
hal sensors 5v
arduino
1000W 24V mean well power supply




I also got a panel with a volt meter and an ampere meter per motor ,
to monitor the motors performance under load.


I made some early sim calculations , do you think this setup will work
Or do I need more torque. shorter levers or change motor position or something else?

SMC3 testing and questions

After reading the SMC info , and installing it.
I got the motors moving with SMC3 and the green line is following the blue line, but they react very fast.

How do you smoothen/slow the movement in SMC3?
The Kp value looks most logical , but it doesn’t look like it changes speed a lot.

Also the movement range is too big , the frame is only 40x40mm alu profile so with the long motor lever it touches the ground very quickly and lifts the whole frame. Not good.

Gonna get some wheels to put under the frame the get more headroom and make it more mobile.

Can anyone tell me how to reduce the range in SMC 3?
As far as can tell, if you set clip en limit to 255 max setting, then the range is at minimum?
but for me that’s still too big , can you reduce it more? And what parameter does that.




We’re making progress but slowly

I have diferent rig, about parameters - more experience member will halp You .
Frequency 15 -20kHz (ibt-2 have suport up to 20kHz as I read during buy on ali...)
To reduce movement in Your case gear ratio on pot should be diferent (oposite).
If movement is lower than 150 deg - You can try Shorter arm hole to some 30-40mm from motor axis.

Thx for your reaction Seusok,
I changed every parameter except the frequency, I will try it and see what that does .

Update:

The motors where not mounted to the frame strong enough , so they would wiggle a bit.

Drilled the holes, in the motor mounts, from 6 to 8 mm, and connected 2 more corner connecters to the aluminum frame so it is more sturdy.



I burned one IBT-2 and an Arduino , due to a polarity error on the IBT .(oops)
Luckily ordered some spare parts

2 motors are working fine within SMC3 utility now.
Tuned down PWMmax to from 140 this gives a nice smooth movement and not too fast.
It looks like this parameter does influence the smoothness of the movement.
Do you need to turn up PWMmax under load? or does it not influence torque ?



Simtools
No problems here , output testing was successful.
I did only put in small amount of movement and smoothening at 50% for everything as a starting point.


Installed and started the LFS game did a short race , exit the game and patched it in the simtools game manager.
Now the moment of truth on the software side , will the motors react to game data.
Yes it worked , I looked in the virtual axis tab of sim tools game engine. And data was coming in and going out to the axis (motors).

Some trouble shooting to do:

I hear some rattling noise from the motors , sometimes in a certain position , need to check this
but motors do not get warm.
one of the IBT-2 is getting a bit warm , will put a fan on it soon.

As for the amps , I hardly see the meters moving, seen 2 amps max one time.

Very happy with the first test run. Still miles to go but we’re moving.
I will upload a video soon.

hi i like your design. have you tested it for stability when at the maximum roll angle.? thinking of the centre of gravity.

Hi,

My universal joint will only give max. 17 degrees of roll and pitch
I tested it close to max without any problems in the balance of the rig .
it stays firmly on the groud , no wiggle

My main issue is the rattling/clicking noise of the motors , at end position of the motor
even when only putting pressure on it with my hand.

Think it is moving outside limits of SMC3, some hysteresis, or signal noise on the hal sensor
Still have to do some tests, to find out what it is exactly.

looks like you have a lot of weight on the motors. when you sit on your sim, the center of gravity should be on the universal joint. to mutch weight on the motors can break the motor gears.

for flying i would use Fly PT instead of simtools.
with Fly PT, you can cut movements of your sim in one direction. that would let you more way for pull up without slamming your pedals in the ground when you push the nose down.

Thx for the feedback Skuldi,
I did check on COG in the beginning of the build , but changed position a few times after using sim calculations to optimize torque.
Will do a balance check again.

I wanted the rig to be hybrid between flying and racing , with racing the pedals will be more up and seat more down (more of a lying position ) The cog will go back then .
That means I have to adjust the seat position every time I change stance.
How precise does it have to be?
Is have rig hanging to the front better for the motors than hanging back to the motorside?

Well, maybe it just looks wrong on the photo. depending on the motors, a little off center should not be a problem.

Did a balance check , moved seat to the front 7cm.
it should be ok now.

measured the position of the joint and motor. and put it in Sim calc.
hope it will do.


Hope to get a test run in tommorow .

I finally got some time to replace the M8 rods for M12 , looks and feels much better.


in SMC3 it is working fine , rattling of motors is almost gone.
Did a testdrive in LFS using simtools , feels much better and smoother now .
IBT-2 didn't heat up very much after 30 minutes so think that's all good now.

since I wanna use Flypt Mover for my rim. I let sim tools rest for now.

Flypt
I did "some" reading on flypt https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/flypt-mover.13464/
most in there is on 6dof systems , filters , not a lot of info on getting a 2dof working.

I gave it a shot and:
- The source module getting info from the LFS game
-a pose module getting info from the source module
-But in the rig module ,I'm lost
I understand you have to define your rig here but what information must go in middle , range ,L1 to L6
probably some measurement from the rig (the values from sim calc ?)



Is there any guide for setting up a 2dof in flypt ?

I like make a test setup like smc3 in flypt :
- 2 loop source modules one for pitch one for roll.
- one pose from motion getting data from the 2 source modules .
-one simple direct module getting data from pitch source.
-one rig module , again no clue how to set this up


so if i connect the direct module to a serial output module it should work like smc3 .
is this correct?

any help is welcome as you can read , I'm a complete newbee on flypt

I finally got some action with flypt mover software
I overlooked the info on flypt website on SMC3 output https://www.flyptmover.com/outputs/smc3-and-sps
once I set output string to "[A<Axis1a>][B<Axis2a>][C<Axis3a>]"
Motors moved.

As you can see I have an offset of 2 degrees to get an output of 511 and get position in the middle of the actuator position test .
By changing input of middle (in the output module) to 25 degrees , it is dead center.
But is this the right way to set it up?

it was a real pain to set the software up but it was worth it! I have to go to work now but here is my mov file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r88-ZQyFkOSsw_VRPv7c8C_dAInGbu5W/view?usp=sharing

Edit: changing my rig Setup will breack my config.

Thanks , will take a look.
I still got to add filters but the rig is working fine.

no, it should be in the center by default. with the 3dviewer you can see how your seat looks like for flypt.
should look something like that:

I changed some settings in the rig module (L1 to L6).


And ended up with this picture. it looks the same only reversed to the green line?
When I change L2 and L5 to positive value it looks like yours.

If you go to POSE From motion and give pitch position 10 degree the software will not rotate your motors for 10 degree. Flypt tries then to bring your seat in a 10 degree position based on your data. If you not accurate, the center position will be a little off or the seat will not use his full movement range or even to much.
I had my problems with that as well and made my seat in fly pt a little bigger than the real one and used the crop filter to cut the movements on the furthest save position.


Is your seat in center position by default?
Does your seat use his entire movingrange without going to far?
Does both motors work synchronous?
when your answers are yes you are ready to set up your games with pose from motion.