Showroom Budget Compact 6DOF Universal VR Flight / Racing rig - MSFS, SMC3, FlyPT, Transducers, Controls

Not super helpful for you at this point, but this was one reason I planned my next build with the Sabertooth/Kangaroo motor controller combo. They have an auto tune feature for PID that can really help with this. I originally built a simple 2 DOF setup using wiper motors and JRKs and took my best shot at tuning the PIDs. I had a problem where after driving for maybe 5-10 minutes one motor would thermally cut out and shut down while the other kept working. I swapped the JRKs over to a Sabertooth/Kangaroo setup just to see how they worked and almost like magic I could drive and fly for a long time and my motors weren't even that hot. Same exact rig and mechanics, just different motor controllers, so I would agree that tuning is probably your biggest heat issue. Unfortunately I don't have any good advice on how to fix it though as I took the "easy" route of buying something to do it for me, lol.

I shot the video with the first real flight test of the rig! I'm happy with it so far. I couldn't even feel the cogging during the flight because there's so much motion going on all the time. The motors heat up to ~46C max with new settings (lower PWMmax, added some derivative, slightly increased deadzone), then I adjusted the settings to yet lower PWMmax and they got even cooler. So I'm cautiously optimistic. Hopefully they would hold on during longer flights. More testing is needed, but it really felt nice! I will adjust the FlyPT profile to near perfection and I'm set.

I added a "showroom" tag to the title, I think it can be pinned to the other complete rigs, now that the build is finished? Or is there anything else I need to do?

You wrote that the engines heat up a lot during operation, I will write what I have noticed during the installation of these engines.
Last weekend I assembled at a friend's house 2DOF + TL on three such motors, all motors after connecting to 24V power supply started correctly, but when setting the crank position manually, I noticed that one of the motors has much more resistance than the other two.
After removing the gearbox cover, we saw a very large amount of grease which caused “sticking” of the gearbox disks,

after cleaning off the excess grease it required much less force to turn the crank , in general the force of two fingers was enough to turn the crank as shown in the video below,

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. The hottest motors are also on the right side, which is the heaviest because of the pedestal I have there, so it makes sense. For me it takes about the same effort to manually move the cranks on all of the motors, so I think they are all OK. But I just built a temperature monitor gizmo with Arduino Nano I had lying around, 3 DH11 sensors, Display and buzzer. So I can see the 2 hottest motor + one hottest Cytron driver's heatsink, their max values during session, total uptime, and if it goes above a set value it will beep, alerting me about potential overheating, with the number of beeps identical to degrees above the threshold. It's rather neat actually, I'll do a video...

Designed, printed and cut labels for the panels and transparent stickers for the lighted buttons. I won't see it in VR, but why not make it look good, right? Besides, it lets me memorize and refresh the layouts in my head. Also, if I really want to, I can actually bring the panels into the VR using Quest3 cameras. I also designed a logo, just because I could

Did you have a link to your button box build somewhere that I just missed? That's a very slick setup. I saw you mention it being Arduino based for the most part, but was curious if you actually detailed the build of it somewhere.

Other than in this topic I didn't list it specifically. I will include the Arduino sketches, basic schematics and 3D printing models in the building plans on my website.

The top MSP/GPS box is running on Arduino Mega + MobiFlight software. It's the most in-depth controller but it's very simple in principle - just a bunch of encoders and buttons connected to Arduino pins, and configured in MobiFlight. It has lighted buttons, 3 encoders, one encoder VS wheel, 4 dual-encoders (actually 8 encoders in 3D-printed enclosures, super cheap), and it also runs the trim wheel and rudder trim knob on the throttle quadrant.

Below it is the Gear + switch box. Again, simple - a bunch of switches connected to Arduino Leonardo. The Arduino sketch I wrote is custom (as for all other boxes), so it's a bit interesting there - it's processing the switches, one button and one encoder (rotating right presses a button, left - another button, center press - another button, press+rotate - 2 more buttons). Also, a gear lever has 2 "buttons" and a center lock position that triggers another virtual button. Setting the gear lever up or down triggers red or green LEDs to blink for a while, then settle into steady light. It would be possible to actually track those LEDs from within MSFS but that would mean another MEGA and Mobiflight setup, and I can't see the LEDs in VR anyway, so just have them triggered by the lever. It appears as a standard joystick in Windows, so it's useful in any sim, including racing and truck sims. 6 potentiometers are analog axes on the joystick.

The throttle quadrant runs on Arduino Pro Mini (basically a Leonardo only smaller and with fewer pins), and appears as an 8-axis joystick with a few buttons. I designed a throttle quadrant inspired by a 737 one, but including prop and mix levers so I can use it both for GA and airliners. The left throttle has TO/GA and A/T buttons at the right places. It has analog reverse thrust levers - processed by the same MobiFlight profile as the top box because MSFS doesn't have analog axes for those.

The rear box combines the power switch for the motion rig, 3 light switches (physical lights, not in sim), emergency stop button, and an Arduino Leonardo joystick with few switches and buttons but mainly with pluggable connectors for the 8-gear shifter + parking brake for racing and trucking sims. Also, it has 2 5-position rotating switches. Those are interesting because I don't have enough pins to run them as 10 buttons, so each pole is connected to the next with a resistor, and all together - to 1 analog pin on the Arduino. So the whole thing acts as an analog pot with 5 fixed values, which I check for and determine which joystick button to press.

The left HOTAS panel is a bit more complicated because it has too many buttons for Leonardo, so I'm using a matrix where buttons are cross-connected and pressing one closes 2 shared circuits and that way Arduino knows what button is pressed (2 can be pressed at the same time, but no more). It also has 2 5-pos switches that run the same way as above.

Very cool! I had a feeling it was mostly all custom made, but wasn't sure how much of the switchgear might have been off the shelf. Neat because it's expandable as well!

All buttons and switches and encoders are dirt-cheap parts from Ali Express. The most expensive parts are the lighted buttons, less than $1.5 each. It ended up being quite a lot of control, on the border of what's possible to remember by touch and use in VR without looking. Note that it's designed to be felt - most knobs are different shape (a combination of real shape of 737 MCP and G1000 knobs), with buttons grouped in a meaningful way so they are easy to find by feel. The layout also mimics 737 MCP and GNS530 on the bottom so it would be somewhat close to what I'm seeing if the aircraft has one of those.

I tweaked the FlyPT Mover enough to get a satisfyingly realistic feel, and I started a career mode yesterday, so I actually played for the first time on the new motion simulator (as opposed to tweaking and tuning). Wow, it feels great! But, it's still heating up too much. The motors' outer body eventually heated up to 62C after about 3 hours of tweaking and flying. Now, it may not be excessive but I can't find the temperature specs for the Yalu 250W motors, so I don't know. From the e-bike and scooter forums, I see that many similar motors' normal operating range is up to 150F / 66C. So maybe I'm OK. I still like to get it to lower temps. I could go one hole down on CTC distance, but that would decrease movement a bit. I'll try to lower the PWMmax a bit more. I'm now at 195 with PWMrev = 190. I'll try 170 and see if it's enough to move me.

For other members these motors are also in 350 watt

I'm not sure what you mean. My motors are Yalu 24V 75RPM 250W.

And also 24v 75rpm 350w

I'm still not sure what you mean. Are you saying that those exact same motors are sold as 250W and 350W? I don't think so. Yalu website only shows them as 250W. There is a version of similar motor (but not the same, and with different gearbox) that's 250W/24V and 350W/36V

They are on aliexpress so people can use longer levers

You are correct. I wonder if 350W motors would heat up less. I doubt it though, because they are virtually the same size (only 1.5cm longer) and utilize almost a third more power, so they might heat up more not less. And I think the heating is the limiting factor here. I have plenty of power - I'm not even using PWMmax at 255, I'm tweaking around 190-210, so not full power. With 100mm CTC honestly it feels like there's more than enough motion. I'm even considering going to 80mm CTC to have less heating. Not sure, need further testing on heating.

However, the cost is very different, at least judging from Canada. The cost is a key factor in my project. I got mine on Amazon.ca at $90 CAD ($63USD) each (somehow I wasn't even charged HST which is our sales tax). Total $538CAD / 375USD. On Ali, 350W version is only $40 ($5 more expensive than 250w) but shipping is $80 and the total for 6 motors is $593 USD (plus customs brokerage fees). And that's the cheapest offer I could find. So almost twice more expensive, and more power draw is needed. But if someone can get them locally for a comparable price they look like a good option. You can always feed them less power I guess, if they heat up.

For me they cost 25 euro more each than a 250 watt in the netherlands

Adgun, can you provide a link to these engines.

https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005...BusinessMode":"retail"}}&gatewayAdapt=glo2nld