Showroom 2 DOF motion seat for A320 home cockpit

Hi everybody,
today I'd like to start presenting my own 2 DOF motion seat project for my A320 home cockpit.
First a short introduction of myself and my flight simulator:
I am 67 years old, retired, live in Germany near Bonn and I am an enthusiastic tinkerer with some experience in wood working, electronics, computer technology, programming and 3D-printing.
About 6 years ago I started to make my dream come true and built an A320 home cockpit with mainly standard parts and electronics and lots of home made wooden and 3D-printed parts but very close to the shape of a real cockpit. I use 4 Windows PCs, Prepar3D as flight simulator, Jeehell FMGS, FSUIPCand WideFS, VoxATC and several addons for the different interfaces and displays. But here the details are nice to know but more object to flight simulator forums. Here's a picture of my half sided home cockpit.

In order to enhance the realistic fealing I added 2 butt shakers below the pilots seat some months ago but still miss the sensation of realistic g-related motion. Of course I know that it is limited with an Airbus A320 but nevertheless it could be better. Therefore I started planning to add a 2 DOF motion rig for the pilots seat using the existing wooden socket and the car seat that are already in action.

For a long time I couldn't imagine building a motion seat myself because it looked to complicated and to ambitious to me. But fortunately 2 weeks ago a fellow flight simmer showed me his cockpit with a DIY 2 DOF motion seat and told me about XSimulator.net where he found the basics and a lot of worthful hints for his project.
That was the starting point for me and I studied all of the great presentations of the different DIY projects in this forum.
Thanks to all of you who share their ideas and their experience. It encourages me to start my own project and to share it as well.

... to be continued

Based on lots of informations that I found in this wonderful forum I started to plan my own projetc. My aim is to build as many wooden parts as possible and to use the electric and electronic parts that most of the other presented DIY projects use. Very helpful was for me the presentation of Gigino83
https://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/my-first-do-it-yourself-2dof-simulator.17815/
thanks to him for a very inspiring attitude.
Now here is my first 3D-plan:
I will use the existing socket box and the rails of the seta will be mounted on the two vertikal wooden plankets. I tried to position the U-junction as high as possible and close to the horizontal COG of the seat because in my opinion this makes the seat more stable and reduces the neccessary torque for the movements. For the same reason I elongated the arms where the connections to the motor levers are mounted.
The junction consist of 4 bearing blocks which i screwed together:

A much cheeper solution than a complete U-Junction and very stable:


... to be continued

For those who are interested here is a list of the parts I bought at Amazon`s mainly inspired by the very instructive and helpful projects of @SaintFrank and @scruck to whom I am very grateful.


Sorry for using the german list but these are the original descriptions on Amazon. If you change the language in Amazon you will find them in english too.
And here is a foto of the parts after they arrived, complemented with some screws, nuts, slices and threaded rods:

Now this is how the U-junction looks mounted in a wooden cage and for me it seems robust enough to carry the waight of the seat and a person on it:




I also finished the complete frame that will hold the seat and will be fixed to the socket box:



At the same time I started to mount the hall sensors to the motors and to build frames for the electronic parts (Arduino Uno and two IBT_2 motor drivers) which will be mounted inside the socket box.



The Hall sensor mount is 3D-printed.

Next step:
The rack ist assembled. The freedom of movement is as exspected and way enough for an Airbus.



The socket offers enough space for motors, power supply and electronics.


Arduino and the 2 motor drivers are mounted on a 3D-printed frame.

The electronics are mounted on the frame ...


... and wired.



Here is how the 2 power supplies are integrated. On the front side there are two fans for the motor drivers.



The frame with Arduino and the 2 IBT-2 is mounted above the fans.



Next steps will be the motor levers, mounting and integrating the motors.

Hi, back after a short pause.

Meanwhile I built the 2 motor levers from a 30 x 16 mm flat steel bar. The aluminium bar which I choose first seemed at last too weak for me.


In order to fix the lever to the motor axis I screwed an M8 bolt into the end of the bar and secured it with a counter nut. The diameter of the tip of the bolt is reduced to the width of the notch in the motor axis. The holes for the connections to the slide rods are in a distance of 90 and 110 mm from the axis so that the length of the effective lever arm can be changed if necessary.
This is finally my test setting. The motors fixed on top of the rack so that the levers can move freely without damaging anything.



The power supply is connected via a switchable connector for the mains plug with an integrated 1A fuse. An emergency stop switch appears to be a must, it disconnects the 24V powerlines.



Ok, lets start the test phase. SMC3-Utils are installed on the simulator network computer which will later operate the seat. The first test showed that one of the IBT2 motor drivers was damaged which seems to happen quite frequently. Even a static discharge while mounting it may kill it. Fortunately they are not very expensive and can quickly be exchanged in my setting.
And this is the result with both motor drivers working properly:

https://youtu.be/ol2sixdYvag

Thanks I hope so. I just requested a Simtools DIY license and will hopefully soon start implementing the tools.

No, I just tested the motors outside the rig because I want to be sure that limits are set properly so that the levers don't interfere with the frame.

Ok, i am on the final. Today i mounted the motors into the rig and connected the slide rods.





The seat is completed.


I allready downloaded Simtools and connected and tested the interface and axis in demo mode successfully. I just wonder how to install version 3 in a 2 computer setting because there is no difference between game manager and game engine. Maybe someone can help.
This means waiting for the license to be able to fully test and connect to Prepar3d. Do I need to send a new request?

Thanks a lot for the DIY license key.
I decided to go back to version 2.5 because the installation process and use of the tools in a 2 computer system is well documented in the manual and they are easy to manage.
I will soon come back with a video of full rig in action.

Well, the seat is completed with covers and security block and reintegrated into the home cockpit.



I already did some tests with the full version of Simtools which was easy to setup on 2 PCs in my simulator network and works very well.
Thanks and great appreciation to the developers.
There is only some experimentation left with the axis assignements for Prepar3D necessary but I need to mention that the post from @Archie about this topic was very helpful for me. As soon as I am ready to fly without being kicked off the seat I will post a video of my motion seat in full action.

Had some issues with my internet-connection but now I am back and I am finished.
After some experimentation with axis assignments and filter settings I did my first flight with absolutely satisfying results. It's a completely new feeling and gives flying the simulator an absolutely realistic touch.
Here is a short video of my DIY motion seat in action:



Thanks to all the enthusiastic people in this forum who helped me finishing my project with the presentation of their projects and with all the worthful descriptions, hints and tricks. And thanks to the operators and moderators of this wonderful homepage.