aarondc's nDOF rig

Thanks Rob. Can you give me a ballpark on price paid? Those website without prices sure make me scratch my head...

$4 - 5 bucks each, from memory , send your branch an email, normally happy to send some one a quote

Can you use a car seat from a car for the rig, or are you better off going for something lighter (SaaS seats?).

My seat cost me about €150. A seat from the scrapyard was similarly priced :thbd:
The weight of my seat is 6.7 kg (see here), a car seat is often > 2x that weight.
The lower the weight, the better the movements. So you have to balance this with your budget…

Thanks value1, I was thinking the car seats would be heavy, and don't remember how or why I think that, but the logic of keeping things light makes a lot of sense, given the intent of the motion aspect of motion simulation.

Your posts describing the project are so well done. Thanks!

I use a baja seat which is commonally used in drag cars here in Australia , plastic very light as in 2.5kg including thin cover, not very comfortable but you feel absolutly everything from the sim.
Value1 is right ballancing the overall wieght is the key in a successful sim.

This project is happening in a round about kind of way as I look at Arduino stuff and interface bits and pieces to it. I researched car seats for a while but turns out they are heavy mofos, and the office chair I bought coz it looks good only weighs 7.9kg, including the arms that hold the base to the upright, so that's a start.

I have researched PVC pipe suppliers thanks to bsft's help, and have the best price available there.

My next step is to do a prototype like Rob and Historiker have, with some movement I can generate from the Arduino itself, considering I have a Mega and am about to hook up 2 extra serial ports and a bluetooth module. Am getting the bluetooth module to talk to my Android phone at the moment too. All good fun.

Just a quick update - I'm here for the long haul, but in no hurry, just taking my time.

Is hobbyking.com.au any good for buying (small) servos and pushrods and stuff?
Or can you suggest somewhere else?

I used my local hobby shop, cheap servos can be bought for under $25, for model purposes even miniature servos can be used too, I just asked them whats the cheapest servo you have, they handed me 2x Futaba s148 servos for $25 each. Push rod and bits are Standard servo rod 1.6mm I think and connecters are cheap and as pictured below.



Please excuse the blury photo couldn't find the camera, lol off me old iphone.

hello aarondc !

what kind of nDOF have you finally choosed ?
[img600px]http://www.x-simulator.de/forum/gallery/image.php?album_id=144&image_id=478[/img600px]

I've just read in this post that wiper motors are not suitable for moving more than the seat ...
with more than 1 year of feedback, Lipide512 managed to make a playseat moving even the screen !
http://www.gamoover.net/Forums/index.php?topic=25907.msg399897#msg399897

I followed him (see in my signature) with no worry for my 2DOF ... and now planning to add traction loss !

Hi Mat

I have not made the decision regarding DOF yet. I drew pictures of 2 to 6 DOF rigs last night and had the 3DOF up and down rig reversed, with 2 motors at the back and one at the front, but had forgotten about the traction loss model, so thanks for the post.

I have lots of ideas and projects in development (mostly on paper / in notepad.exe) and am in no hurry to do my sim, instead looking at all the options and learning as much as I can before pulling the trigger.

One idea I had a while back but decided was not going to work was for the centre pivot. My idea was to use something like a 4WD exhaust jack:

[img600px]http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/270/slln.jpg[/img600px]

One of my design goals is to have a very quiet rig, so I dropped the idea as it needs a fairly constant (pump-driven) pressure to work. But it would provide a very stable, fluid pivot mechanism, I think, and they use them to jack up 2 tonne 4WDs, so the weight of the rig would not be an issue...

bsft: I think you have 2 rigs yeah? One sit driven and one feet driven? Can you share the pros/cons of the 2 different setups? D you prefer one over the other?

And thanks for the links to your build, [strike]good[/strike] amazing reading indeed.

I'll have a look at the other build you linked to now.

the foot motor rig, shorter throw as its a longer way from pivot, like 700mm, but using leverage, it can move heaps fatter driver, up to 140kg.
The knee motor mount, like this old rig 2dof-redesigned-big-worm-gear-motor-sim-t3640.html more throw with same length levers on motors, but cannot accommodate a fatter driver, like over 110kg, unless I move the pivot balance point. I think it was 350mm from pivot.
Both frame are of different design of course. Both work very well. No real favourite.
Rig design has been changing with me, trying new ideas and setups to find several solutions.
I like both current rides, PVC is used most as it is online, Foot motor for fun with mates and kids.

As for the airbag design, some else did that already to support the weight. It is a good idea.

Someone already did the airbag? Hah! Nothing new under the sun, is there!?

Would be interested to see how they did it, how noisy it was, etc.

Have a lllooooooooonnnnggg dig through the threads....

Couldn't see a airbag pivot work, unless motion is restrained so the centre doesn't roll past it centre for 3dof or lower, but 6dof mmm different approach. Model are a good way to test if your not in a rush, me a good pivot for 3dof is a uni top for roll and pitch and a shaft that can compress and rebound with the help of a spring, should sit at its centre position when loaded so that it can help in the massive weight transfer of lifting compared to rolling and pitching. Gunna need some grunt. Air actuation as in lineers has been done way in the past but even found by commercial companies to be not good, way to slow and laggy.

FOUND IT!!!

my-project-zero-gravity-4dof-t3103.html

Good searching, thanks!

Wow. That dude knows his stuff!

Ok noob question:

In a lot of the setups I read about, there's 2 computers, a micro controller, then acuators:
1. game computer
2. force / control computer
3. micro controller
4. actuators

It looks like a program grabs values from the game computer and sends them to the control computer, which processes the data before sending it to the microcontroller. The micro controller than positions the actuators of the motion rig to match the values passed in.

Is that right?