D.I.Y 2DOF motion simulator

I have decided to endeavor into building my own motion simulator, I have done some research on this and am a little confused with some aspects of it. I think from here it is best to just outline what I am after and what I KNOW about getting it.

I am going to be building a 2DOF wiper motor arduino and monster moto set up (forgive me if this is not the correct place to post this). I have found the diagrams online and seen finished project pictures which show me the lengths I have to go to. the main area of confusion for me comes when the diagram says I need a pc to act as "xsim sender" and "xsim profiler". I was hoping that I had just over thought this whole idea and that I could infact just use the one pc to do the whole lot (again forgive me if im mistaken).

building the framework and the mechanicals should be straight forward once iv figured out what the optimum angles are for the link rods to be set at (hopefully you can all help).

the electronics and the programming will be the main task for me to overcome. I have 100% ZERO knowledge of arduino and monster moto , or the code that runs it. so Im loking for someone who has already created one of these machines to talk me through it.

I have only got a static seat at the moment and am hoping that I will be able to use this as a basis for my sim (im only looking for the seat to move not the pedals and wheel).

so far the items that I have on my shopping list are as follows:

Monster Moto Shield :£20
http://www.dx.com/p/monster-moto-shield-for-arduino-red-161274#.U0XZdppwZhh
Arduino Board :£10
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/1612...ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108
Drop Links :£9
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PEUGEOT-3...arts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM&hash=item19d012ee62
Potentiometers :£2
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3pack-10K...al_Components_Supplies_ET&hash=item20d54d9740
Power Supply :£25
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-PS-360...omputing_PowerSupplies_EH&hash=item4ac886a65c

I do realise that I have not yet planned which motors I am going to use. the answer for this is simple. I DONT KNOW. I have to admit im relying on you guys to point out what I can and cant run using the gear I have put in above. was just going to use wiper motors out of an old defender or something similar.

I think this is a practical way to start and I hope this covers most of the main bases on what I need to kick start this project. any help at all is going to be greatly appreciated by me (not the missus).

thanks in advance for all you help and more thanks to @motiondave for pointing me in the direction of this community

Hello @MattAKAbez ,and welcome.
ok I will forgive you for mentioning x-sim sender and profiler. Obviously that software is not supported here. Its only Simtools thats here and is better than the other, more games, offline usable, free to use, no need to buy a "key".
You are welcome to use ard and hbridges, and there are several codes. From memory, @eaorobbie , @prilad , @RufusDufus , @Historiker can direct you to a code that works with minimal fuss.
If you do not mind spending the extra, the Pololu JRK 12v12 is a powerful little board that needs no coding and is very fast. It will run 14v at 30-40 amps all day with heatsink and cooling.
Motors, wipers can be a start , but you need to earth isolate them. Find the earth point using this diagram

hopefully you do not have to pull apart the motors. Try to find as cheap as possible and from a large passenger car will do nicely. Use 12v for 12v. DO NOT use 24v on 12v, half the speed , half the torque. ergh.
I ran $10 wipers on my first builds. If one was too hard to earth isolate, I tossed it out and bought another.
These days guys use these style of motors http://www.ebay.ca/itm/GEAR-MOTOR-1...ILLCRAB-POT-PULLFEED-150160-rpm-/370915744975 or something similar depending on what part of the world you are in. Stronger, more powerful and faster. I think @eaorobbie calculated a linear motion speed of something like 500mm per second with a 50mm ctc lever under load. Thats WAY faster than SCN under load.
As for frame build, plenty of seat movers here. For wipers to start, use shoulder mount for sure to save the wipers from too much load, then move up to bigger motors later and get the crap shaken out of you.
Post up some pics of your existing build and we can advise on changes.
@Nick Moxley did the same thing and now he is in motion in a short time.
Hope that helps a bit.
Cheers, David.
P.S. since when are women possible to keep happy........

ah I apologise, I literally saw one of these and decided IM HAVING ONE haha. the jrk you mentioned I have read about it but didn't know if there was more than one kind. if you could supply the link ill have a ganders. basically I have a zero bufdget at the moment so I will be buying components as and when. would the system you talk about run from one machine or would it need 2 as per the previous idea. on top of this what kind of pc spec should I be looking to use. im quite happy at the moment running f1 2013 from my i5 laptop with hd 4000 graphics. im assuming this wouldn't cut it for the motion sim too

this is my existing static setup. the stainless panels you see between the seat and the base are not standard the person I purchased it off put those in so I was thinking, remove them. put in CV joint. and extend the bottom rear of the actual frame (not the seat) to house all the motors and wizardry. maybe make a new frame to house a better seat. as the guy who owned this one was possibly the scruffiest, smelliest C*** iv ever met.

http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1393 one per motor. 7 wires, one usb cable, hook up a pot on the motor shaft for feedback.
The graphics on the laptop would probably not run it. But you could use the laptop as motor control, then a half decent dual core, 4 gig ram and decent graphics card for main game use would do the job. 2 PCS. Or if you want to splash put a quad core pc. Use windows 7 though. I have 2 sims, one has main sim pc for games and talks to laptop for motor control, the other uses a quad core pc for all in one.
I know what its like to have no money, dont panic, you will get there in time, a bit at a time.

thats convert possible, with a frame like this

or like this

Cheers, David.

well If its possible id like to have EVERYTHING under the seat, so I pretty much plug in a 240v plug in and it fires it all up at once. I think I might be able to get my hands on a AMD 6 or 8 core with 8gb ram for very cheap. maybe just a quick graphics update and that would do the trick. definitely sounds like its less complicated to use all in one. ill have a look at the links now and see what I can muster together. are those jrks in need of something like the arduino or do they connect directly to the pc sending the signals?

http://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/desk-racer-2dof.5326/ here is the thread for the desk racer with everything under the seat, jrks, power supplies, motors. I just plug it into 240v, plug in jrks , click the simtools programs, click game and I am off.
That would do the job as long as you dont weigh over 100 kg. I am 85kg and it throws me around well, there are videos down the page on the thread. Comparable to a shoulder mount seat mover (I have one as well )
The PC sounds good as well, just toss in a decent graphics card. Usually a $200 card will do it, GTX 660, ATI equivalent (not sure). Or even an old GTX460 or 470 if you can find one. I remember seeing a GTX470 second hand at a pawn shop for $115, I didnt buy it as I have enough graphics cards in my computers. My 10 year old son has a 2.9 gig dual core 4 gig ram, windows 7, GTX460. It runs games fine, but due to 2 cores it would have a bit of trouble running simtools I think. It pays to have 4 cores minimum for motion sim use. Especially if you run a dash at a later date. Never too much power.
I have built a separate pc for the desk racer so I can demo it. It is $75 AMD motherboard, AMD A8-6600K Quad Core $135 , GTX660 card $220 (I forgot about 470 card), 4 gig ram (already had it), 500 gb HDD $70, 700 watt psu $100. it cost about $600 to put together, I run cracked windows 7 so I saved $110 there as well to total cost, I had a spare case sitting around. Works great at 1920 x 1080 and good high end graphics resolution.
Sites like www.canirunit.com are good to test a pc to see if it will run a game.
the JRKS work on their own, no need for an ard to control them. Thats the beauty of them, an "all in one" unit. One per motor.
We will help you get there in no time.
Cheers, David.

ah its like stepping into the oracles library here!! exactly the thing I am looking for. admittedly I did ask the question about the JRKs prematurely as when I looked further down the page I saw that it actually told me that I only needed to plug into the usb. im going down the local scrappers at some point over the weekend and grab a cv joint. and a couple of cheap motors out of a van or small lorry, hopefully they will be rated a bit higher than the ones in cars as they (in theory) have to apply more power to move the larger wipers. waiting for some welding rods to turn up and then I can start savaging the setup to make the alterations. iv set myself on just having the seat move and then in the future just extend the platform so that I can include the wheel and pedals. I cant do that right away as there is no permenant place for this thing to live so I want the seat base to be the bulk and then everything erlse just stack ontop of it as it does now. when im looking into it I see people have different locations for the rod mounts. you mentioned shoulder level is that the place that produces greater effect for lesser effort or is that just me thinking too much? im going to try secure this computer so that I can keep the budget as low as possible. is it wise to make a bit of a diary in this thread or is there somewhere that is suited better for that in this forum, it would be nice to show you what you have helped me create.

the last question before my return from the scrappers is how do I test the rotation of the motor? is it as simple as whack a battery on it and draw some lines on the shaft and the housing and visually check it. and should the just run clockwise, counter clockwise, or both. again is the test for both as simple as reversing the polarity of the power source (just switching the live and ground onto the opposite terminals).

To the last question, if we talk about wiper motors, what i done i simply connected motors to the battery then changed polarity and tried again. Did both directions to find out which turns faster. My CEP wipers turns faster counter clockwise. It is easily visible also you can hear difference too. Just i took out motors from the wiper frame before that. And you need to hold them tight, they jumps really strong on the start
Also if you will go JRK's way, when all connected to JRK's you will be able to 'Detect motor direction' in the polulu software menu, which makes very small movement with the motor so you can easily see its direction.

@MattAKAbez ,
you said " when im looking into it I see people have different locations for the rod mounts. you mentioned shoulder level is that the place that produces greater effect for lesser effort or is that just me thinking too much?"
no you are not thinking too much, shoulder mount is for sure the least effort to move even a seat mover. The desk racer design needs bigger motor thought, wipers would struggle a bit. Make sure the angle is at least 15 deg back and out the sides, More is good on a shoulder mount.

" is it wise to make a bit of a diary in this thread or is there somewhere that is suited better for that in this forum, it would be nice to show you what you have helped me create."
For sure, just document it here. this is the best place for your build.
Wipers are a bit slower in the other direction, and from using wipers, I didnt really notice that once in game and the rapid direction changes going on.

Again, you need to try to establish a design to work from, be it shoulder mount, or what ever takes your fancy. Then we can properly advise on motor placement.

before we go any further, the images here are not an overall example of my creative ability LOL. they are shocking I know but if the get the job done that's what counts.


this first diagrm is for the locations of the electrical components I think this is a pretty generic design and very similar to many peoples versions of this.



this second image is my interpretation of a shoulder mounted device. the very top bar of the yellow being the headrest support. the only thing that I cant show is the arms that are going to attach the rods to the motors. a few that I have seen have varied in length, but I think im going to go with between 50 and 80mm between the centres to give me a (what I believe) larger throw and therefore a bigger movement on the chair.

im here for you help so if iv overlooked something I would really be greatful as it would save me sorting out an error made now when it comes to welding it all up.

thanks again

does something like this help?

otherwise, you look to be on track

yeah that is a very good diagram and shows me that I don't actually need to extend the rear of the frame by as much as I had thought. ill get together all the components and pack them as tightly as possible and see what sort of size frame im going to need.

welding rods have been dispatched, scrao yard visit tomorrow for motors and joint. should be fabricating by Monday

got the spec for the pc. not quite as higher spec as id thought. but still not garbage, wanting to know if it is worth an investment solely to run this SIM.

AMD Athlon II X4 3.1GHZ
8gb RAM DDR3
GeForce 550 ti 1GB graphics.

those are the specs for what I call the necessary parts of the build. I can build upon these at any time. I know they are definitely not HIGH end parts but if the will sufficiently run the machine with a view to upgrading over time that's exactly what im after.

your feedback is appreciated as usual

its a quad core and should do it.
Ram is enough (never enough!)
Card will do as long as you run lower res graphics.
That will do the job for sim and game running though. Simtools uses bugger all power so it will run on a hamster in a cage wheel.
If you get it, run it throught www.canirunit.com. to test how it should go with games, it gives you a general idea of game running requirements.
Cheers, David.

Back on the diagram I posted, I built my now sold dc motor seat mover more or less off those dimensions. Base was 750mm wide from memory on mine, but it move a 130 kg bloke easy.