DIY 2DOF Budget Build

Guns????

I thought you were Australian, not American.

"You'll shoot your eye out kid!"

Sure am mate.


We do have very strict gun laws after one major incident in Noorbeast Land (Tasmania)
the Port Arthur Massacre in which a lone gunman killed 35 people and wounded 18 other people https://www.britannica.com/event/Port-Arthur-Massacre
That event prompted the government of the day to introduce stricter gun laws banning all semi and semi automatic and military rifles except for certain cases
e.g. pest eradication, stock control and primary production.
They also did a national buy back program and destroyed thousands of handguns and rifles.
So now even a slingshot is a prohibited weapon in most states.
But people like myself have done training and licensing for the possession of firearms for sporting shooters and hunters
and there is special class H for all handguns including all types, centrefire, rimfire, air pistols for Club Use only.
So all weapons must be kept in appropriately rated storage safes which is more strict for handguns.
You can not just have a nightstand gun or for personal protection. All guns and ammo must be safely stored when not in use or for maintenance.
So it is a hard earned privilege and not a right like in the USA.
Even with these laws, the criminals have guns galore and we do have gun related crimes but not on a daily basis by far.
And I love my guns like the Ruger 357 in my pic and you always get a kick when you pull the trigger and feel the power and smell the gunpowder

I'm not up on Canadian gun laws, but we don't have grizzly or brown bears like you have, but we have a special bear called a Drop Bear which a cross breed Koala Bear.
It is coming into Drop Bear season and you have to be very alert as they drop out of gum trees and rip your throat out.
Just about everything think else in Australia will kill you too.

There's few horror stories when using SMC3-SPS with a new 2x60. It's mostly plug and play other than knowing how to program an arduino. Other things are similar for both like hooking up feedback and using a utility for settings.

I'm slack I know but still no motion because I have been making a mount for the HOTAS system that I got yesterday so that I can try some flight & space sims.
It's only an Saitek X52 but it will do what I need and it was cheap.
It's all very cosy but they are easy to reach and I'm skinny anyhow so if I can fit is all I care about.
It is easy to remove, just two wing nuts and It will come off as one complete unit.
So I am happy with the fit etc so it will get a coat of blue jam tomorrow to match the rest of the frame.
My VR headset is visible as well.

Looking sharp my man!!!!

I see that you've added a couple of fans to the lid of your electronic box as well, or has it always been like that?

You'll have a blast with flight/space sims in VR on that rig of yours.


I've had a very successful weekend of testing racing sims on mine, everything is moving as it should.

Flight sims will be a bit different to set-up though, as they'll need smoother transitions for rolls, etc. in order to trick the brain.

There are threads on here which cover those issues, which I believe is called "washout".


If I come across any tips or tricks I'll let you know.

Thanks Kranky or do you have a real name ?
I have just been trying to configure the space sim Elite Dangerous but it has so many options and the HOTAS has more button than a shirt factory
and I got lost or stuck in video training mode, so I bailed on that for the moment and headed over to Gun Club VR.
Now I can shoot and know how to reload, and eject a mag but it's a whole lot more difficult in VR and I kept dropping my pistol and getting killed or timeout.
It's still a hoot, and no ammo to buy and dumb gun laws to obey.
I'm contemplating an expresso machine add-on to compliment it
I really need to get my motion moving so I can have more fun.
My best mate called in today and I gave him a VR demo and he was blown away and he's an old fart like me at 65
We have known each other for a bit over 55 years and went to primary school together.
Friends like that will probably be a rarity among the newer generations.
Did you check out my Drop Bear video Some tourists actually fall for it, even all the deadly creatures we have, but that is true
Oh well, 3.00 am it must be bed time me thinks.

I'm very slowly trying to get Sim Tools setup and working but I must have buggered up somewhere as I gone through the manual and followed the steps and
I have LFS running and the capture data on and also live data is working in Virtual Mode and the sliders are responding to my imputs, but I am getting no movement from
either motor.
So can some one look at my screen shots and tell me where I might have goofed please.

Finished the HOTAS mount and added some braces and it copped some blue to match the rest of the rig.

Ok Noorbeast I will give it a go

No luck so far. I did what you said unpatched Did some laps, Repatched and ran the game LFS and captured data and it was showing in Vitual output pan on both axis , saved those new settings, the tried Manual output and SFA movement when I move the sliders.
I think that I'm close and the motors are getting power and slightly quivering when idle so i think it is comms problem or setting but I do have the port setting right and the baud rate etc, rotational output selected.
Are the settings kept in one profile file that I could send as get you to see if anything obvious is out of whack ?
And as usual it's late , 2.40 am so my brain needs a rest

Set the baud in Simtools to 500000. 38400 is arduino to your sabertooth rate and 500000 is Simtools to arduino rate.

Noorbeast, I changed the baud rate in Sim Tools as you suggested and turned on Axis tuning and motor A started to rotate on it's own and would not stop.
So it's the same old problem or setting at work.
Motor B did not move at all.
So I guess it's back to SMC utility to see what's going on.

Heeeeeyyyyyy...I recognize that desktop wallpaper.

I live around a 1/2hr drive from that intersection.

Back in my 20's we'd drunkenly stumble around that very location.


I'm sorry to hear that you're still having issues with that Arduino/Sabertooth setup.

Hope you sort it out soon.

It's relevant to my love of German Shepherds.
I've had four so far and my last one was Jack who I had from a pup until he was six, then I got bowel cancer and spent a year dealing with that and I could give him the care and exercise that he needed so he went back to live with his mum and the breeder that I got him from.

If you swap your current motor 1 motor and pot with your motor 2 motor and pot does the problem switch too or is it still motor 2 that doesn't move? If the problem is still with motor channel 2 only then its likely a communications problem. Again the sketch is optimized to run at 115200 and your trying to run it three times slower at 38400. One last thing you can try before switching to a supported controller is to make a modification to the sketch to slow it down which may give it enough time to process incoming serial data. Look for this line at the top of the sketch and increase it from 1000 to 2000 and test to see what happens.

#define PROCESS_PERIOD_uS 1000 // 244 -> 4096 per second approx

ps While this may give serial data time to process I don't know how much pid processing will be effected.

Thanks Noorbeast, I will do some testing and see what happens.

I really don't want to have to change drivers as I just can't spare another $250 or so for some JRK's unless someone wants to trade.
I already have too much invested in it compared to my pension income

Back again.
Noorbeast I checked my pots and they were out a bit so fixed that and now I am getting movement from bot motors in Manual Testing.
When you run LFS and you have Vitual Testing ON is the rig meant to follow the game inputs ? as the sliders are moving in the window
but no movement from the motors.
BTW I have NOT modified the sketch yet, it is as it was.

Can you spot anything out of the ordinary in the pics. ?
Last question is how do you get each motor to it's home position ?
Is it done with the pot position or in software setting as my pots are out orf home position and each by about 45 degrees which makes me think that the position in SMC is meant be the same position, as in above or below the Target line ?
Thanks.

Update.
I did something ? but now I have both axis responding to the LFS in Virtual Testing but is hard to see how much it's moving and drive LFS at the same time.
I think the only problem now is working out how to get both axis in sync and start from a common home position which they are not doing atm and they are
about 90 degrees apart .
Sop as I suggested I think I need to move the pots to the same position ? YES or NO