DIY FFB Steering wheel (MMosFFB ) (In Progress)

SMC3 supports the IBT-2 already. You can read more on the first post here:

http://www.xsimulator.net/community...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/

There is also discussion on these drivers in that thread.

For other uses (Such as Alexi's project) this might help:

http://wordpress.bonairetec.com/?p=75

Well I was kind of hoping to update this thread with good progress but I ended up stopping any more development on one system that I was working on.
I was hoping to put it up here as a sub $200 DD FFB wheel but alas it was too good to be true. I'll explain what I was doing anyway.
I had the idea of turning a treadmill motor into a DD FFB wheel and by all means it did work, and scarily for that fact. A treadmill that I purchased for $30
uses a 180V DC motor and in my mind would make a great DD motor. Well I was right at least on the strength of the motor. But safety concerns made me end the development prematurely.
I was not liking the idea of having 180V pulsating at my finger tips and so I have decided to go in a different direction. Parts have started trickling in and I will update once I have something worth while to show you.

I have been busy in the mean time.

I finally ended up wiring in my 5 DIY 5 speed shifter.



I didn't like the first sequential that I made so I made a new one. Made the shift knob myself


Activated by pushbutton switches.


Difficult to see but within the sping seat I have drilled and tapped a hole for a screw to sit in and activate the button on either side.


And also a new inverted pedal design. Still in the design phase.


Still got plenty of work to do on all the peripherals. Not done yet

Nice work Alexey I have been very happy with my shifter (7 speed) as well. I see that you changed the design slightly with stops rather than ramps for the bearings. It would give a more solid "thunk" entering into gear, nice.

You are definitely right about the "thunk" into gear. I tried to emulate the feeling of an real shifter and this seems to achieve that. The gates look quite ugly, but feels really good. They didn't start out that ugly.
I opted for a 5 speed as in most games that I play, the cars have either a 5 speed or sequential gearbox. Never liked 7 gears on a H pattern. If I do decide to make one it will be gated on the top and labelled as not to confuse the gear positions while using it.

The nice thing is that with the design that you and I are using it is pretty easy to change the gear configuration.

We need to add your shifter to the DIY Faq page, and of course give @elnino a giant for sharing his design with us.
http://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/diy-h-shifters.59/

Updates!

I've now completed construction of a 150W FFB wheel. One word to describe it is "overkill".
In testing I have had the reduce FFB strength to %25 as even road effects can get so strong at %100 that you cannot turn the wheel without great force.
A 100W motor would have been sufficient in this design.

Some photos of initial testing:



I originally wanted to use aluminium plate for the base and support pillars but found that the wooden frame was more than strong enough and also allowed for a very fast prototype construction.

The final product and comparison to a Logitech Driving force Pro.



It's definitely quite larger than your run of the mill ffb wheel but it is also considerably more powerful.
Once mounted on a rig I don't think the size is really going to matter that much as it doesn't block any view that isn't blocked normally.
It could be made smaller by relocating the power supply to be external and the use of multi gearing to drop the height.




Pedal, sequential shifter and 5 speed gearshift outputs with enough room for anything else I need to add later.



Since the STM32 has no real mounting method I made my own PCB and made the outputs more manageable. I also added angular adjustment at the bottom.

Price list:

150W 12V DC motor (with chain drive sprocket): $35
82 tooth #25 chain sprocket: $22
#25 chain: $20
Monster moto driver: $7
STM32F Discovery board: $35
2 phase encoder: $20
40A power supply" $30
Raw materials (wood, alluminum, screws etc) : $50
Flange mount bearings: $12
Steering wheel: ~$30 (refurbished) will end up getting something a bit nicer.

In total: $261 (give and take considering unknown cost of raw materials, I already had most of the materials to build the unit)
In terms of price point it would be comparible to a second hand G27 and $100 less than a G29. But a world away in terms of FFB strength.

The design could be vastly improved in terms of drive method (belt/gear drive).

In all I am really happy with the outcome and am now continuing on with the pedals and shifters.

I hope to put some videos out in the near future of thier operation and strength.

Cheers

wow great work!. thanks for the detailed picture too.

I'm thinking i should emulate this for that TX project, just ditch the motor and control board and replace with 12v motor, disco board and motor monster.

dear Alexey

some questions/thought

1. wooow it is just grate what you did (woow again)

2. as you can see in this question i am not at all an electronic guy... but... what you did with the discovery card can be replaced with arduino uno?? (i mean trying to get the price tag lower)

3. i have never understand how does a ffb works, the motor moves the wheel and then you counter turn the wheel and the motor? (i guess it is obvious, but if so, does the motor gets hurt and it will eventually blow or what.

4. when you plug your wheel to the pc how does it is recognized by the usb port?

best regard

fer

Sorry for the late reply, been a tad busy.

To answer your questions:

1. Thank you!

2. Currently I do not know if you can replace the STM32 with arduino. You would have to find out yourself but so far I haven't seen anything.
Your overall price tag would only drop by about $20 (you should be able to get a discovery board for $30 as opposed to arduino for $10). In the grand scheme of thing it's barely a saving in the overall cost.

3. You are partly correct. FFB tries to emulate the tires on the car resisting turning forces like in a real car. If you have never been on the race track it is difficult to describe the feeling that the steering wheel gives you when you run out of grip or changes in road surface at speed, tight corners and long high speed sweeping bends. FFB gives you a really good feeling and emulates very well in terms of real world effects (depends on car type, power steering kills all feeling, suspension etc). So yes, the motor resists you hands turning the wheel when you turn the steering wheel but not all the time and in varying strength depending on the situation.
3.1. Eventually yes the motor will burn out due to high current. This could happen in a week or it could happen in 4 years. If you do not cool the motor it will definitely burn out but if you provide adequate cooling and ventilation then the motor should last a very long time.

4. For the discovery board. You will have to download the utility and drivers for the board. Very simple to do and there are guides on youtube.

I'll be happy to answer any other questions you may have.

Cheers

man thanks a lot for your replay... i will keep an eye in your post, again grate work!

(what you did compared to a regular cheap ffb, is the feeling better?)

fer

Cool project indeed.

I just quickly skimmed through it, but a lot of interesting details I will come back to.

Thanks

Great achievement! You did it: congrats!

great work!!

but, i´ve read this several times, and thinking about it, why not use a normal car power steering? in one of this you have a motor, a gear and an encoder. i don´t know how is resolution of the encoder, but...

ok, i´ve found this. it´s from an opel corsa b, the second one. and i think it can be use for our porpuse.

Looks quite interesting, here in Austrailia that would be cost prohibitive due to not having such parts freely available.
It could work quite well actually.

I suggest to buy it, to wire the gadgets together and report your progress

ok, but give me time to do it.

alexey, here we have scrapping cars where we can buy second hand parts for our cars. and if you want it, the garages use this parts to fit your car.

We have the same here but generally the second hand parts that are cheap are for much older cars or cars that do not have the technology equipped.
We can buy those types of parts from specialist second hand parts dealers but they cost an arm and a leg. Just as a comparison something like that would cost $400 + here.

We also have that in Australia, but unfortunately they often want top dollar for anything but rubbish .

ok, I don´t have de power steering yet, but I want to learn more about MMos ffb tool and how it works. I have a dfgt at home and I will test with it. i do the conections like in this post, but someone can tell me how is the encoder conection? i don´t want to broke it.

Hi birle1, do you have a multi meter and are you capable of tracing circuits?
From memory, you need to find the ground, this wire should buzz out to the power source or USB ground.
Then you need to find the V++ which can be traced back to a low voltage regulator on the DFGT pcb (3.3v?). the other two wires will be your encoder A and B channel (no need to check, polarity can be changed in the MMosFFB utility or just swap the connections). I have found that the colours coming from the optical encoder do not follow standard colouring guidelines (red = power or black = GND). If you can still power your unit, the V++ line on the encoder will read 3- 3.5 V DC.