Help choosing the right kind of 2dof for me.

I took some hours today, studying what to do and weighting pros and cons, I decided to build as a first build a desk racer "clone" ( @bsft yours is too tempting ) , and keeps reading and getting experience for something more complex in the future.

Hi,
As promise, please find attached a couple of pictures.
Please excuse the dust, it was located in my basement and I had heavy woodworking closeby.
Project is for timebeing on hold, but not cancelled.
OscarH

Thanks very much @OscarH ! Did you got it working?
Maybe too much stress for the motor so near the shaft. What I really like is the compactness of the unit

Hi,
Compactness is one of the reason why I moved to this setup. I can also be easily dismantled and moved away, much ore than the Tornadoblu setup who was one piece...
The motors does no suffer from any stress using this type of actuator. If you removed the supply on motor, the seat stay as it. This was different from Tornadoblu, as center of gravity was too much on the front, and motors had to support 2.5 Amps to have seat staying horizontal. This was the reason for the big counterweigh in back to compensate.

So far, I didn't had chance to use the new seat as real simulator, I just excercised the 2 bank and picth motors manually. Worked well.
Then came another bigger project (a new home to design and build) so it became asleep.

In the meantime, I have seen my old BasicStamp soruced from TronicGr can be replaced by an Arduino + shield, so this bring new ideas to surface... but probably not short term.
Cheers.
OscarH

I mean being that close to the shaft, because I saw others that puts the motors as far as they can from the shaft to reduce stress over motors. Anyway, I really like your unit! I will try to do something like that in the future, but not at my first attempt.

Well, Today I lost my first round with Arduino
1-Did the test to the motomonster, and one of the combinations gave me 4,96v instead of 12v, so, the MM is faulty.
2-Didn't had the right cables and can't solder good enough to suit dif ones.
3-I'd paid for the soldering job on the MM, now it is faulty, money to the toilet, not much but to the toilet anyway.

Anyway, I will have a revenge

It does not modify much in my motors, if I twist the cup, it slow or speed up the motor same to both sides, so not of much help. I also tried using different brushes, using the ones that are at 12 o'clock each other gave me slow speed.

Back
All is wired again, using RufusDufus SMC3, but looks like maybe I have a problem with the POTs, also the only way I can turn on the motors in SMC3 utils is putting the max limit to 0.
Pics and video of wiring:


Any tips?

hi @mariano68 I assume you have read and followed all the steps strongly recommended below:

Initial Setup

1. Disconnect the motor power supply
2. Make sure Simtools is not running – we’re not ready for that yet!
3. Wire up the Arduino (with SMC3 installed) to your H-Bridges and connect to your computer via USB
4. Run the Windows SMC3 Utility software and make sure it communicates with the Arduino (There is no need to set baud rates, they are not configurable)
5. Set the Kp, Ki, Kd, PWMmin, PWMmax, PWMrev to 0 for ALL motors (This will make sure the motors don’t move)
6. Set Clip to 255 (you need to do this first) and Limit to 255 (This will give you plenty of margin if something goes wrong while setting up)
7. Turn on the power to your motors – nothing should move at this stage!
8. Set Kp to about 400
9. Now slowly, increase PWMmax… at some point the motor should start to move. When it does check the “Green” feedback line is moving toward the “Blue” target position.
   • 
     
   • If it is then that motor and feedback is wired correctly - proceed to test other motors.
     
   • If it is moving away turn off motor power immediately (or quickly reduce PWMmax again). In this case you need to either reverse the wires to the motor being tested –OR– reverse the +5V and GND wires to your feedback pot for the motor being tested (do not do both). Restart the test from the beginning.
10. Do the above for each motor

Thanks @Pit I did from 1 to 8, I'll do something to connect the POT to the motor and I will try "9". Just the way the motor spin out of any kind of control even if I moved the POT manually was what made me not to even try point "9".

if you follow carefully the steps there is nothing going wrong.

Ok, connected but I think it isn't the way, but I post the video as the other problem is still here, that is I cant change the clip limit from 0 or my motor shut down and I dont know why.

either your pot is faulty or it is not correctly wired.

Changed the way the pot connected to the shaft, now directly.
Also tried with another POT:

@mariano68 , do yourself a favor, the amount of time you have now spent getting the ard going and its still not working properly from what I can see, you would have been better spending more money in the first place and bought a pair of 12v12 JRKS.
Think about a time versus money factor. You would have been going a lot quicker for the sake of $60 or so and the endless hours you have put in sorting code and goodness knows what else.

I did myself a favor and ordered 2 JRK that will arrive mid June, I wrote that at the beginning of this thread, remember?
Also, where is the fun and the eternal building of character if we didn't fight against the impossible (arduino for me) ?
Anyway, I think I will prevail if help keeps coming .

so good luck in that case I will leave the thread for now. ntl the noisy signal has nothing to do with the Ards in general dear @bsft, I am rather sure there will be a way out of this behavior. Many times beginners do mistakes we have to advise independent of jrk or ard.

Thanks again for all your help, I don't understand why you leave the thread and decided to stop helping me as I did all you asked me to do. For sure beginners do mistakes, that's why are beginners (I am).
So, the problem is on the POTs side, I will get new and better POTS on Tuesday, Monday May 25 is no labor day (Revolution day) in Argentina.

you can do something more:

1. Upload the SMC3 code 0.63 (!) to the Ard
2. Connect ONLY the pot to the Ard
3. Start SMC3
4. Move the pot by hand and have a look to the screen - if the feedback line is NOT jerky the pot is OK, if the feedback line is jerky there must be something wrong.

I had a couple of pots (very cheap gadgets) which have been very noisy but never like the your's.

PS: take a detailed photo of the wiring and a video of all at least, as a last try