Hoddem's Aluminum Rig V2 (3-DOF, SFX, VR)

My how time flies, here is a quick catch-up of where I am at.
I received the donor amplifier board from ebay and I was able to harvest all the components needed for the damaged amplifier channel.



Here is the fixed amplifier board, don't mind the solder blobs, the leads on the replacement components were trimmed a little to short so I had to make up for that with lots of solder.

Initial tests looked good so I put the amplifier back together.



Here is a known good channel and the repaired channel playing the same source. I also tested with a transducer and all works as expected.




Amplifier issues aside I started final wiring. All of the wiring on the cockpit part of the rig were routed to the middle right of the rig. They will get bundled together and make a sort of flex cable that will then mount to the lower frame and enter into the enclosure through the two slots I previously made.



Kind of no going back at this point, I organized as much of the internal wiring as possible now I need to home run everything and start setting up software. It will be a pain as I can only lift the rig as high as the actuators lift it and then I have to work in the small space between the upper and lower sections.



More to come soon

Looking awesome matey ! and doesnt time fly by !!

I did a quick assessment of what is going to be needed to get this done. Turns out I left myself in a pretty good spot nearly a year ago.

I started working on the wiring again, I found some cable wrap and made some loops in the cable to allow for the movement of the cockpit. I don't think it will be the final solution, I will probably end up getting some (3d printing) real cable chains and figuring out how to make that work. I need to think about it a bit more as the cockpit inst just moving up and down, it also has pitch and roll which might not work with cable chain.



I have everything wired in except the 8 transducers and 4x fans at this point and all is working in initial testing.

A couple of things I need to fix yet
First, the switch box panels aren't to my liking. I tried a few different things with my 3d printer and I'm not happy with any of them. Its hard to see in the picture but I tested some different surfacing techniques and even some clear coats. Ultimately I think a single piece aluminum plate with machined text that is back filled with red paint would be just right, but for time and efforts sake I will probably stick with 3d printing. Also the emergency stop mushroom button broke of randomly, I will need to fix or replace that.



Second, I am having an issue with my tpu bushings working their way out of the cups. On initial testing I thought there would be enough friction to keep everything in place, but over time they seem to loosen up and now they are falling out. I added some retaining features to the parts and will have all new sets off the printer soon.






Third, I was able to put together some new computer gear last year. Well it was new and now its a little outdated again. I went with an AMD system this time, 5600x processor, B550 mobo 16gb ram and 2 onboard m.2 drives. I am also running two sound cards for vibration and my trusty old GTX1080. At this point I'm just waiting for the new gear to drop before I decide what to do about my graphics card situation. If I had to buy today I would go with a 6950X just due to the availability and the pricing. I picked up a reverb G2 on sale at some point too. so far its a great headset, but I really cannot utilize it to its full potential with my 1080.
Don't mind the atrocious cable management in this picture, I will get that fixed or possibly just close the lid and never see it again.



The new motherboard came with onboard Wifi, so naturally I have to make good use of that. I was originally going to use a powerline adapter to get network connectivity, but I found that any time I turned on the servos for the linear actuators the powerline adapter lost its connection. A few months back I pulled an Ethernet line to the garage so I have an access point close enough to get full speed on the simulator pc. funny enough, even without the antenna attached I was getting full speed.



Fourth, I want to add some limiter straps connecting the actuators to the cockpit, I have had a few times where the rig started to tip when I stepped on the wrong place climbing into it.


So here is where I am sitting now



I am slowly working through all the software setting everything and testing. I have my OSW up and running and I was even able to turn some laps in VR. next up is vibration, wind and eventually motion.

Well I have been at it on and off over the last few days and I feel like its always two steps forward and one step back.

With my OSW up and running I moved on to wind. I am running a Sabertooth 2x32 to 4x Seaflo blowers. I have tested a few different configurations and the Sabertooth 2x32 is by far the easiest to use. It has a built in micro-controller so all you need to do is send serial commands and it takes care of the rest. You can even program custom mapping so fan speed ramping doesn't need to start at zero and doesn't need to be linear.

I have two fans down by my legs and two pointed at my head. The upper and lower fans are on different channels of the sabertooth so I can adjust them independently of each other. I found that all 4 setup on speed control was too much at full power so I have the lower fans set to turn on at 25% power and stay there the entire time. The upper fans ramp from 0-100% at a speed range of 0-250mph anything over about 60% power is pretty aggressive especially with the reverb G2 which has off ear headphones.




I made a little phone holder that closely matches the stream deck design. No more trying to dig out my phone while strapped into the racing seat. Next up is a cup holder.




Next up was sim vibe and my transducers. I was able to get sim vibe setup and working, but something was still off with my amp. It's been so long since I did the last repair I don't even remember which channel was fixed at this point. I pretty much threw in the towel on this amp and ended up ordering a new one. I was able to find a certified manufactured refurbished unit on ebay for around $250 shipped. Ebay provides a 2 year warranty on the unit so if this one goes bad I should at least get my money back. While I wait for the new one I have to figure out how I'm going to go about getting the old one out and the new one back in.


so that issue aside i was looking through the forums and saw this


I reached out to Flag Ghost on discord and for $40usd he sent me all the plans to build his DIY belt tensioner. Pretty well thought out kit as it was, but I decided to put my own spin on it. Unfortunately it is not open source so I can't share any details other then some pictures of the finished product.



I have always wanted to add a belt tensioner especially because I still have a spare servo and drive left over from the SFX-100 kit.

Test prints are looking good and all the hardware is on order. Because of the angles I believe I will need to add some rollers to my seat so that's now on the list too.



Finally my new actuator cups are all installed, no more worrying about the TPU bushing working out. Each cup set was roughly 1/2 kg of petg and took over a day to print. the last thing I want is that to fall apart during use.


So after a few nights of software installation, firmware updates and hardware diagnostics I finally put it all together. Last night I did about 2 hours of racing with everything working (only 6 transducers). It was pretty awesome. I am still running my reverb G2 in potato mode in order to keep the FPS at 90, It definitely leaves a lot to be desired as far as visuals go, but the combination of VR, Motion, Fans, Vibration and the OSW is crazy fun. I still have a lot to do but I cannot wait until this thing is ready for every day use.

Lots of activity the over the holiday weekend.

My new amplifier showed up, looks brand new upon inspection.









I was able to pull the old amp out and inspect the damage, it looks like the same channel failed again. The resistor smoked for sure, but probably the transistors went again too.






I did some initial testing of the new amp to make sure all 8 channels are were working. The old amp would max out at about 42v AC with a 0db 50hz signal coming from my iphone. The new amp was spot on at around 42 volts at max gain. I also hooked up a transducer just to play around with it. My transducers are all rated for 50w each so when I setup my new amp I set the output voltage at the terminals to 14.5 volts. that should give me just over 50w. I was initially struggling to get a high enough gain with my two sound blaster audio cards, but I was able to turn off all the EQ features and boost the volume enough to easily hit my 14.5 volts.


I ran into a little snag with the new amp, I was working through each channel one by one and when I got to a certain channel the amp started popping every time I powered it up. This was exactly what happened to the old amp right before it blew. After a some evaluation i figured out that I have one transducer that the amplifier does not like. I think this was the reason the first amp blew a channel and I probably would have blown a channel on the second amp if I had let it go as is. I cant find anything wrong with this one transducer, but I had a spare so I swapped it out and the issue went away. Now all 8 transducers are working again and now that the amp gain is setup they seem to be working better then they ever have in the past.


Leftover parts



Onto the belt tensioner, I needed to squeeze another servo drive into my enclosure. I was able to prop up the cockpit with a jack stand and that gave me just enough room to work.



I moved my Argon servo drive over and that made just enough room to squeeze in my 4th and final AASD15A drive.



While I was under the hood I cleaned up the wiring as much as I really could. Its much better now, but the amount of wires and cables required is truly insane.


I have a Thanos AMC-AASD15A motion controller and he is working with the guys on his discord to get it better suited to running a seat belt tensioner. Unfortunately the version I have is not compatible with his beta firmware because of memory size constraints so I ordered a new MEGA2560 from Thanos-Motion.com. once that shows up I will be able to load the new firmware and have button control of the seat belt home position.

like this


I had to add some cables to the controller that will run to my relay bank which will then be controlled by a rotary switch on the switch bank. Solder job isn't perfect, but I did do this while it was all still inside the enclosure.



Here is the updated switch panel, unfortunately I have to remake the entire thing so i have several days of 3d printing to get it done.



I had to do a little rewiring to get all of this setup correctly, first of all my relay that turns on my amplifier was sticking on so I moved that over to a different channel. I am running two ethernet cables from my switch panel to my relay bank, I happened to have 2 unused wires left so those will be allocated to the seat belt position rotary switch. It's getting pretty messy, but its all still working.



Now I'm just waiting on a some parts in the mail, one or two more weekends and I should have this thing done.

I haven’t pulled it apart, I did check it with a meter and it’s not shorted, at least it wasn’t when I checked it. I also checked all the wiring going from the amp to that transducer and everything checked out. For some reason the amp just started thumping that transducer on power up, the same thing my old amp did right before it blew the channel. Because I had a spare I just swapped it and so far all is good so I’m just hoping I can move past this issue.

Picture Dump, I finished assembling the belt tensioner. I still need to cut and mount my belts in the clamps and I am pretty sure I will need to add some rollers to the seat too.









This is the clearance with the seat fully back, realistically you would need to be about 7ft to drive in this position. I like to have the range to make climbing in and out of the rig easier.



I also got a care package with my rotary switch and some replacement e-stop mushrooms. I should have my last few printed parts to finish the belt tensioner and switch box by this coming weekend.



I am now rocking a heavily modified Prusa MK3S+ (Bear Frame, Revo 6, Repetier Server, C920 Camera, MMU2S) and it is a really great printer, but compared to my MK2.5S it sure seems slower. the center section of my control box clocks in at around 37 hours, that same part would be close to half the time on my MK2.5S.

New switch box is installed, I am going to redo this at some point as I am still not crazy about the 3d printed panels. Wiring this was an absolute nightmare, I really needed about 4 hands to get this done without damaging anything. Also, I accidentally made the threads on the box 6-32 and they are supposed to be 8-32 so I will have to remake the whole thing down the road. I am going to redesign it so that I can install everything on the bench and then move the entire assembly to the rig.





The new MEGA2560 from Thanos-Motion.com is installed and updated with the latest seat belt tensioner firmware. I had to cut my existing seat belt straps so there is no going back now. The new rotary switch is working great though, it makes it really easy to set the starting tension when you first sit down. it works well enough that I am thinking about removing the adjustment feature on the shoulder straps.







I also threw on my anti tip straps, once I am happy with the length I will trim them down so I don't have any excess material hanging out.





I put my spare wheel and shift knob on the backside of the display mounting. I am using the simxperience accuforce QD which works really well and allows for USB connection through the QD. I had to buy two because I have two wheels and each set comes with both sides so I just mounted my spare half to the profile.



The last thing I got done over the weekend was to mount my fire extinguisher, safety first of course.



I still have the covers off the control box because I am still playing with the setting on the servo drive for the belt tensioner. Beyond that I just need to spend a lot of time configuring everything on the computer side. I will say its tough to make an progress tuning things because as soon as I get on the track I lose focus and just want to drive.

Also, now that I have my transducers tuned to the correct output wattage all I can say is holy crap 8 transducers at full power is OVERKILL to the max. I had to turn everything down because at idle in the Mazda miata in iracing I was shaking so bad I couldn't see what I was doing in VR. I can't even imagine what would happen in the stock car.

One last thing I was playing with over the weekend was streaming sim racing to the tv in my garage, I am planning on having race nights every now and again where a bunch us get together and either try to set fastest lap times or maybe race AI or do practice sessions while the rest of us watch on the tv and of course drink beer. I have a fire stick plugged into my garage tv and I was able to use screen mirroring inside windows 10 to mirror the display onto my tv, I couldn't drive and watch the tv at the same time, but in my initial test it looks like I will have some lag but overall it should work.

Thanks
Not sure about building them as a business though, financially I'm upside down on this one by quite a bit.

I have had this thing sitting on rollers for the better part of a couple of years now. It was always my intent on setting it onto a 4x6 rubber mat. After test fitting it in a few spots in the garage I pretty much settled on the spot it has been the whole time. It makes my little workshop nook a little tight, but I can deal with it.

I used a bunch of 2x4's, a crowbar and some well place corner brackets to slowly jack everything up, remove the rollers and slide the mat underneath.



In its final resting place, it is really heavy so I hope i don't have to move it again.



The whole thing sits about 5-6" shorter now and its crazy how much smaller that makes it feel. I'm not sure that I will keep this arrangement though, I would like it to be somewhat moveable and the floor mat makes that pretty tough. I might come up with some sort of onboard lifting system so I can easily lift it up onto rollers. I would also have to make some sort of rubber foot for each of the 3 plates that the rig sits on. Maybe later.

Onto another issue that has been nagging at me. I have said many times that I just don't like my switch panel. After trying several variants of 3d printed plates with lettering, painting etc I decided it was time to do it the right way.

Here are a handful of my test panels.




This is the design I settled on



Not going to go into a ton of detail here, but I had to bust out the vinyl cutter.




















New 3d Printed box is open from the front and rear, this allowed full assembly on the bench.





And the final result, much better in my opinion.

Nice work!

How does the new center of rotation feel?