Kanuk's first foray into the world of motion simulation...

@kanuk - will those MMs have some ventilation/fans in that MM/Arduino controller box? If the box only has a lid that’s a pretty small volume that might heat up on you. Nice looking rig!

Hello @Zed

Thank you for your kind words

Yes. It is cooled. I have a 120mm cooling thru the cover with holes and I have left an air gap between the cover and case. It's not a permanent solution however.
I have 2 x 40 and 2 x 50 mm fans coming to have direct cooling onto the MM's

I have a question if the powers of knowledge would be so kind to help with....

Once tested with SMC utils, and I have centred the hall pots (haven't marked them yet but according to the tutorial they are in the middle and both motors are within limits) would that mean I am able to connect to SImtools and then plug in the values for the needed plug in?

The other question I have is (and I am kinda tired as I've had a long day or two!) is how does one set the limits on the motor travel fore and aft? Is that within Simtools?

Thank you

The limits of travel on the motors are probably set in the motor controllers along with direction, feedback sense, limits on pulse widths, etc.

If Simtools tries to drive an axis to 100% travel, it’s the motor controller that knows what 100% actually means.

Sorry to disturb but quick q guys....

I purchased a 1 year plug ins package but whenever I go to download a plug in it removes coins from my account anyway but whats really confusing is it wont allo me to access the plug in for Elite Dangerous?
Am I doing something wrong here?

I have had no success
Tried almost everything and I am sure it's me of course but to no avail

I am going to post my settings but nothing is different from all the tutorials I have read

Any help would be greatly appreciated of course!

yer sir @noorbeast

After testing the controller on smc utilities I installed the ard on the gaming pc and loaded and set up simtools 2.2 but this is where I'm stuck. With no movement. any advice on what I should do?>

I am going to re test on smc utilities and see whats going on. Would appreciate some troubleshooting steps if anyone has them....

And if all this fails I might power up the pololu boards....

The com port is correct yes. @noorbeast

I will adjust the com port speeds within the interface and the actual port in windows. Thank you for the heads up

Now I reconnected to SMC Utes and having the pots wired this time and setting min at 0, max at 150 and reverse at 50, I can get both motors to move forward and back using their individual pots with no dramas. A question I have is that when I adjust the pot on the left, the motor moves forward and backward in the direction of the hall sensor pot, but the right motor moves in the opposite direction of the right pot. Do I have to reverse this pot?

if you are using hall sensors that has polarity you have to reverse the motor cables otherwise with other pots you can reverse the motor or the pot

So is the correct way when the motors move in the directions of the pots or like Racing Mat's tutorial, should they move the other way?

when pots are "mounted" on the motor and move the same direction with the motors and the motors stops you are ok if they never stop they are wrong.never tried mats code, i use SMC3 and its a great interface for arduino with a visual app to do some tuning and has a lot of support from members here

thanks @insanegr

I discovered that it is meant to rotate in opposite directions of the motor in order for it to function!

One was fine and the other had to have the motor reversed.

I got it running though SMCUtils and got both motors to move on the sine and sawtooth output but they stop after a while and then start up again. And I seem to get some sort of cogging going along with it. Possibly my Pid values are all up the proverbial without a paddle I suspect, I'll post screens of the waveform anomalies tomorrow on the 2 motors and also take a video of what they are doing. That should give the experts here a chance to help me resolve my issues....

Also, my pot centering seems to move after the motor tests. I am using bolts (with the heads cut off) with a smooth shank (non threaded) going into the coupling interface and I think that the its too smooth and causing the grub screws on the coupling to not have decent mechanical adhesion.... Any ideas anyone? Maybe I should use a threaded rod so that the grub screws can grip the thread?

So after having had a myriad of issues setting up the Ard/MM combo I built (and yes, it is working in SMC Utilities), I have decided that I will use it for the 320W motors that I have included in my flight chair or even possibly upgrade that to a Ard/sabertooth2x32...

In the meantime I have decided to convert the race sim to JRK's as it seems a whole lot easier to setup for a beginner and besides the wonderful @noorbeast is happy to give me a hand.

I started the controller build tonight and encased it all in a TT Mini ITX case along with 2 x 60A PSU's. I read @Zed 's article on Pololu cooling and thus I decided to heat sink the top and the bottom pad for good measure. @Zed , do you think this will be enough sir? The case itself has a 200mm fan in the front and twin 80mm rears extracting air and I am thinking that this will be more than sufficient to gool the JRK's.

Here are some pics then...

I am planning to utilise the remaining space for ancillaries that I will add (eg. 3rd PSU And Pololu for 3DOF addition in the near future!) etc.

In the meantime and tips and advice would be gratefully receeived of course!