Motion Sim w/ Surge & Traction Loss

Thanks @noorbeast

I did look at that and attempted it but I was a bit confused by it on what he meant shaking etc as I was experiencing it shaking at every number I put in haha. I need to do more research into the PID part as it wasn't really making much sense to me but I did just read a page on the polou site which explained it a bit better and showed what a well tuned system should look like so it should help me understand.

It's a bit difficult while im up at my father in laws workplace as I don't have internet access other then with my cellphone so im trying to get help on certain bits quickly with that but your assistance was appreciated and helped!

Good news is I got it 'somewhat' working. The surge worked brilliantly and was by far the best bit, moving with ease it really added to the experience

Bad news was the traction loss which doesn't seem to move well at all, Im not entirely sure if its wrong placement of the arm or badly tuned motor etc but I would think the motor can handle it as I can move with by hand without a huge amount of force, it somewhat moves when Im playing with it in the jrk config software but doesn't move barely at all in any games with simtools. Ran out of time to play with it more but I guess I need to understand about leverage more as that could also be the issue

As for the 2dof ontop again it didn't seem to be working that great. As soon as I put my values in simtools to anything close to 80-90% overall the jrk would throw out an error pretty early on. This is with the 50:1 gearboxes, I played around lowering the max duty cycle and even adding a brake duration but it still didn't seem to help much and I was also a bit confused if I was meant to be setting the exact same totals and exact same forces for both of these motors in the software. I could do like roll and pitch at like 30% each but if I tried adding like heave and sway or anything like that at 20% each then the jrk error would occur. Again if I went to jrk config and tested the motor 1 at a time then it seemed to move fine and shook me around a ton more then it did ingame.

I wasn't sure if I should be adding more degrees of movement as I was using a 60mm CTC lever and was using 38degrees up and down from center but movement felt quite minor ingame

It was cool to have a play around with the software but my hours were limited and did what I could in the time after wiring it all up etc we didn't have enough time to do it all

Mrs took a wee video here for you to take a look and a couple pics

yes I did follow his guide and he stated
When Motor is off - I set to coast. Some motors support this big worms don't.

Since I am using worm gear motors I left it at brake since he stated that above

Unfortunately I cant post my simtools settings as computer is left up at father in laws but I didn't touch anything except for setting up my 4 interface settings and then setting ingame forces as I described above

Interface 1 was traction loss
Interface 2 was surge
Interface 3 was left rear motor
Interface 4 was right rear motor

I set Axis 1 to be Extra 1 for instance at like 70%
Axis 2 to be Surge at like 70%
Axis 3 had roll and pitch at about 30% each
Axis 4 had roll and pitch at about 30% each

everything was going same direction (nothing was reversed)

I don't actually know what you mean by tuning settings?
The correct Tuning Center sequence is click capture max/min, reset all, drive/fly for a while without hitting anything, back in Tuning Center save then finally stop capture.

I don't know where I do this, can't see any settings saying capture etc in simtools

**edit** Ok well ive seen one issue after reading this

Roll will always have ONE orange and ONE not orange (this gives you roll as one motor goes up as the other goes down) - You will need to determine the order.
Pitch will need BOTH ORANGE or BOTH NOT ORANGE (Gives you up and down) - Again, you will need to determine if BOTH on or off.

I had roll both the same as I had that set incorrectly obviously

Im running 700w HP PSU's and saw @Nick Moxley tweaked his psu to lower voltage output I believe so I may read into that a little

@noorbeast damn I missed that tuning center as I never right clicked on that doh!!

damn me and not doing more research beforehand!

What does going above 100% mean? Anything really negative?

I can't do anymore testing right now as my sim is a good 400km away as Im back home now. I will be making another trip soon though hopefully within couple weeks and ill be taking a trailer this time to bring it back

makes guide simple for people, then they try to complicate it with things that do not even exist in the guide.

well I apologize @bsft

as I stated I didn't have access to internet so getting all the information wasn't easy for me and I followed several different guides where I could, I don't know what you mean about doing things that don't exist in the guide as I never did anything like that

Im learning and trying my best

i thought that the 100% "limiting" was when we were using one motor for more than one dof and if we had one motor for surge or one for traction loss for example we could use all the range up to 100% for that motor

Well that's what I thought too. I was under the impression that each jrk could total up to 100% for the forces basically so for my surge motor I could have 100% of the force on that while my 2 dof motors could have roll,pitch and sway at 33% each

so thats as suggested, sway 20% + surge 20% + heave 20% + sway 20% + roll 20% = 100%.
you can run higher percentages, but the total should be realistically under 150%. Simtools just throws more values at the controller and that can cause issues
I have told the Simtools developers that even I cannot get decent motion with all at a total of 100%, I can raise power in motors, but that can cause some errors. I run totals near 120%
with my setups, to stop errors, I may set main level at 99 or 98%, then I can fiddle with tuning centre numbers a bit more if need be.
Reducing main level will soften motion if you go too far down.

Does every motor have different PID values? Or will all 25:1 worm gear motors have the same PID values etc?

best adjust PID individually for each motor, I found one motor a little twitchier than the other.

do you still get any jrk errors @bsft? I need to look into my psu shutting down when jrk throws out an error but it could of also been the psu shutting down and causing the jrk to throw out an error as a result. A quick unplug-replug of the power cable would power everything back up again untill another error later. I can either upgrade psu's but from what ive heard mine should be fine at 56amps, could add a battery in parallel or could also just look at adding a relay into the mix to automatically re-power the power supply when it loses power but Id like to find out whats the issue for sure. It could simply be me not setting up my profiles etc correctly so far in the tuning center

It could be motor power settings, can you please take screen shots of ALL tabs of the JRK utility for EACH motor and post them up.
I have heard of server PSUs shutting down from over current drain.
It seems most sold are 2nd hand and they could be at the end of their service life.
Hence I use LED power supplies that are new. Never had a problem.

I will once I can, sim not with me right now.

What AH do people get for their 12v batteries in parallel with supply? I'd like to know if I need a car battery or can get away with something much smaller

@Boomslangnz - I too had problems using PSU power supplies @eaorobbie said to me I was going to have problems, but I was too hard headed. So I ended up buy HP power supplies to run my 12V 25:1 200W motors. In the end both mine also started dropping out under heavy load. I replaced both with a single LED Driver, never had an issue. It appears these server psu's just don't like overcurrent, maybe their too smart. Simple LED driver from china just works

I believe mine were DPS-600PB.

@madgino Thanks for the input. What size LED Driver did you go for out of interest? Yeah I would basically think it was simply the power supply except many others are using these or even less powerful supplies and don't seem to have the same issue so Im not sure yet. Ill properly test with a power supply and see if it keeps doing it to prove its the psu. I can always get a different supply