my 2DOF +/-30 degrees tilting chair mosim

Its been a while since I've done the math on it, but a quality gear box with a a 650:1 gear ratio @ 13 RPMS, will give you 2500lbs an inch of torque. Directly mounted to a drive shaft to a rigged chair will give you all the torque in the world from a 24v 20amp motor, and $40 server power supply. The best part is use a single motor and gearbox. Highly responsive, insane torque, just a little slow. I use Xsim to fly large bombers, 747's etc, 12 rpms for roll is all you need with that configuration, and its a slow enough speed, with such a low center of gravity, VR Oculus Rift doesn't require any fancy bullshlt for head/hand tracking.

i've been away from this project for a while. i'm still waiting for the arduino UNO board from china, i ended up ordering 3 times from different suppliers, hoping at least one would show up, so i have no idea what's going on, but its very frustrating. and there is nothing i can do without that board.

nothing i can do but wait i guess

An arduino Uno clone costs less than 20 dollars anywhere in the globe, get it locally...

hi all, so i finally got my ardunio board (2 showed up from different suppliers on the same day!) and did all the wiring according to this
https://www.xsimulator.net/communit...3dof-motor-driver-and-windows-utilities.4957/

i installed the arduino tools, test blinking LED, ok.
i installed the SMC3 util and download SMC3.ino in the ardino tool and the sim moved, so i guess that much is working. i read through the instruction sin the SMC3 setup and monitor. BUT i'm not sure what the point of that is yet
then i download and installed simtools and the joystick plugin which i figure will be useful for testing.
now i'm working in simtools game engine but should i keep SMC3 setup and monitor app running? i guess i should right so i can tune the parameters, but it seems like simtools does that too?

i guess i'm not sure the relationship between the SMC3 and simtools. does simtools talk to the arduino directly? or though the SMC3 utils? i realizes the SMC3 code on the arduino is necessary in either case right?

thx steve

ok, that's probably why simtools isn't communicating? so when i'm running simtools, should i kill both the SMC3 tool and the arduino loader tool?

i guess i don't understand the point of the SMC3 tool really. sure i can change the param in the arduino code, but how do i know what params to set? i guess i'll figure that out once i've played with simtools some more?

do you typically go back and forth between SMC3 tool and simtools then until it all runs smooth?

thanks

noorbeast, thanks for that info, now i get the PID concepts and i get what the SMC3 app does, its changes the PID and other parameters in the arduinos feedback controller right.

so i guess in a 1 computer configuration, you would set some params in the SMC3 tool, then quit out, then start simtools game engine, then try it with the output testing, then quit simtools, then go back to SMC3, tweek parames, quit, start simtools, try again, etc, until you get it moving nice. is that right?

OR option B is to use 2 computers, like in the description 'Connecting to Simtools via UDP ' then i can monitior and adjust the PID parameters as i test the rig in simtools.

is that correct or am i still not understanding the work flow here?

ok, thanks. so i have SMC3 app running now and i see what i need to do, on 'Out Mode' , lower left side, i select manual mode then i can drag the blue slider on the right of the graph up and down and the selected motor should move to follow the blue target line. NOTE, my setting are Fpid/p/i/d/a = 1,400,0,0,1 min/max/rev = 50,205,0 limit/input/dz = 20, 55, 0

so fist question, on the motor on/off button on the top left, click turns it on, but for me, clicking again doesn't turn it off. is this a known bug, or something i'm doing wrong? how do i turn a motor off once i've turned it on?

but my main question, when i drag the blue dot up (Motor 1 on, 2 off), then motor 1 moves up and the green feedback line moves up, so that means my pots are wired correct. the green line gets close to the blue line (about 5mm short of blue line) and the motor stop. i guess that's ok right?

BUT when i drag the blue down back down, the motor does not move at all. if i again drag the blue dot up above the green line, it moves up, then i try down, nothing. seems to be unidirectional, maybe a wiring problem?

i have the 43A's in mode 2

NOTE, i notice when i drag the blue do up, the yellow PWM (which i guess is indicates that power is been applied to the motor), move around. but when i drag the blue dot down, the PWM does not move. this makes me suspect its more of a software issue?
thanks

ok, thanks, it seems that the SMC3 util should do everything i need to get the basic setup running, since it allows me to 'drive' the motors directly with a slider and monitor the behavior. i just need to know why it only runs in one direct. i'll ask on that thread

UPDATE. i found a problem, my soldering sucks. i had one of the PWM pins on motor1 wired to the wrong pin. seems to work well now. i guess i'll leave this question here incase anyone has the same problem.

It makes me a little scared for the continuation of the construction of my simulator

why? simple wiring problem, only to be expected there's be a minor problem here and there.

i'm having a harder time figuring out the software actually. i have the sim reasonably controllable from SMC3 now, really only took me about 8 hours work to wire up the electronics, load the software and get it functional (to SMC3 app working ok), so i wouldn't worry at all. i think its going quite well, everything seems to work as it should once you understand it.

I will also have to reinstall the PC for the simu completely before the end to leave on something clean

ok, next problem. i got simtools game engine configured and running and i can control pitch and roll ok with the mouse. all looking good
now i start simtools gamemanager an the app looks like this


i'm guessing that's not right because i read the docs and it should look totally different. i did the plugin thing already and installed a joystick thing for testing and DCS

i tried clicking everything on that app and all i get is a bunch of webpages
when i right click in this in the systray, the only option is exit

i know that the plugins install because in game engine, i look at the game list and i see joystick, DCS and Live for Speed

any ideas pls? thx

FYI, here's my simtool game engine settings

just double click on sys tray icon and game manager will pop up

duh, i didn't realize you have to double click on game manager, i was right mouse clicking it and all i got was an exit button

thx again, what would i do without you

good news people, i have my system working well in DCS. haven't tried VR yet, still tuning params so its best to see the tuning center screen etc, but its working.

first thing i notice is that DCS drives the rig much more smoothly that that the output testing in simtools or the drag the blue dot thing in SMC3. i spent some time getting it to react well to hard position changes, but i guess airplanes don't make such violent movements in real life (unless you crash!). i guess when i get round to car racing, i'll need it to be more aggressive.

anyhow, its seems to be working;l now to play with it a bit. simtools and SMC3 are fantastic products, and free, thanks so much to the developers and to all the help from this forum, epecially noorbeast

one quick question, in game engine, i have 4 profiles, default, DCS, joystick and live for speed. in game manager, i select DCS but under profile selection, the only choice is default, it doesn't give me the option to select the other profiles.

as i'm only using DCS right now, not a big deal, i can tweek the default profile, but in future i'd like to select other profiles. how would i do that?

thanks
steve