My Sim Build - Project FTO

Time for some window dressing. Ill need a shelf for the PC and some covers to hide wiring.

So, sheet of aluminium, some piano hinges, nuts and bolts, 4 pieces of angle iron and a drill and voila:




So the bends were made by clamping the angle iron where the bend needed to be and then using the clamp handles to make the bend. The piano hinges provide the ability to open the flaps on either side up to get at what is underneath. I used cardboard templates the make the shape of the flaps on either side before cutting the aluminium.

To be Continued...

OK, moving on

Audio and Video

So, audio is quick and easy. The car is already set up for surround sound, so no work required there. Using a Kenwood stereo with Aux in from the PC. And we added a bit of base and a subwoofer for effect...



And that's that. But the video side of things is a little more complex.

I considered a roof mounted projector but as the car is facing the shed roller door, I think it would wash out with the light. In the end as we already had a Sharp Aquos 51" TV, we decided to go down this path for now.

The next question is whether to mount the unit to the car or as a static unit sitting on the floor of the shed. In hindsight, maybe we should have opted for the latter, especially given we are looking at moving the car, A car mounted TV adds weight and also will be under a fair amount of stress during movement. And it occurs to me that maybe the PC falls into this category as well. Anyway, for better or worse, our current setup is connected to the car.

So, one of the goals in this project was to make the car look like it could drive out of the shed. This means that the monitor has to be non intrusive and removable. We also wanted it to be adjustable. and finally, I wanted to still be able to fit the bonnet. So, quite a few limitations.

So the first job is to mount the frame to the car in an unobtrusive way. Recently we dismantled a frame for a solar array. Nice aluminium rails that have slide-in clamp down brackets. After looking at the car for a while, we decided that the best point to mount the frame to is a couple of bolts that mount the quarter panel. But the little brackets that hold up the rail are not strong enough for the weight that the rail will need to support, so here is what we did.


A bit of gladwrap to protect the panel, a sheet of rubber underneath and space filler foam in-between the rubber and the rail. This and the rubber provides a bit of give and when the gladwrap is removed, will also protect the panel. So the good thing about space filler foam is it can be cut with a saw:



Not bad, but some bubbles to fill. We used auto body filler to fill these. I've also painted it. you'll see this in subsequent photos. And the bonnet still opens and closes.

Now, we need the frame to be height adjustable. Luckily some of the solar rails are telescopic as well...



You'll notice the lynch pin in the upper telescopic section. This holds up the TV, but does allow it to be adjusted up and down. Next, we need a tilt. And here it is:



So, the bearing allows the TV to be tilted forward and back. Adding the TV to the mix gives us this:


There is a circular aluminium rod that inserts into those bearings. This rotates within the aluminium box sections attached to the TV. The adjustable centre support needed to be added because the TV was a little heavy and the circular rod was flexing. So this rod provides the ability to tilt, but does not allow us to hold it in place. This is what the 2 brackets at the top on either side do. There are a number of pre-drilled holes in those brackets that allow the TV to be tilted to different angles.

So, the TV can be moved forward and back on the lower rails, up and down on the telescopic posts and tilt on the round rod. With the lower half of the TV tilted toward the windscreen the bonnet will still open. The only issue is that the best height for the TV is below the level of the bonnet. So, to use the simulator in its optimal position, the bonnet needs to be removed. To make this slightly easier I made a couple of cuts in the bonnet hinges and now the bonnet is a quick release. It will slide into the bolts and act like a normal bonnet and can just be pulled outwards to be removed.

Job Done...

To Be Continued...

Actually, I forgot to cover that in the sound section. I have an antique cushion (circa 2000) that fits into the back of the drivers seat. Works off the base. I'm assuming this is a transducer. The controller is in this photo (Aura Interactive Cushion). I have been considering updating though as the technology must be much better now.

OK, so definitely worth replacing then.

So by multiple transducers, does this mean multiple cushions or does it still use a single one but have multiple operations. I'm assuming it gets built into the seat. On a normal rig, I can't think of too other many places where you could put it. And if it is in the seat, does it get in the way of the G-Seat modifications. Reading the manual, it sounds like some of these effects are driven through the speakers themselves as well. I guess the amps we have installed would help with strength too.

I was lucky with this one as the FTO seat has a zipper that when unzipped gives access to the back of the seat. There was already a void in there the exact right size for the cushion, so shoved it in and zipped back up. The vibrations are dampened a bit by having to go through the seat, but you can still feel them.

Ok, apparently i've made my own in the past (sort of). I used an old fan motor and put an off-centre piece of wood on it. At the time I couldn't work out how to get the variable speed based on accelerator/load and eventually gave up on it. I keep meaning to revisit, but is a lower priority than getting the sim fully operational (still working on wiring and gearbox atm). I guess that's where GameVibe comes in. It can provide the input I need. Are there recommended transducers for different functions. I'd definitely like to upgrade the unit in my seat, but the pedal and shifter transducers sound worthwhile as well. I'm guessing search is my friend...

One of the larger problems im going to face with all these additions is power usage. I live totally off grid (solar + backup generator). Makes high electricity usage problematic. I have to be a little careful with what I choose.

Going to cover off a little on wiring now. This is going to take a number of posts to get through.

Normally the Logitech G27 has 6 little red buttons on the steering wheel, but of course this is gone (cut off) and even if it was still on the Logitech wheel, it would be in the engine bay. Well, its no use there. The idea is to transfer these back into the cabin. The other thing we haven't touched on yet is the Logitech Gear Shifter unit. This also has a raft of buttons on it, so these also need to be sorted.

So the FTO steering wheel has no buttons (other than the horn). But an EVO 10 wheel fits as well (with minor modification):


So, I picked this up with a blown airbag and no wheel centre. Also managed to get this:



This would be tip shifters to fit. Ive also managed to locate a clock spring to fit.

I'm going to start at the other end though. There is a cable inside the Logitech wheel that runs from the circuit board through the steering column (if you can call it that) and into the wheel. The cable runs between these 2 plugs:



On the left is the main board in the body of the unit. On the right is the board that sits in the steering wheel centre. And this cable is way to short. Time to cut it in half.Now, here is a close up of the Logitech Steering Wheel



So, the half of the cable that is on the main Logitech board needs to be extended to reach the location of the steering wheel board. This involves drilling a hole in the case and soldering an extension on the cable. On the other side of the extension, the other half of the cable is soldered.

Now we decided to centralise the circuit boards (there will be a few). And we have chosen here:



And this will be under the cover on the drivers side of the car. This of course does not get the wires to the steering wheel. Ill get to that soon.

To Be Continued...

Right, Moving onto the other end. Lets start with the clock spring.

The EVO clock spring has the capacity to pass 10 wires through it. Normally, some of these would include wires for the airbag, which we don't need. Having said this, there are 12 buttons on the EVO wheel and then there's the horn as well. 10 wires is just not enough. When you look at the circuit boards for the button units in the wheel, you find multiple button signals are passed through a single wire. This is something that needs to be addressed but I'm not going to cover this off just yet. Lets concentrate on the clock spring.

So when you tidy the wiring up a bit, you end up this this:



The white plug will take all the wires from the steering wheel. Now on the other side of the clock spring is a DVI connector. it takes these 10 wires + 4 wires from the tip shifter. Put it all together and you get this.



Now a cautionary tale: I decided to use an existing DVI cable to reduce the chance of soldering issues and to centralise all the wires in a single cable. This currently runs through the engine bay to the circuit boards. This was a mistake. Another mistake was to use some single core wires (on the tip shifter - they have a habit of breaking). Not colour coding wires from one end to the other through multiple connectors resulted in wiring hell - incorrect mappings and wires not working properly. While we have got it working now, im not convinced it's stable enough (or tidy enough). I'm going to rerun the wiring with multiple multi-core colour coded cables and make it tidier. As a result, I won't cover that bit until i've redone it. What i've learnt:

• Don't use single core wires - they break easily.
• Colour code wires from end to end to reduce the chance of mistakes.
• Separate wires into logical groupings and run separate cables to reduce complexity.
• It's easy to lose track of wire mappings when going through multiple connectors. The more wires in the connector, the easier it is to make a mistake.

To be Continued...

So i'm going to hold off on posting any more on the steering wheel wiring until i've had a chance to redo the wiring. Im waiting for a few plugs in the post, so can't really do much more until they arrive. In the mean time, ill move on to the dash:

So, a few years ago, I bought myself a Pro-Gauge from SymProjects. This allows you to run the instrument cluster out of a car with your games.



And here is the back of my instrument cluster with the 4 gauges i'm going to connect marked:


So, apart from the speedo, there is an earth, power and signal wire for each gauge. Given we are powering the car and the dash is still plugged into the electricals, we need to remove these gauges from the car's electrical system. They wont work anyway as there is no engine and we don't want the power from the car interfering with the Pro-Gauge board. This means taking a scalpel to the plastic circuit board and carefully cutting a circular chunk out around each of these screws or isolating the trace by cutting a section out. We don't want to destroy any of the other traces. Next, we add a shared 12V to the positive terminal on each gauge, a shared earth to each earth terminal and individual signal wires to each gauge. This is what it now looks like:



Now, this plugs into the dash, and I wanted a nice sturdy plug for my new loom. A bit tricky as it needed to fit within the housing and not fowl anything. So this worked:



This is just a VGA connector. Add a VGA cable to this and run it through the firewall and into where our circuit boards are located and then its just a matter of plugging the wires into the circuit board. I am remounting the circuit boards at the moment, so will take a photo of this in the next day or so. Suffice it to say that we have this working.

Ive also hacked up the loom that runs into the cluster so that I can export all the warning lights. I do have a question around this. Has anyone done much around getting warning lights working. I haven't had a chance to look at whether SimTools supports anything of this nature. Just thought it might be nice to have the warning lights light up at the appropriate times in the game if this is possible. I can certainly isolate the wires, I just need a trigger...

To Be Continued...

So I some of this weekend redesigning the area where the circuit boards are kept. This is what it looks like now:



Still have to redo the wiring, but at least the boards are more stable and neater.

So there are still a few things to cover off before i've got to the current state. The remaining progress mostly revolves around the Logitech gear shifter and the FTO gearbox. Let's start with the Logitech gear shifter.

The Logitech gear shifter has 2 basic components; the gear stick itself and a range of buttons plus a d-pad. This post is going to concentrate on the buttons and d-pad. As we will be using the factory FTO gear stick for the simulator, the Logitech gear stick will not be required.

I'm sort of going to cover this twice as I have 2 different designs for the buttons. A quick and dirty one that utilises the existing buttons and a more complex one that replaces the buttons and the d-pad. Before I launch into this, here are the locations I have to work with:



The picture above shows one of my old cars. Normally there is only a single din stereo in the car and that is what is the case with our simulator. This leaves a space under the stereo. While our simulator came as an automatic like this one, it will be converted to a manual setup during the build. So on to the builds...

The Quick and Dirty Build
So we actually did this build more recently as the other was taking longer than expected. The aim was to get a working solution in place so we didn't have to run a Logitech gear stick through the windscreen that still didn't quite reach far enough.

Notice the cup holder between the gear shifter and the console between the seats. Our first button panel will replace the cup holder.

The first thing to do is remove the gear stick from the Logitech unit. I needed to cut off enough so that what was left was flat. This meant cutting pretty close to the bottom row of red buttons. The Angle grinder did a good job of that and what is remaining now will fit within the desired location.

The cup holder in the FTO console just clips in place, so this is easy to remove. This leaves us with a couple of minor issues:

• There is a plastic support structure under where the cup holder sits that will get in the way. I have attacked this with an angle grinder and this is now gone.
• The hole isn't the right shape for the buttons. Its too wide and not long enough. So more work with the grinder and a file and we will need to use a custom plate to make it look tidy.

The custom plate needs to completely cover the hole we have made and needs to have the holes for the buttons in exactly the same place as the original. Luckily, around the original is a very thin aluminium plate that can be peeled off:



So overlay the peeled off one over my new sheet of aluminium and draw in the circles. Then carefully drill them out. The d-pad hole needed to be filed to get it big enough. Ive then glued the plate over the buttons. When I did a trial fit, the unitwas slightly too thick and fowled the handbrake, so needed to cut a bit off the bottom as well:
OK, now that just needs to be screwed in place. A U-shaped bracket sorted that:



If you look closely, you'll notice that i've also done the handbrake mod on the circuit board above and guess what is directly under the button panel - the handbrake. I should also mention that the handbrake as been modified to remove the ratchet mechanism (angle grinder). This means that the handbrake will not stay on. I've left the handbrake switch in place so the dash light comes when the handbrake is applied and added a micro switch for the in-game handbrake.

The finished article looks like this:



The only other thing I needed to do for this one was to extend the cable by 20cm to reach the plug on the steering wheel unit in the engine bay.

The More Complex Build

So this build will fill the space beneath the stereo and will replace all buttons (and d-pad) with aftermarket versions. This means a lot more circuit board work and some CAD design for the d-pad.

So the first thing to do here was to export all the buttons on the circuit board out to a plug. This is essentially the handbrake mod on steroids. Here is the result of that.



So currently, this circuit board is in the engine bay and is one of the 3 pictured in the circuit board modifications I posted earlier today. I'm still not sure whether it will stay here or replace the one in the other build above or whether we'll use both in the console. I'm also not sure whether we will keep both button solutions in place or not.

Next, I needed to make an aluminium plate for the buttons. We decided to use an XBOX configuration. Here is the first iteration of the panel:


We were originally going to use an electric mirror switch as the d-pad (shown above), but that didn't end up working out so now we are designing our own circular d-pad button in AutoCAD and using a board from a X-Box wheel. This is close to complete, but a few minor changes are still required.

So the holes you see in the picture take momentary push buttons with a coloured illumination ring. The ones in the middle are the X, Y, A, B buttons and illuminate to match the X-Box colours. Here is a picture of the buttons inserted (left) and the back of the button panel (right):



There is a DVI connector to wire the buttons into in the picture on the right and while we got the buttons working with this it wasn't stable enough, so today I cut that off (see previous post re DVI connectors). New connectors are in the mail. This is where the progress on the buttons ends at present. We still haven't printed the final version of the d-pad yet and need to re-do the wiring between this and the board.

To Be Continued...

Time to spend a little effort on the steering wheel. When I bought the wheel, it came without the airbag which had deployed and was thrown away before I bought it. As a result this is what I got:



I thought it would have been nice to approximate the original centre section, but initially didn't think that was realistic.

So I had a bit of this on my steel rack outside the shed:



150mm sewer pipe. This was an offcut about 1m long that hadn't been used and had the flange that can be seen in the pic. Just as a joke I compared it to the size of the centre of the wheel. It was close. So I cut the end off and was amazed with how well it fitted. Here is a picture with a lip added to the top and a bit of grey paint:


Now at this point given how well it was going, we decided that we were going to try and replicate the EVO centre. To do this, we needed a working horn button and a bracket to attach this to the steering wheel. Something like this:



The final piece of this puzzle required a bit of CAD work (My son has quite a good understanding of AutoCAD Inventor these days). The underside needed to match the buttons in the photo above on the left. The top side needed to match the actual EVO steering wheel centre. Here is the result:



And that fits into the centre piece like so:


So, pressing the centre piece presses the 4 buttons underneath. And this is how it looks in the wheel:


Looks just like a bought one...

To Be Continued...

Have a couple of pictures to fill in some of the gaps.

Firstly, here is a picture that helps explain what we did to the gear shifter circuit board. I have put this together just in case someone else wants to get adventurous.

• Firstly, pin 13 (above) is a common wire for all buttons and all the others are the individual wire for each button.
  
• I have marked where the soldered wires need to be attached with a little rectangle. It is important to solder the wire on the correct side of the resistor.
• Be very careful if doing this. Overheating the resistors will damage them and may also dislodge them as they don't have pins that hold to the board.

Secondly, here is the new wiring loom inside the steering column shroud:


There is a little aluminium custom bracket that holds the cables in the right place.

To Be Continued...

OK, shed is partially flooded due to heavy rain, so not a pleasant place to be - time for the gear stick post. This part of the project is one of the most challenging so far for several reasons.

• Firstly, the car I started with was an automatic. And we need a manual shifter.
• Secondly, there is no gearbox, so will have to make that.
• Thirdly, I need six gears + reverse and the car setup I have only supports 5 + reverse.

So, all these issues have to be solved. I'm going to break them into individual posts as the gearbox in particular is quite involved.

The first issue is the easiest to resolve, so we'll start with that. I need a manual shifter setup, and luckily, I just happened to have some of those parts on the shelf in the shed. Here is a manual shifter mechanism (fitted).



Now, there is an issue here. Without the gearbox, the shifter mechanism flops around in any direction (there is no H pattern - the gearbox normally provides those constraints). Hence, we will need to build a gearbox to sort it. Although I'm going to cover this off in a separate post I do have to connect the gear shifter to the gearbox i'm going to make. In a manual FTO, this is cable driven (2 cables joined together) - one for left/right and one for forward/back. I don't happen to have a manual transmission cable and they are quite expensive, so i'm going to use 2 automatic transmission cables I have instead. As the eyelets on these and the throw is different, this is going to mean some custom brackets. So let's look at the connection points for the cables:



Iv'e removed the top of the shifter and circled the connection points in red to make them easier to see. The one in the left picture controls forward/back movement and the one in the right picture controls left/right movement. So, the one on the right is simplest as it only pivots on a single axis, I just needed to pad the little rod a little with a spacer (was slightly too small) and then drill a hole for a split pin. The one on the left was more difficult as this pivots in 3 axis. I had to make a special bracket for this. And here it is:



Using this setup, the ball on the lower end of the gear stick can pivot at any angle within the normal range of movement.

With this done, we need to play with the throw of the cables. Without the casing of each cable secured, the inner cable will not move through the case, the whole cable will move. And as these cables are not standard, they won't mount up to the normal securing locations. This means that we need to work out the extent on the throw of each cable and mount brackets to suit:


You can see each cable secured on the right. These special brackets were cut off the shifter mechanism and moved to get the right throw and bolted in place. And it works like this:



As for the other end of the cables, well these run through the firewall into the engine bay:


You can see both cables in the picture above. One is sitting on top of the frame and the other comes underneath on the right.

To Be Continued...

Moving on to the gearbox. So I need a H pattern gearbox that takes 6 forward gears + a reverse gear. In the Logitech this is achieved via 2 potentiometers for the forward gears and a switch for reverse. Potentiometers are a lazy way of solving this issue and aren't particularly accurate, so we aren't going to do it that way. We are however going to replicate the switch for reverse. Lets start with that.

A 6 gear H pattern is achievable without too much complexity (3 gates, one in the middle). A 7 gear H pattern however would be 3 and a half gates. With this in mind, we will be going with a lift reverse. This still allows us to have a 3 gate H pattern with reverse reusing one of the existing gates. This means reverse would either use the 1st gear gate or the 6th gear gate. After a bit of thought, we decided that we would use first gear as it would be much easier to move from reverse to first if it was on the same side.

So firstly, we need one of these:

This is a lifter for a reverse gear for a Toyota BRZ, so wont fit out of the box. We also need a gear knob that supports one of these lifters. Now, the hole in the middle of this is substantially bigger than the gear stick shaft we have.



So, a piece of garden hose is exactly the right diameter to act as a sleeve. The lifter is a snug fit and still moves freely. Also, a spring needs to fit between the bottom of the gear knob and the top of the lifter. The one I have chosen is a good size for the hole in the gear knob, but too big for the top of the lifter, so need a sleeve on the top of the lifter:



A piece of 19mm irrigation pipe makes the perfect sleeve under the spring. So we now need to somehow change the gate to operate a switch when we pull the lifter up against the gear knob. And whatever we do needs to fit under the gear boot, so not much space. To achieve this, we need to add an extension to the bottom of the lifter so we get well under the top of the gear boot and then we need a lobe on the bottom to activate a switch:



So i've used a piece of stainless steel towel rail, and attached a lobe made out of 6mm aluminium bar to the bottom. This has been cemented in place using fibreglass reinforced auto putty. It needs a slot to cope with the bend in the gear stick about half way up. Although this bend made it a little harder to make, it does provide a benefit. The lifter cant swivel, so the lobe remains in exactly the same place and just goes up and down.

So, the gear stick needs to activate first gear or reverse depending on height. And the lifter provides the mechanism to achieve this. There is another requirement. When in reverse, the lifter should stay in place without having to hold it up. This should only happen in first gear however. So we now need a frame around the gear stick. The frame needs to go around all the moving parts without interfering with their operation and needs to behave as follows:

• When first gear is required, the lifter will be down. First gear will be engaged without pressing the reverse switch. The lobe will just slide under the upper platform of the frame.
  
• When reverse is required, the lifter will be pulled up while engaging the gear. When the lifter is released , the lobe will rest on the upper platform. Pulling the gear stick out of gear will release the lifter.
• When operating other gears, pulling up the lifter will not result in it hitting the frame or sitting on top of the frame.

And here it is...



In the picture on the left above, the lifter has not been used - the lobe slides in under the platform. In the picture on the right, the lifter has been used. The platform stops the lifter from going back down. This only works with first gear engaged.

The next job is to add a micro switch right next to the lobe in the right hand picture. Still have to do this and add the wiring from that back to the gearbox circuit board. I also need to trim the trailing edge of the frame as well as it just sits too high and fowls the console cover. So broken the back of the more complex issues, just have a bit of tidying up to go.

To be Continued...

So now, the rest of the gearbox. This is a big post with lots of pictures, so apologise for that in advance, but it is a complex beast, so needs the detail to adequately cover it off.

This unit will be installed in the engine bay and will be driven by the 2 cables that were fed through the firewall. With that said, we need a base plate for the gearbox:


The holes relate to mounting brackets and the parts that will make up the gearbox. The next thing we need is a way of accepting the movement of cables and translating it into something that will determine what gear we are in. We are going to use an automatic shifter for the basis for one of the cables:



The first 2 images are of each side of the shifter. The image on the right is the core mechanism we are interested in. You can also see this in the middle picture. Now this is useless in its current form, so it needs to be cut down a bit:


So with all the crap removed, you can now to see the cable holder comes in on the left and the cable attaches to the top of the pivot at the back. This mechanism will handle the forward/back motion of the manual shifter inside the cabin of the car. Ive also added another pivot out of a 2nd shifter mechanism in the foreground. This one will need to interact with the H pattern gate. This will only work if these move in concert however, so we need to add a bracket between them:



And now we need to sort out the left/right movement of the manual shifter. For that, ill need a set of these:



These are linear slide rails. They will help sort the other axis of the H pattern. And installed, they look like this:



Ive also added a cable holder for the other cable.

So now the H pattern. The size of this needs to correspond to the minimum and maximum extent of both cables. So after quite a bit of testing, we came up with this:


So to move into 1st gear, the gear stick pushes forward and to the left. This pulls the gate towards the bottom of the screen and pushes the pivot to the right. 2nd gear is gate toward the bottom of the screen and pivot to the left. The rest of the gears operate in a similar fashion. You'll note that between each gear in the gate the tips are pointed. This helps move between gears. Add a useless cover to the pivot and you get this:


Was going to use this to trigger micro switches, but have now gone another direction. So just cosmetic now. We need the pivot to click into place when in gear. For that, the bracket in the lower middle left has been added:


So now we need a few microswitches (4). These need to be at the minimum and maximum extent of each cable. And here are various shots of that:



So, when installed, it looks like this:



This sits under the steering wheel. You can see both cables are attached. The feel is very close to the real thing, complete with clicks when in gear. We still need a voltage divider and some wiring to complete the build, but will do a separate post on this when we get to it.

To be Continued...

So, I blew up an instrument cluster today. Took me a while to work out why it wasn't working too. Completely replaced the wiring loom thinking it was that, but it still didn't fix the problem. Had to replace all the gauges for simdash to start working again in the end. I think it might have been a short to earth but will probably never know for sure. New gauges are working now though. Lucky ive got a few sets on the shelf.... I also managed to break a wire on the brake pot when doing the rewire. That is going to be a bugger to fix as its right up under the dash. I might have to replace that loom with a more robust one with thicker wires that is located in a safer position.

So it been a little while since my last post. I have made a little progress since then, but not as much as I would have liked.

So I rewired the dashboard cluster in the end. Thought that was worth the effort. I also managed to get video (animated gif) of the gearbox in action and here it is:



This is cycling through the gears. You can just see the first cable in the top left corner and the other in the lower centre. These drive the position in the H pattern and as a result the gear you are currently in.

Gearbox Cable Update

Also, I think I mentioned previously that the movement of the shifter was a little stiff due to the cable being bent at an angle when it hit the cross member. Well, iv'e also fixed that now:


Ive made a cut in the cross member and lined it with rubber. The cable runs through this so it doesn't rub. The shifter is now much smoother and pretty much the same feel as the original. I possibly need to change the mechanism that you get the click as it slides in to gear, but that is very minor and can be sorted later.

Gearbox Shifter Update - Reverse

Moving on to the shifter and the reverse gear. I had to replace the top of the housing around the gear stick. Here is how it looked before:



The aluminium wasn't thick enough, wasn't the right shape and was too high on the side furthest away from the stereo. So here is the replacement including with the reverse microswitch:



Although the switch is now wired in, we are still not in a position to test the gearbox. The voltage divider circuit board is the only piece of the puzzle to build and hopefully this will be all that's required to finish this off.

A New Issue - Seeing the Left Hand Side of the Screen

As we are sitting in the drivers seat and not in front of the middle of the screen, the left hand side is outside peripheral vision. This isn't a huge issue, but there has been one downside. On a number of games the track is displayed on the left. The idea is to move this to a separate display in a more visible location.

So, we could have used something like OBS to solve this issue, but that would be too easy. The computer we are currently using for this project isn't the newest and we can't afford to use any CPU on this problem. So here is a more complex solution. Firstly, lets add a perspex bracket to hold the display.



This is going to sit between the main cluster and the upper centre console cluster. I had to make this one because of the location. An aftermarket bracket just would not work here. Now, let's add a couple of old phones into the mix. We are going to use wi-fi direct to solve this issue.



So above is the left hand phone. This is running an app called IP Phone Camera. As you can see, the phone is capturing the portion of the screen with the track on it. Now let's look at the other phone:



So this is the phone in-between the clusters. The first phone is streaming the video to the second phone. Both are plugged in to chargers and neither require a sim card to work. Still need to work out how to get them to automatically turn on and off, but the solution does work. Oh and neither of the phones obstruct the screen.

Clutch Refinements

So, the clutch feel in the old setup is too light. So a redesign is required here. I'm now looking at creating a fulcrum to get enough force to get the right feel. So we start with a brake pedal and make a few adjustments. Cutting away some of the housing, removing the pedal and adding a plunger to drive the pedal results in this:



Now we need to attach this to the existing clutch slave cylinder. To do this, we needed to add a bracket, a piece of pipe and cut away some of the tray behind the computer. And the result is this:



Now all that's left is to add a big tension spring to the top of that pedal. Haven't done this bit yet, so will update when i've got that right.

Buggered Logitech Steering Wheels

So i've been trying to work out why my right tip shifter hasn't been working for weeks. I've replaced all the wiring and still no solution. After much frustration, I have finally worked out that the steering wheel PCB had chucked it in (I found other examples on the web - Right tip shift works, but most of the buttons and the left tip shift doesn't). Not good news I thought, but I had a spare wheel so all good right. What do you think the chances are that the 2nd wheel had exactly the same issue. Just my rotten luck I guess. I decided that I didn't want to risk forking out another $200 to grab another wheel and risk getting the same issue again. So here is another complex solution to avoid this issue moving forward...

All the buttons on the wheel and the tip shifters are in essence switches, so here is the solution to the problem:



Yep, an old logitech keyboard. It is a USB keyboard, but you can't see the cable in the picture. What we are interested in is the keyboard matrix (the board inside the keyboard). We are going to use this to enable the tip shifters and the buttons on the wheel. It will also give us a much larger number of buttons to work with moving forward. So here is the matrix with a few wires soldered to it (I have more to add):


There are 28 pins on this keyboard matrix and the way this works is that connecting any 2 pins results in a key press. Luckily that's exactly what the tip shifters and buttons on the steering wheel do as well. All we have to do is map the keys. To do that we need to look at the plastic circuits under the keys. There are 2 of these in most keyboards of this type and they look like this:



Using a black texta, i've marked the letters in their locations on the board. All we need to do now is follow them back to where they meet with the Keyboard matrix and note down the 2 pins that relate to each key. I'm looking at supporting a-z and 0-9, so 36 keys. Here is a screenshot of part of the excel spreadsheet im using to do that:



I'm going to make this a programmable thing, so plan to add 36 sockets that map to each of the 36 keys i'm supporting and can then just plug in the switches where I want them. Remapping a button will just mean moving the plug to another socket.

So just a note here. It's much easier to do this with a non-mechanical keyboard. Also, if the keyboard is too cheap (like the $8 Kmart one I started with before moving on to the old Logitech one), the pins on the circuit board will possibly be graphite, which you can't solder.

Again, I haven't finished this build yet, so will update when I have more progress.

And that gets you up to date. More soon...