Showroom No-Weld 2DOF Seat Mover On Homebrew Ricmotech RS1 Clone

After some final fit and finish work, I'm calling the build DONE!
Since it's the centerpiece of the mancave renovation, this means the mancave is done too; Time to show off!

It can be slid under my desk and used without VR, here's my wife giving Dirt Rally a go with that setup:


Future plans

• Double-bridge mod new motor controllers when they arrive to get more amps with less being asked of each controller board.
• Traction loss! This is a heavy unit, but I am considering adding a traction loss platform under it as a summer project
• Enjoy it!

It's been a fun and highly rewarding build, I really am grateful for the community here and all the help I received along the way.
I wouldn't have been able to do it alone; My wife made a vinyl decal to advertise the community and I have it proudly displayed on the rig!

will done Sir
A job well done
not only have you helped me with my arduino code but you have inspired me in your build quality and engineering skills
Thank you so much for your help
still dancing

@armpit , what's the length of your rods connecting motors and seat? (the long vertical ones)

The rods that are connected from motor lever to seat back are 30.5" center to center. adjustable +- 1"

Perfect, thanks.
I'm building 2 linear actuators for a 6DOF (cost constraints) and I just thought that adding the ujoint, I could use them on a 2DOF similar to yours while I build the remaining 4 during the following months. They will be under 30".

The controllers came in from ebay seller satisfyelectronics and they worked perfectly! These are the first ones I've had that actually work 100%, they are around the $5 price point shipped from China.
I wired them up as half-bridge following Pit's guide and they feel great! They seem to require less pwm to have the same intensity of movement and seem to overshoot+recover less than with the single driver per motor. I'm leaving everything configured the same as before to do some shakedown runs and then I'll work on dialing in the SMC3 tune for this change.

Full disclosure, it was late at night and I was tired doing the wiring and accidentally plugged the 12v input to one of the controllers inverted which made my arduino let out the magic smoke as soon as I powered the chair on. It ended up being just the 5v regulator which sacrificed itself to save my USB port. Everything still works fine because this chip isn't needed when the arduino is being powered using usb, so I really lucked out with the damage there since I don't plan to use this board for anything except this chair using USB input.

@armpit did you or can you measure how much your seat was raised due to the ujoint, please?

Right at 3 inches

I decided to extend the levers coming off of the motors to see how an absolutely absurd amount of movement felt, and I'm really impressed with how the motors are handling it. I'm a heavier guy and it was still able to toss me around without the motors seeming to struggle at all.

The amount of movement IS ridiculous and wears me out after an hour or so, so I'll probably be swapping them back soon.

Here's a video showing the new range without me in the chair (bonus cat in a basket). With me the movement slows down a bit but the motors do not stall.

I reverted the motion back to my medium lever length, the torque just wasn't there for extremely hard braking and really it was just way too much movement for inside of VR.

I used the seat slider rails I took off of the seat to make a platform for the pedals mostly so it's not quite so cramped for my taller friends to use when they come over but also so my wife (shorter) can reach the pedals, really happy how this turned out:

Hey, what size or gauge steel did you use to mount the motors? Is it possible to mount them with wood?

I believe it's either 0 gauge or 2 gauge. It's whatever the local hardware store had that seemed like just the right amount of too much overkill for motor mounts.

I'm not sure I'd trust wood as the mount itself since the bolt thru holes in the motors are so small, I'd be afraid wood would split the first time there is agressive movement.

@armpit, if you're still active here could I trouble you to share your final settings in the SMC3 utility and where you ended up as a 'default' with SimTools axis assignments? I'm kind of at a loss as to where to start with tuning them, since this is my first sim and I'm not sure what it's 'supposed' to feel like.

I'm also using the PGSaw motors and they are also giving me that PWM buzz that you had - going to try the 104 ceramics on the Arduino side of the hall sensor connections tomorrow morning. The sensor boards I'm using already has an RC filter built in and I'm still seeing noise in the SMC3 util, so I figure that's probably worth a shot.

Sure thing, I'll grab a screenshot of the settings this evening

Here are my SMC3 settings and my axis settings for Assetto Corsa. These might help you out but they may not work for your particular build at all.
It's definitely worth taking the time to set up a motion profile from scratch following the FAQ https://www.xsimulator.net/community/faq/steps-to-create-a-motion-profile.228/

Thanks!!

I've got something that seems to work-ish with SMC3, but I'm not thrilled with it and yours are pretty radically different. I'm thinking it's probably worth trying, I can always reset it back to what mine were before if something closer to yours don't work at all.

The SimTools axis settings is mostly just to confirm I'm on the right track more than copy direct. It looks like I'm headed in the right direction on that front, at least. I had thought that each axis was only supposed to run up to 100% to avoid clipping - you seem to go way over that. Was there a particular reasoning that let to that?

The axis exceeding 100 is what I found gave the best feeling for me - it gives me more feel for what my car is doing but will clip if say I'm braking hard while in a turn on a bumpy road I may not feel the bumps in the road much. Definitely will depend on the game and especially the tuning center settings, which I realized I forgot to post for Assetto. Every game will vary wildly in setup for all of this, and there's personal preference that goes into it as well

Going over 100 being okay is a pretty big piece of information. I was struggling with getting any feeling out of road surface or curbs / rumble strips at all. Thank you!

Yeah, I took that to mean 'Really, seriously, get it down to 100%' rather than 'FYI clipping will probably happen'. I've read the guide a couple times but I think I just need to spend more time with it because I really don't fully grasp what is going on yet.