Zee Sim Rig

[Zeeflyboy]

Bit of an update!

First things first The VRS Direct Force Pro came into stock, so I snapped one up. It was hand delivered by Matt who is the UK distributer since it turns out he lives just down the road from me! Have to say he's a top chap and we ended up having a chat for the better part of an hour

I machined up a mounting plate for it, the idea being it will be easy enough to hot swap this out for eg a Yoke if I want to add one in the future. It fits like a glove, almost as though it was made for it







Next job will be installing the control box under the rig and running the wires properly. I have to say I'm extremely impressed with the quality, they use good quality connectors and shielded lines to the motor. The control box is compact and very dense, a revelation compared to something like the open wheel control boxes if you are familiar.

In other news the motor mount I was waiting for arrived and I got it attached to the seat with a small printed part to adapt to the curvature.



Which then allowed me to mount my belt "backpack" (ignore the red tape holding the straps, I'll be making some clips to hold those)




And beyond that I've been prototyping my actuators, including how they'll mount to the rig. I've designed a system that uses cheap stainless steel strap and tightens with a little cam piece to grip the tube. I've mocked one up and it seems to work well.






I just took delivery yesterday of all the servo motors, but still waiting on many of the internal parts such as ball screws to arrive but I've made most of 1 actuator. Quite long 3d prints involved as I'm printing the parts fairly dense for strength. This is just a prototype and I'm not sure yet whether I will end up machining the main end pieces out of aluminium as it would be quicker and stronger, but takes more effort and material cost. I'm sort of interested in how well the 3d printer parts will hold up to the abuse so I'm tempted to go for all 3d printed for now.... certainly more accessible for others if they want to copy the design so would be good to know how well it works.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks

Excuse the mess and unsolicited commentary but I thought this was great - the boy is only 3! His head is so small I had to pad out the G2 with some gloves

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Make some space and have a crack!

Printed the main slider parts for the actuators in Ninjatek Armadillo which is a mostly Rigid TPU... very tough stuff and probably overkill but I figured this part is probably subject to a fair bit of force where it is joining the ball nut and the linear rod.... First I chucked them up in the lathe to just give them a small finish pass and then smacked the steel linear rods into them with a mallet.







Waiting for some more filament to arrive before I can start printing more of the actuator parts, in the mean time my next job is to make something vaguely presentable out of all this stuff:

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Got the belt tensioner up and running, it’s pretty awesome. When added to the full motion I think it’ll give a lot more depth to the experience with some proper braking sensation.

Here’s a lap of Oulten Park showing it at work - excuse the vertical video again, this time it’s my fault… it was the only way I could prop the camera up and fit everything in frame. Forgive me.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Certainly not… I feel persistent idiot is closer to the mark. In all honesty all the hard work of such stuff (like the thanos controller or the SRS software that I’m running to interface with the games) is done by much smarter people than I. By comparison I’m the monkey banging on the typewriter.

I think it’s an important point to make that I truly am no genius though - All this stuff is so much more accessible than even just 5-10yrs ago. Not only is there so much info and help out there but also top kit easily available like the bodnar boards, the BlueHID and the Thanos I’ve used in various things here. Not only that but 3D printers normal people can afford, hobby lathes and CNCs, Incredible design software like Fusion that you can use for free. I got into all this stuff in around 2010 with FPV and drones, even the change since then has been incredible.

All that is to say to anyone reading I’m nothing special in that regard. If I can do any of this stuff then so can you… I’m mostly fortunate that I’ve been able to build up a nice selection of kit to play with over the years, but as mentioned this stuff is getting ever more affordable. You can buy a decent 3D printer for a few hundred notes these days - when I bought my makergear M2 10 or so years ago it cost me £2k and had to be shipped from the states! Don’t write any of it off as being above your abilities, it just takes some time to teach yourself what you need to know… all the info you could ever want is a click away and so many truly talented people share their expertise, ideas and experience freely. It’s an incredible time to be into this sort of hobby.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers

So a little hiatus as I've been away for a bit. Back at it now though and some important parts have arrived - namely ball screws and linear guides.

With that I've been able to get an actuator up and running to test, all looking very promising. Not sure what speed it is running at during this test mode but it's certainly not full tilt... in a perfect world at 3000rpm (ignoring the brief time period for acceleration and any slow down due to load) it should travel the full length in about 0.6 seconds, as it parks in the middle that'll work out at 0.3 seconds to move to either extreme.

Anyway all looks promising so just need to build another 3... I've printed out a lot of the parts but still have several days worth of printing left. Need more printers so I can have several going at a time!

Almost a shame to hide these mechanics inside a steel tube... perhaps I should have gone with plexiglass!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thanks, and yeah I hope so! He's always asking questions about it, and I know parents are biased about their own kids but he's as bright as a button (the three year old, the 10 month old can't even talk... pathetic... ) so perhaps it'll ignite an interest for him in engineering or at least something more productive than what his Dad does!

In terms of progress I've got one actuator completely done, well apart from attaching the foot, and have done innumerable hours of printing so have most of the components for the others done. Just 3 more 10-12 hour prints left I think.

Revisited the design ever so slightly, extending the receiving piece at the top of the actuator to help add even more resistance to torsion and made some firmer bump stops for the ball nut... also added a small trim detail piece between motor mount and actuator body to give a little visual interest

New bump stop:




Extended top cap, along with cut out for grease nipple




Finished Chonky Boi 5000TM, orange trim piece and with child for scale:




You may recall I had a server rack and a bunch of electrical components to try and put together. Well I've made some progress there too but it's still very much WIP with more wiring and tidying up to do:

Individual breakers and EMI filters for each drive, a further filtered IEC inlet and an earthed steel shield for the thanos controller itself to try and protect it from any disturbances that close to the power (Hadn't noticed issues thus far but was recommended by Thanos himself... not the purple one). Not sure why I decided to make it out of 2mm stainless steel plate, but for anyone else do something sensible and get a thinner or easier to bend material! My son watched my struggling to get it to bend (I have no metal brake!), he tried and then said we needed Hulk to help.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Got the actuator mounted up today, along with coming up with a removable wheel system for the rig - idea being I can roll it out to where I want it, place pads underneath the actuators to protect the floor, raise the platform and then slide the wheels out so they don't interfere with low travel.

So first I mounted the actuator to the rig to test out how my plan will work... seems rigid and strong so time will tell!



Some brass I was waiting for in the post then arrived so I made a small snug fitting piece to mount an m8 thread in the bore, sleeve locked it in and printed some feet out of flexible TPU






And I wanted to see how it would lift the rig... effortlessly is the answer lol

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So here is the little removable wheel system, just slots in and out. I may add some little latches but I'm not sure it's necessary as when loaded up with the weight of the rig they are held firmly in with friction anyway.






And the other rear actuator now fitted... the observant may notice that the motors aren't facing the same way - still playing with position to try and find the best wiring route. You may also notice the 3D printed floor cups for the actuators to sit in. These will be mounted to an 18mm plywood square which will then have some 20mm vibration mat mounted to the underneath, should help reduce noise and will keep my floor from getting messed up with constant motion.




So what's left to do? A bit of wiring in the control box to get all drives powered, and I will be shortening some of the DB25 cables to neaten it all up, but that isn't a priority. I need to switch all the servo power cables over to shielded which is a bit of a faff, I've already done the seat belt tensioner and one actuator, rest still to do... then obviously I need to mount the front actuators and make some more wheel mounts for the front.

Then it's pretty much done outside of a few finishing touches, so should be operational this week I think.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So got an unexpected day to play from the wife, so been a productive one!

Made and mounted up the front wheel mounts, got the actuators fitted and added a piece of aluminium angle at the front to add some rigidity (since it lacks the upper cross bar that the back has).




Almost ready to rock - just need to swap 3 more servo side power cables over to shielded, and then finish the wiring in the control box itself.... oh and the foot pads. Few more hours work maybe.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers

got it all done and working, still some bits to tidy up at some point but it’s fully functional currently.

Spent a couple of hours playing around with settings on ACC, one nice thing about sim racing studio is that I can tune from the mobile phone while live in the sim which is good for experimenting with.

I also got the witmotion accelerometer to be able to use the motion compensation built into SRS so currently getting my head around the finer details of that but seems to be working pretty well already. I think the virtual controller it uses for motion compensation is fixed in reference to the room, so to avoid having to reset it everytime I think I’ll be making some “stage marks” on the floor so I always roll the rig out to the same spot.

Once I’ve tidied up the mess from getting it all sorted I’ll try and get set up to make a decent video of it.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Here is a quick video of range of motion (set to about 75% max here iirc) operating in simple joystick mode.

mostly using this mode to test motion compensation (which is working great btw!) but it’s also theoretically good for games that don’t support motion natively like squadrons.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Thankfully in VR it looks like whatever car you are driving!

For now the plan is to enjoy it for a bit.

I do have some future plans around building a DIY gearbox, maybe some DIY warbird style throttle/mixture/prop/trim unit, and on the motion front I want to add a movable pad in the back which will give better feeling of acceleration (powered by the same servo that does the belt tensioning)… other than that though it’s reached a pretty happy place to just put in some hours playing in it!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Cheers

Too hot to play VR at the moment so I'm back to making a mess.

I've decided to crack on with adding a better feeling of acceleration with a G-seat style actuator tied to the belt unit - so where in deceleration the belt tightens and gives you a feeling of sustained G-force, this will instead loosen the belt and push your back to give a feeling of sustained acceleration. In theory.




Here's where I'm at so far...

This is the design for the addition to the belt unit, the basic idea is that the linkages will tie the belt arms and the upper assembly, then linkages from the upper arms to the seat pad. Centre section of the upper arms is free to move downwards so as not to jam and prevent belt tensioning, but when the belt arms move upwards it will simultaneously release belt tension while pushing the pad into your back to simulate acceleration surge...

Order of the day was to make the seatback piece, so I laid up some fiberglass and cut it to shape. While I wore my fancy new full face respirator, I completely forgot to wear long sleeves in this heat and now I'm itchy!










Next up will be making the actuator assembly!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

 

[Zeeflyboy]

That’s more or less the plan… there’s plenty to do!

Off the top of my head already for future consideration:

- Wind simulation
- Extra axis x2 for dual traction loss/yaw
- Further g-seat elements for sway
- F1 style wheel rim
- Warbird style throttle quadrant
- Quick detach joystick with multiple positions (side/centre mountings)
- Lebois H-pattern and sequential gear shifter (he’s made an awesome design so for once I don’t need to design my own, just make it!)
- Electric motors for seat position
- DIY force feedback joystick

I’m sure there’s more too… Between all those and the endless ability to tune the rig itself and different software options there’s enough to keep me busy over the next decade!

 

[Zeeflyboy]

So finished off the g-seat paddle... I trimmed the fiberglass in a velcro friendly material (like the seat already uses) and built in two velcro tabs at the bottom to act as a hinge.... then the cushions simply attach as they did before to the seat back, just with this pad inbetween... basically invisible now it's done.










There are some minor tweaks to make to the servo driver setup and controller configuration to make sure I'm getting the most out of it, but it works well as is. The feeling of slamming the throttle open in a powerful plane now causes quite a lot of pressure to appear on your back, and feathering the throttle in a racing car gives you immediate acceleration feedback. I have to say it's at least as good as the belt tensioner was on it's own, so now it's 2x as good! Obviously you simply can't really simulate sustained g-forces in a motion sim, but it makes the games all the more involving none the less and a good facsimile.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

@Jay85 sorry missed your last post. I don’t think it’s likely to be a business I pursue, but I’m generally happy to enable people’s creativity where I am able to help… in terms of business I just don’t think the majority of the public are willing to pay the sort of money required to make a prototyping or low-run order financially viable in terms of time/effort reward ratio.

However I’ve made a few bits and bobs for people in the past on request but it’s very much just an adhoc sort of thing as time/motivation/capability allows… vastly different proposition than to make a viable living out of it.

If I were to win the lottery tomorrow, one thing I would set up right away would be a non-profit local makerspace… I don’t believe there are any particularly close to me.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

From what research I have bothered to do the patent troll aspect is largely overblown internet drama… see Brunner’s existence as a case in point.

Ultimately however it’s meaningless. Patents are ultimately irrelevant when you are building something for personal use… Under UK patent law:

“An act which, apart from this subsection, would constitute an infringement of a patent for an invention shall not do so if
(a) it is done privately and for purposes which are not commercial;”

Section 60(5) of the manual of patent practise. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/manual-of-patent-practice-mopp/section-60-meaning-of-infringement

If I were to try and commercialise it then that would be a different story, and I would have to make sure that patents indeed weren’t being infringed. I do however have zero interest in doing so anyway.

I believe your sidewinder is, by the way, usable in MSFS with certain addons. One such example (there’s at least one more but it escapes me at the moment) https://www.fsmissioneditor.com/product/xpforce/

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Weak sauce feedback on the old hardware though, things have moved on a lot in the last 2 decades!