Prototypes of SimuCUBE motherboards and acrylic case have just arrived! The first successful test drive has been done with a big smile :) We hope to have Indiegogo campaign launched on the next week. Get ready for early bird specials!
SimuCUBE front
SimuCUBE rear
SimuCUBE motherboard with IONI Pro HC and 320 power supply
Construction of the acrylic case
Aside with 30 Nm peak MiGE motor
Ingenious SimuCUBE hardware & enclosure design and photos by Aki.
We’re working on to make a reference design of acrylic enclosure for a SimuCUBE system. The box will fit all necessary force feedback system electronics, including a 320 W power supply. In our tests 320 W was fully sufficient for a 20 Nm wheel and well usable also with higher torque systems with power draw limit of IONI.
Work in progress acrylic case for SimuCUBE system. Design by Aki Korhonen.
Connector side. Design by Aki Korhonen.
The plan is to eventually offer a kit of all components, SimuCUBE + IONI Pro HC + PSU + case parts. Stay tuned!
I’m happy to reveal the details of the upcoming force feedback controller – SimuCUBE! The hardware design is now complete for prototyping and we will get prototypes in the lab in the next month. SimuCUBE has a STM32F4 microcontroller that is compatible to a popular STM32F4 Discovery board. The plan is to start an open source firmware project for this board.
SimuCUBE will change the way simulators are built. Click to enlarge.
Brilliant hardware design & image render by Aki.
Our FFB wheel build is taking big steps forward. This rig may have world’s first laser gas & brake pedals. And the biggest wheel motor too!
Thanks to Aki for design, tooling and video. Stay tuned for more progress, during this time we have have got many ideas how to improve electronics & software of FFB systems.
The decision to build a racing simulator with servo motor based force feedback has yielded first tangible results. The picture below shows the current setup of a force feedback wheel with a 36 Nm (peak) motor equipped with a sin/cos encoder. The system is being driven by IONI Pro HC and a STM32 Discovery based interface.
Simulator direct drive FFB wheel is operational but currently it lacks other controls. Mechanical parts design and tooling was implemented by Aki.
The first test drive on iRacing put a wide smile on our faces immediately and gave more motivation to make faster progress on it :)
The plan is to experiment with wheel effect calculations, such as friction, inertia, damping and spring, inside the drive firmware to take full advantage of high resolution feedback devices. Also it’s a good platform to test how far IONI can be pushed in output current ratings in this kind of system.
Now it’s official – as hobby project I’m going to build a servo motor based force feedback wheel to be used with racing simulation! As side project I’ll be thinking of how to make drives even better suited for this task.
This is all I’ve got now. Haven’t decided yet whether I’ll be using IONI or ARGON with the motor.
As I’m not throughly familiar with all the details, the first thing in is to gather information to get me started. If you wish to help, please share some useful FFB related links in the comments!