Planet Arduino

Racing “video games” can be incredibly realistic these days, with every facet of the car’s physics and their interaction with the asphalt programmed in. Those racing sims could provide a completely immersive experience—if the player wasn’t sitting on a motionless couch using a controller that doesn’t resemble a car’s steering wheel in the slightest. To rectify that issue, high school student Pranshu Agnihotri built his dream racing wheel.

Agnihotri tackled this project for a senior project in his Principles of Engineering class at Irvington High School. Its purpose is to provide a more realistic interface for racing games and sims. It doesn’t have any force feedback capabilities, but it will work with any PC game thanks to the Arduino that lets the user easily rebind controls. Those can even emulate keyboard and mouse inputs for games that weren’t designed for use with steering wheels.

The brain is an Arduino Leonardo, which Agnihotri chose for its Microchip ATmega32u4 microcontroller. That is configurable as a standard USB HID, so any computer will recognize its inputs without any special drivers or software. The steering wheel and electronics enclosure were 3D-printed in exactly the shape Agnihotri wanted. An M8 threaded shaft acts as the steering column. A potentiometer provides steering angle input, while limit switches detect when the player presses the paddle shifters. The Arduino reads those inputs, then sends out the corresponding gamepad, keyboard, or mouse commands via USB.

We have to assume that Agnihotri aced this assignment, and now he has an awesome steering wheel to race with. 

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A sequential transmission is one that only allows you to move up or down by a single gear at a time. They’ve always been the norm for motorcycles, because they’re lightweight and compact. And Formula One cars have sequential transmissions for the same reasons. But unlike motorcycles, which require manual shifting, Formula One cars have lightning-fast electronic systems. To recreate that for racing sims, Carlos Almeida designed this sequential gear shift controller.

Real Formula One cars have paddle shifters, so that drivers can shift while keeping their hands on their steering wheels. This is a little bit different and looks more like a conventional shifter at first glance. It is a large lever that the user can push forward to move up a gear, or pull back to move down a gear. A seven-segment display shows the current gear number.

Most of the mechanical components are 3D-printable and an Arduino MKR1000 WiFi board is the primary component. Moving the shift lever pushes a switch, which the Arduino registers. Almeida developed the sketch using PlatformIO. It sets the Arduino up as a standard USB HID that will work with any racing sim or game, because it sends key presses like any keyboard or gamepad. It doesn’t receive feedback from the PC, so it has to keep track of the current gear and let the user set the number of gears available using small buttons below the readout display.

If you want a physical sequential shifter for racing sims, this will make a great weekend project.

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