Planet Arduino

Racing simulators these days are very good, thanks to incredibly realistic graphics and physics. Developers have recreated the effects of everything from tire composition to asphalt temperature. But a lot of that effort goes to waste when you’re playing with a standard gamepad, because that can’t probably any feedback other than some vibration. To make the most of racing sims, Jason Winfield built a DIY force feedback steering wheel using the motor from an old power drill.

Force feedback steering wheels act as both input devices and output devices. As input devices, they monitor the angle of the wheel to provide a steering value to the game. As output devices, a motor forces the steering wheel to rotate based on what occurs within the simulation. In a hard turn, it might provide resistance. If you spin out of control, the wheel might move around wildly. Because that has to overcome the player’s own grip on the wheel, the force feedback motor needs a lot of torque and that’s why Winfield chose to scavenge the motor from a power drill.

This motor, like any you’d find in a decent drill, is powerful. It also includes a planetary gearbox to increase torque at the expense of speed — a worthwhile compromise for an application like this. Winfield also scavenged the motor’s high-current driver, which can be an expensive component. An Arduino Leonardo board controls the motor’s operation according to values coming from the racing sim and also sends steering commands to the sim.

As Winfield states, this prototype has some issues and the strength of the parts isn’t enough for long term use. But with a little more development, he should have a pretty nifty force feedback steering wheel to race with!

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As part of his ongoing PorscheKart project, YouTuber Wesley Kagan wanted a better way to steer his V12 custom-built race car, as the previous wheel was simply a mechanical linkage to the front steering. Instead, this new version would closely mimic the layout and functionality of an actual Formula 1 wheel, complete with all of the buttons, dials, switches, and the central screen.

The base of the wheel was formed from a laser-cut sheet of aluminum while the surrounding grips were painstakingly 3D-printed out of TPU filament. For the electronics, Kagan decided to use a pair of Arduino Micros, which were split between handling button inputs and driving the display, while an Arduino Mega 2560 gathers sensor data and sends it as a string to the two boards. Because of the limited number of pins, he wired each of the three rotary switches’ output pins to a differently valued resistor, thereby letting the analog input on the Micro know which position is selected by the incoming voltage.

The final steps of building this upgraded steering included connecting the 3.5” LCD screen to one of the Arduino Micro boards and wiring everything together with the help of a couple harnesses to minimize the mess. However, creating the graphics program proved to be a challenge due to the limited space in ROM for storing all of the draw function calls, which is why Kagan plans on eventually swapping it out for a static image that has the values filled-in. To see more about the project, you can watch his build log video below and read this blog post.

The post Wesley Kagan’s PorscheKart project returns with a new Arduino-powered F1 steering wheel appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Instructables user [Roboro] had a Mad Catz Xbox steering wheel controller he hasn’t had much use for of late, so he decided to hack and use it as a controller for a robot instead.

Conceivably, you could use any RC car, but [Roboro] is reusing one he used for a robot sumo competition a few years back. Cracking open the controller revealed a warren of wires that were — surprise, surprise — grouped and labelled, making for a far less painful hacking process. Of course, [Roboro] is only using the Xbox button for power, the player-two LED to show the connection status, the wheel, and the pedals, but knowing which wires are which might come in handy later.

An Arduino Uno in the wheel and a Nano in the robot are connected via CC41-A Bluetooth modules which — despite having less functionality than the HM10 module they’re cloned from — perform admirably. A bit of code and integration of a SN754410 H-bridge motor driver — the Arduino doesn’t supply enough current to [Roboro]’s robot’s motors — and the little robot’s ready for its test drive.

[Roboro]’s suggested improvements are servo steering for the robot, upgrading to the HM10 module, more sensors to take advantage of the other buttons on the wheel, and a camera — because who doesn’t love some good ol’ fashioned FPV racing?