Quote :

If anyone has questions just post them here.

make one for me?
actually, no.
my wheel broke so i wouldnt have a use for it.
but id be interested to see it "running"

All last year I had to clamp the shifter on a small table that someone once thought would fit good in my room since I'm rarely here anymore. That was far from perfect, the shifter tended to move, the whole table was wobbly and I want to be able to use the shifter at my uni flat, where I have less space (and no spare table...)

well, yesterday I felt that typical after exam urge to fabricate something, and this is the result. (the shifter itself still works perfect, whenever you saw me race in the last twelve months I used this thing (except on derby servers, where I race with a gamepad)):










btw, the whole contraption is heavy as ****

Winter break in a couple of weeks, and I start thinking about what to cobble together this time. I'd like to do something about my pedals, cause the two pedal set solution I use now is not really perfect. The MS Sidewinder Clutch Pedal likes to slides around, and both sets (MS and Logitech) are not build for feet as big as mine, so whenever I lift both heels of the pedal base while pressing the pedals, the whole set will tipp on its back.



So I think, I will either:

• Get a G25/27 pedal set and wire it up tp both PCBs, or:
  
• Build some pedals myself
  

I'd rather do the first so whoever has a spare G25/27 pedal set, lives in europe and would like to sell it may pm me
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hello folks, I have been busy. I started building one pedal myself, out of profile sections from the hardware store. the first pic in the attachments shows how far I got. the problem that stopped me was how to get the movement translated into something electric. stan.distortion sent me a link to some guy using hall sensors, a method that was pretty expensive, and the needed sensors are somehow not available anywhere for sale (in Germany)

so, the other day I walk over a small flee market, and stumble over a G25 pedal set (the seller switched to a FREX set, GT Legends player)





Gas and Brake are connected with the DFP/GT loom, the clutch will connect to the Sidewinder like the old one.

I extended the pedals by ~5 cm, now the height seems pretty comfortable for me, like a real car, could not test it ingame yet, when I'm back at college next week I will post some first impressions.

Quote from ACCAkut :

snip

If I were you, I'd reverse-mount the pedals. Even more realistic and easy to do. But that is just me.

Very nice work Pivot point are nice and close to your heel so should feel good, would second Thunderhead though, reverse mounting just feels more natural for some reason.

Cant see how you have done your travel stops, worth spending time making good solid stops as calibration will wander if there is any inconsistency, also worth using a large area and nylon on 1 side to keep them quiet as metal to metal stops are annoyingly noisy.

For the hall effect sensors, you can pick them up on ebay for about 1.5 euro each, you have used steel though which may cause issues with magnetism reaching the sensor and with getting a linear signal. Your axis pivots on the pedal, if it had pivoted in the mounting you could have attached a magnet to the end or a linkage for a potentiometer. I had the same issue with potentiometer rotation before, used cables to get around it. You could run a cable from somewhere near the pedal side spring mounting, fit a pulley to the pot shaft and mount it behind the spring. With a double row pulley you can use the second row for another cable with a return spring. That gives good, accurate movement but will bend the pot shaft so it needs to be bearing mounted both ends, 6mm ball bearings are on ebay for about 1 euro each.

Simply mounting the pot on the pedal axis would work if you can get 10bit or higher resolution, mjoy or many of the arduino projects would give you this and give plenty of scope for expanding with handbrake, balance valve etc. They are AVR based, worth checking out PIC based projects too, if you need to get into the code they might suit you better (I dont like PIC's, ymmv) but you wont need to code to get things working, mjoy give 8 analogue inputs, a shedload of digitals (think its 64) and costs less than 10 euro to put together.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm preaching, just suggestions based on past experience and IMHO. Really nice job so far, you know what your doing

these are just the G25 pedals without the plastic shell and my extension, the travel stops should be inside the red tubes, I didn't change anything.

I took a good look into the site you send me, there is one type of sensor that gives out a signal similar to the 10k potis, any other type (= those that I found for sale) needs some kind of amplification, and I have no experience with that sort off electronic at all. The cog-wheel actuation Logitech uses imo is a good way to use all available rotation out of the potis.

About reverse mounting, I thought about that, but the whole contraption would get pretty big. I'm building this at my parents house, and carry it to my Uni town next week, where I use it at a desk that is used, well, as a desk mostly. I don't want anything that I have to screw to the wall.


And those real racecar pdeals are floor mounted too ...

Lol, thought the work was far to detailed for DIY, but then thought maybe that's the way Germans do DIY, an Englishman would have used lumps of cast iron and a bakelite on/off switch for a sensor :P

give me a workshop with tools not meant for wood, and some CNC machinery, and I may end up with something as detailed as those Tiltons in my last post, after all, I'm becoming an engineer at the moment

so, after two weeks of casual usage I can say it was a good investment. It took some time to get used to, but I like it so far. The pedals are more precise (= longer travel), and you push them horizontally like in a car, not down like in a bus

I added another layer of wood to get the base up by 15mm.
And I trimmed down the carpet stoppers (exactly the same on both G25 and DFP, down to the serial number) from the old plastic casings and screwed them on both ends. No movement whatsoever.

little something: made two plexi spacers to limit the gas pedals transversal movement, which you feel mostly during heel-toeing

ACCA: How are you going to plug G25 pedals into PC? Do you have proper controller for that? If not, Leo Bodnar sells a USB -> G25 here that might be useful for you?

The G25, DFGT and Sidewinder all use 10k-100k ohm potis, so the pedals are split up, gas and brake go to my DFGT, the clutch uses the former steering wheel channel from the sidewinder. That way I can still play games that only allow one game device, DIRT or RBR, (and save money :shy.

btw, that shifter contraption is now in use for almost two years (every other weekend), and still works flawless.

Three years now, only had to bend the plate that holds the shift-buttons from time to time when 2nd gear started to "jump out". But over the last weeks I ran into some problems, I tended to overshoot under braking, somehow I struggled a lot more than usually. I than noticed that my throttle axis spiked a lot while and after heel-toeing, meaning while I used brake and throttle at the same time. Throttle stayed at ~10% even when fully depressed until I used the brakes again.

I traced it back to a broken cable, the black one that connects both potis. Soldered in a new cable, now I can blame my driving errors on myself again

Bravo, keep up the good work!

Contraption is now 6 years old, old enough to start elementary school, made it through 3 moves, still working fine...



(only added another button for 6 gears + Reverse)

Nice work man,default pedals od dfgt is very bad
i have my reworked

I know, thats why I use G25 pedals. But the DFGT wheel itself seems to reach the end of its life, FFB gets weaker after 20 minutes of driving at a time.

edit: took the wheel apart a little further. Brushes are still well within their live span, cleaned all the coal dust that had settled on its contact surface with a paint brush and some PCB cleaner, problems gone. Seems like DFGTs do last quite long with good care.

Thought it would be a good idea to add another small info to this write up (after finding out that googling for "DIY H-Shifter" will show this thread on that first result page...am surprised about that).

Some months ago I changed the springs of the modded G25 pedals. After years of usage and mostly with my 70mm extension they were too weak for my liking.

Instead of spending some 40€ a ready made "kit" from a sim racing supplier I instead went to "GUTEKUNST FEDERN", an industrial spring supplier. On their website (available in english too) I could enter the dimensions of the stock springs from the G25 pedals (diameter ~25 mm, L0 (relaxed length) is 63 mm), and pick something with a strength that I liked. I picked 6 springs of different strength based on those outer dimensions to mix&match, all together costing only ~20€.

For the original spring strength, I measured the outer dimension, and with a kitchen scale determined that to compress the spring by 10 mm I need to apply 2,8 kg of weight to it.
With those measurements I can calculate R = F/s, resulting in R=~2,8 N/mm. So if you want a spring of double that strength, look for one in the R=~5 N/mm range.

I could probably tell you which springs I bought, but I don't have them at hand right now (not typing this at home), and I'm not even sure which I have installed right now... I tried around a lot until heel&toeing felt right, I think I now have the original brake spring in my clutch pedal, to give you an idea.

Sooo.. I now have a loadcell brake. A brake pedal that no longer translates motion into a signal, but pressure. How did I do that? Did I pull out the 100€ needed for a plug&play kit? Following the theme of this thread, of course I did not.

Instead I googled around a little, and came across this forum thread made by user RacingMat:
https://www.xsimulator.net/com ... ke-pedal-short-tuto.6042/

Second page of it makes mention of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board as a good source for load cells (four of them, all in Wheatstone layout)

So I went on ebay, found a board like that for 7€. The three listed electronic components were another ~13€.


The Balance Board without its bottom cover. Really sturdy build, all metall. Sticker says 150kg max... I believe it can take double. Safety factor ftw


Each corner has a Wheatstone bridge with two nice mounting plates. Internet says each of these is rated for 75kg max


Each metal-metal bolt has loctite applied - Nintendo does not mess around




Cue a few hours of tinkering, taking measurements on the G25 pedal, scavenging through my scrap metal bin. This is the bottom part, as you can see it uses the Nintendo mounting plates, as those probably guarantee the best pressure actuation of the load cell itself. The square alu tube acts as the guide for the spring (heaviest spring I had left from my earlier endeavours).


Installed. Needed a few attacks with the Dremel to make it all fit in the original rail.


Upper part installed. I was lucky to have a piece of stainless tube laying around that fits neatly,but not too tightly into the spring. This is somewhat essential to guide the whole contraption and stop it from folding up- or downwards. Tho with the original pedal layout the motion of the cylinder is almost linear. Upper mount, lower mount and centre of the loadcell are all on one axis.

The stainless tube is ~25mm shorter than the spring, meaning I still have some motion in the pedal before the tube touches a layer of vinyl inside the alu square. This took some tries, initially it was too long.

Now onto wiring:

The thread linked above has it in detail, which parts you need to amplify the loadcell signal into something that is readable like a poti. I needed some brain acrobatics to translate it for the "Nintendo bridge".
Important: If you want to wire it like I did, DON'T choose wiring loom this thick. This was an old PSU loom, many nice colours to keep it tidy, but after soldering the whole thing was so stiff that I almost bend the pins off the chip.

Last line reads:
E+ E- A- A+
Blue Green White Red (colours of the wires already on the load cell)




This is how it all splices into the G25 brake pedal wiring. I did it like this just in case it wouldn't work, to easily be revertible.


With some electric tape applied. I've since secured everything with some hot glue in an old tupperware box, with a small hole for the gain resistor to peak through, which you need to for fine tuning.

And it works fine ingame, no additional controllers needed, its the normal Driving Force GT brake pedal.
Now I only need to finetune myself for the new hardware