My new Logitech MOMO F1 wheel for the G25

Mr Pibb · Sep 4, 2011

Some years ago, I designed and built an F1 wheel hub to fit into my Logitech MOMO wheel rim which is mounted on a G25. You can see my current wheel here. This old wheel is powered by Beta Innovation products and sadly, these are not compatible with F12010, so I decided to build a new one based on the SLI-M.

I posted a bunch of questions about it in the "Leo Bodnar Shift Lights and controllers" thread, and thanks to the more than helpful replies, I have progressed the design much further. I decided to start a new thread, showing the design progress so far:

The new wheel is essentially just the old wheel with a bit of a rehash to suit the SLI-M. Everything is based on manufacturers dimensions so it's all very accurate (which helps) but I haven't yet ordered the SLI-M, so the PCB mounting and digital display are only based on some templates and will probably require some minor tweaking once I get an SLI-M in my hot little hands and take some proper dimensions.

Will keep updating as and when things happen. I hope you like.

Regards,

Mr Pibb.

Mr Pibb · Sep 11, 2011

Well, I'm a very lucky man. My birthday's coming up and so Mrs Pibb said she'd buy me an SLI-M!

So she's just ordered it so hopefully I'll have it in my hot little hands soon. <- insert cheesy grin emoticon here.

Once it arrives I can do a final measure and then finalise the design and get the parts laser cut.

There's actually not many parts to cut as you can see here. The film in the middle won't be laser cut, I'll just print that out on a colour printer and cut it out with a scapel.

Thanks.

Jim Cole · Sep 12, 2011

Silly question, but how much are you having to spend to get those parts laser cut?

Mr Pibb · Sep 12, 2011

Jim, I have no idea what so ever what this'll cost as I need to finalise the design first before I get any quotes.

But it's a real chicken and egg thing. The design depends on the materials readily available to the laser cutting company, and the laser cutting company's price depends on the design! So it's a viscous circle. If the price is right but the materials are not, then I need to change the design to suit which may push up the price so that company is unsuitable. They are not all equal in capability either. Not all companies will cut PETG for example.

Once the company is finally chosen I will have to redraw everything to suit the thickness of their laser too.

For my current wheel I used these folks in USA: [URL="blocked::http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/749"]http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/749[/URL]. But there was an ulterior motive for using this company: I designed the whole thing around parts available from McMaster-Carr in the USA. It wasn't until I placed an order with McMaster-Carr that they told me they won't ship outside of mainland USA. Great. So this laser cutting company agreed to act as an address for having my McMaster-Carr parts shipped to and forwarded the parts on to me as part of the order.

Based on the last job I did with them, I expect I'll be looking at something like £75.

I was planning on using them again, but if you have a better suggestion I really would love to hear it!

Jim Cole · Sep 13, 2011

No better suggestion, sorry mate.

I was asking as I was thinking it might be something that others would like to know and have done as well.

Mr Pibb · Oct 1, 2011

Well, this project's not dead yet.

I ordered my SLI-M and since it was compatible with F1-2010 I cellotaped it on top of my G25 and started palying like that. It's great! I can use manual shift again now that I have blue lights flashing at me to shift.

Then, in the interim, F1 2011 was released so I've been playing that so this project was very much on the back burner.

But anyway, I decided not to progress it any further, and instead I decided to re-hash my old wheel to suit the SLI-M. So, I gutted it, removed all the old Beta Innovation boards, and did a little chopping here and there. So far so good! And it hasn't cost me a penny (except for the SLI-M of course).

Progress shot:

Now there's the wiring to do. So far, I've desoldered all the RPM LEDs from the SLI-M and have done a test remote-mount of an LED and it works fine.

Will keep you posted.

Mr Pibb · Oct 6, 2011

Well, it's done!! :thumbup:

Finally I finished wiring up this thing. Man it took ages - it's a very intricate job.

The 7 seg LED was tricky because it was surface mounted. First I had to desolder the old one then solder/glue some new 2.54mm pins to the surface mount pads. The new 7 seg LED - a yellow one (personal taste) had 5 pins coming out the back top and bottom and also at 2.54mm centers. This let me wire it up easily with 10 pin plugs and 10 pin cable.

BUT - I must have fried a bit of the SLI-M when I was desoldering the old 7 seg LED as I can only get the bottom half working. :damnit:

I've tested it exhaustively and all the wiring/soldering checks out - so must have fried it. Oh well, I'll get a new one soon and try again. All the wiring is demountable so I easily swap in another SLI-M. All I need to do is prep the board. Does anyone know if Leo can do a board with no LEDs attached at all?

Anyway, the rpm LEDs and all the switches run sweet

So I'm a happy man.

Brian Clancy · Oct 6, 2011

Great job!

A very pro looking and unique wheel, magic stuff Mr Pibb's

You sure you havent 'burnt' the 7 seg rather than the SLI board??? I have found that soldering wire to the 7 seg pins need a fast touch to be sure you dont damage em

Mr Pibb · Oct 6, 2011

Thanks Brian.

Yeah, I *think* it's the board - I can flip the 7 seg /wires around and get all bars lit up so the new 7 seg unit seems ok. It could be my soldering but it really does look ok through a magnifying glass. I can hook up ordinary LEDs to each output + Vcc and they test ok but only on the pins associated to the lower part of the 7 seg. The others are dead. I can't trace them back to the IC beside it, but the one's that test ok seem to track back to the IC just fine.

Never attempted any surface mounted work before, so a bit disappointed it didn't quite work

Brian Clancy · Oct 9, 2011

I use SMD quite a bit now. The surface mount stuff is not as hard as people think, if you have solder PASTE, de-soldering wick and a little bit of a steady hand you are good to go

. I must admit I have an SMD re-work station with a hot air gun for SMD soldering, but a standard iron will do it quite well with a little care

I would change the I.C. (its probably an I.O. expander) and wont cost much £2 - ish for a single unit. Worth a go before youy scrap the board and buy another.

Either way, great work