Ger's Playseat Challenge Build Log

[Geraint Thomas]

I've finished the 50kg load cell build, and it's brilliant!

It's a bit of a mess at the moment, but it's working beautifully.

I've also replaced the pink rubber with solid silicone test tube stoppers. They're tapered so they compress really well, and they're a perfect feel in terms of stiffness. They're also 19.5mm, which is the exact dimensions of inside the spring. There couldn't be a better solution!

The blue dial allows me to alter how much load it needs until it reaches 100%, so I can dial this to however I want. If I put it to the max, I'm lifting my own chair off the ground before it even gets close to the top. I've dialed it to putting a huge amount of pressure gives 100%, but a hard brake gives about 80-90%, which is spot on.

I can how either use one of thoes silicone bungs with a tall black piston to pre-load it for a stiff pedal, or have a shorter piston setup and use two bungs for a more progressive feel. That, mixed with the dial on the circuit board, means I have an infinite amount of configurations for the pedal.

And it only cost me £15... ridiculous.

I've also invested in a £9 small digital clock from ebay to keep an eye on those server joining times...

 

[Geraint Thomas]

Blimey, it's been a whole year since I've updated this. Not a huge amount has changed though.

I tidied the pedal build up a little more, given the wires and boards a box in between the pedals, and printed new clamps for the pedal bar so that they don't come loose and rip the wires during heavy braking. Ask me how I know.

A keyboard was also added by taping it to the back of a phone holder. This was great, but eventually the phone holder snapped, so I'd need to think of an alternative as this was a very neat and tidy solution for the playseat.

I mocked up a very quick button box, and printed it out. This thing has been extremely useful, sitting into the aforementioned phone holder instead of the keyboard.

I'm currently designing a new style button box as small as this, that fits into a phone holder, for exactly this purpose.

Meanwhile, the office had a re-paint. I got a little tired of the darkness in the middle of the day, so the green was (sadly) gone.

More in the next post.

 

[Geraint Thomas]

The lights work a lot better in a lighter room, though.

As a quick side note, I've also been designing a new DIY wheel that people can buy the digital files and build themselves, or purchase it as a kit. This is through a joint venture with a friend, but so far the design is coming along well.

One of the best upgrades I've done so far is to fix the T300's cooling, and implement more power.

The cooling was finally fixed by fitting a Noctua A6x25 fan, along with a 3D printed duct that someone had kindly given me to print. I've been running this with very strong feedback and no fade. Along with a recent re-build of the motor with 300 degree resistant JB weld, it looks like this has fixed the issue entirely. High-temperature weld and proper cooling.

Now that the T300 has proper cooling, I decided to give it more power. The stock PSU gives 24v, but is unregulated and is pretty terrible in its power delivery. Replacing this with an external laptop 24v PSU fixes the notchiness some experience with the T300. However, after some research, you can give these 36v quite easily for a little more headroom with power.

I purchased an adjustable PSU from Amazon that has a dial and a readout, allowing me to switch between 24v and 36v if I need to. I also placed some heatsinks on the mosfets of the chipboard to help with the cooling.

After this, the PSU was removed (you can see in the fan image above), and the power port was cut and replaced with a simple female power port (didn't take a photo of this). I sourced this from an old Driving Force GT as it already had a plastic mount that, incredibly, fitted perfectly into the back of the T300. Worst case though, you purchase one from Ebay and 3D print a plate instead. Nice and simple.

The power leads are now a lot smaller.

No more notchiness, a bit more power, good cooling, and everything is as it should be.

I do love it when the FOV works seamlessly between the monitor and real display.

That leads us up to now. Future plans would be to tidy the LED lights on the chair, as the current solution of simply slapping on some adhesive LED strips is very messy. I'll consider some neater solutions.

As well as that, I'll look into adding some rumble motors for the pedals. I can easily build these, but my issue is that it's yet another power supply that I'd have to use that cannot be bound to the other wires as they plug into the back of the wheel. This new power lead would plug into the pedals, and as I'm trying to make this build as neat as possible, this wouldn't be great. I'll see if I could tap into the power that's supplied to the T300's fan, as this is 12v, which is required for the motors. This can then run down to the pedals along with the other wires, which would mean no more wires on show.

I'll see...