Thinking of a SLI-PRO

[Richard Hill]

Just wondering recently I have been thinking of getting an Leo Bodnar SLI PRO and a wheel plate from Sim Racing Hardware.
But I run a G27 and I was wondering is to worth getting one as the wheel I bought for £180 and the total cast for the SLI PRO and wheel kit will be about the same.
Also what wheel would you recommend to replace the G27?
Not saying it's a bad wheel cause I think it's great but it's more the rattle is starting to get annoying for me and my neighbours. But would like to modify it to make it look nice.

 

[David Turnbull]

why bother, make one, use an old phone and dashmeterpro and customise it to how you want it to look, ive thought about it for a while but aint gonna pay that amount of money for a small circuit board, ive made a few wheelplates in the past, the one i use now is one im happiest with, nowt fancy but does the job.

heres what i use now on my g25, i plan on keeping this until my other projects are done....



and heres one im working on with my spare g25, dunno if ill end up selling the whole thing or not yet, this one would probably be ideal for an sli..



eventually my main wheel will be totally diffrent from both of the above, ive got another f1 wheel project in the pipeline

 

[Richard Hill]

I have tried the dashmeterpro and is fantastic. Been looking for an android phone so I can have it attached to the wheel but I can't work out which one is best as I know nothing about android. That's why I thought f*** it why not get the sli but I got a tablet that I use with dashmeterpro but is too big for the wheel and I have got it in front of my monitor so I could do with a phone for it so it is closer. What phone would you recommend? As I would only use it for dashmeterpro
Also would like a better looking wheel tho if I keep the G27 and also would like more buttons and even thought of doing the simraceway mod but I suppose a better looking wheel that looks the part will do for me

 

[Richard Hill]

Love what you have done tho David

 

[David Turnbull]

i use the sony xperia e for my everyday phone and for the wheel, its about 40-50 quid to buy now i think, any size android phone will work, as long as you got access to googleplay on it to download dashmeter, wouldnt even need a sim card in it, your tablet would then come in usefull for the buttonbox app i posted in general wheelplate with dashmeter and tablet with buttonbox, more leds and buttons than any man could want and a fraction of the costs involved in an sli plus housing plus buttons plus... whatever else.

sean can tell you more about the simraceways wheel, he was going to do it and actually bought it when he had the g27 to mod, ill let him tell you why it didnt end up happening, but needless to say ive overlooked it since.

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

Ye simraceway is tiny, shifters suck and even buttons tiny, sent it back right away. At the time you also have to buy separate software to make leds even work on pc lol, not sure if fanaleds works it now though.

I'd say do whatever you can on the cheap and save money for future wheel upgrade the slipro etc is nice but the price + modding you have to do, I didn't think it was worth it.

Also modern f1 wheels now have a small screen anyway so modding a f1 wheel look with phone fitted, use a gamepad circuit board or something for buttons/rotary, route cable through g25 base and would be pretty awesome.
This is what I would have done if didn't buy a csw. By price also I paid 179 euros for my f1 rim so about same price as a slipro, just the base also obviously bumps up the total price its kind of how I just got the csw adding prices of what I could have spent buying this and that.

Modding something these would be quite impressive

 

[Richard Hill]

Cool thank you guys
I know if I posted this here I would get some real and down to earth advice
I like your idea Sean on using a game pad circuit board for buttons I don't think that I am that good at modifying things but I might give that a try.
David how do you connect you phone to the wheel? Does it turn with the wheel?
I really do appreciate the help I have been thinking for a while on doing something like this for a while but don't know where to start.
What's the club sport like Sean?
Also been thinking of the t500 RS and getting the Ferrari upgrades for it but the f1 one seams quite cheap looking to me from the pics.
Sorry for all the questions

 

[Bob Laube]

this is my selfie for G25 with a Leo Bodnar SLI-M from 2009
it woks great for over 5 years

Greez Bob

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

I like the csw a lot very strong ffb nice wheel with plenty buttons also with belt drive its a lot quitter and can use less or 0 smoothing with rf2 especially.

Compared to the t500rs some people do think the t500rs is slight stronger ffb etc but I think they are both quite good wheels and really would come down to own personnel preference. With the t500rs you also get a pretty good set of pedals at around £339 is quite good deal. Also though the t500rs has static paddle shifters, so mostly driving formula style I would have had to also get the f1 style Ferrari addon or buy the integral version that comes with the Ferrari wheel for £400. Yes it does look slightly cheaper more plastic and the rotary's are just for show but still not bad altogether.

I also already had a set of clubsport pedals v1s and are probably slightly better than the standard t500rs.
Price for formula rim and base csw is around £500 and then also obviously a set of pedals if csw v2s another £200 starts to become a bit expensive.

Another option now is the thrustmaster tx xbox wheel its also compatible with the pc and slight less overall power in ffb strength than t500rs although I think most people with this and csw run with the ffb lowered anyway nobody really could use really strong ffb and do a long race for example. Some reviews say its quite difficult ot notice much difference between t500rs and the tx. The thrustmaster tx is around £225 and normal wheel has moving paddles so no need to upgrade to Ferrari addon right away you could add this later. One thing is the pedals that come with the tx version are terrible but thrustmaster have now a optional addon set of pedals that are close to the t500rs set also with a brake mod for around £80 odds or also the option of say cs pedals at £200 or csr elites at £120 ish both having a load cell for the brake.


The cheapest upgrade would be the tx wheel and tx upgrade pedals at £300 or say with the csr elites at £340 and would be I think a good choice compared to the standard t500rs mainly for the moving paddles with slight better brake with load cell and then in future could also add a Ferrari f1 wheel with no need to rush.

Obviously none of these apart from csw comes with leds and speedo but then so your original question about slipro leaves you with loads of options as to what you want to do lol as a slipro would look great on a Ferrari thrustmaster wheel arrrg the full circle back to beginning of choices ! Sos for being no help at all .

Edit : Ye Bob I forgot about the sli-m its also slightly cheaper option, I remember seeing your wheel a while back started me off thinking to mod back in the day

 

[April Dillon]

I need to start experimenting with these DIY wheel projects... Seems like there's a lot one can do with these things with a little creativity

Sean-- I'd personally advise against using the Thrustmaster F1 rim, as it's got horrible double shifting problems. This may be okay for drivers in the F3000 who don't downshift rapidly (as I know the faster folks do). But driving the FISI2012 in rF2, I had the double shift prevention up to a quarter of a second, and they still happened. Further more, I found having it that high was actually very intrusive, and frequently found myself one or two gears higher than I wanted after long braking zones.

The Ferrari GTE wheel however has no such problems, the paddles turn with the wheel, and I think I've only had one single double shift from it over the almost 6 months I've had mine.

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

Good to know I've never had a shot of either of them kind of glad I never got all that now I'd have been kinda pissed lol sounds very frustrating. Shifting was main thing why that simraceway wheel was a joke and really hated the feel.
The formula cs rim they are completely adjustable so you can get them feeling exactly how you want, I like to shift fast with hardly any travel in paddles.

 

[David Turnbull]

David how do you connect you phone to the wheel? Does it turn with the wheel?

cut out a bit of hard plastic into the shape i wanted, took out the alan bolts on the front of the wheel used the plastic insert that holds the logitech badge to mark up the holes on the plastic, then fitted them together, bolts back in and that parts done.

i then bought a cheap 2.50 hard case for my phone from ebay and screwed it onto the wheel plate, job done and yes it turns with the wheel, if you didnt want it to then could make a mount same way and glue it to the top of the g25/7 cover so its always in front and in view.

 

[Richard Hill]

Thank you guys for the help
I have decided to buy a android phone and mount it like David for the time being. I have looked around and have took inspiration also from this mount for a data display
http://www.renovatio-dev.com/wmk9cg27.php
As it looks easy to mount a display like this.
Also I will be able to attach the phone somehow when I do change my wheel to maybe a fanatec but that might be a while
Thank you again
This will be my first project and quite excited about it even tho it's quite a small one at that. But might look into adding extra buttons with an old Xbox controller that I have

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

What do you guys think of the importance of very strong FFB motor on steering wheel? What i mean, Momo, with it's puny one motor is easily strong enough at it's max power output.. i need 75% to 80% of it, what are you're higher end wheel FFB max levels? I can't see anyone needing stronger continuous forces, that would be very tiring and unnecessary. The way i see it, is the low end torque that is more of a problem, to get things moving in the first place fast and to provide faster responses at high end of scale, for ex when voltage is at 75% of max and you need to produce small movements that the person can still feel (where Momo is lacking, with it's puny motor, physics is a harsh mistress...) Or is it stronger motor is needed to decrease the torque conversion rate, thus getting more direct feedback? Cause it surely can't be the total max power output torque where you need stronger wheel motor. Just like to hear the reason for that part of equation.

I would surely like to tune FFB curve better, now there's basically just maximum and curve linearity, i could surely use real bezier curve (to enhance the lowest forces to get the wheel moving and to make the high end of the curve a lot lot smoother...)

 

[Sean Greenlaw]

I think higher ffb strength probably overall slows your overall pace, I have to tone down the ffb with csw in rf2 but with gtr I have it at 100 and max ingame but set to 90 90 ingame options. Both quite tiring after a session of long race, my hands are usually aching even at these settings.

Anything that is jolting you wheel from perfect angle into and round turns etc will slow you so to strong ffb would affect this to, but strong ffb sure dam feels nice at the time .

 

[Reik Major]

Has anyone an idea if there's a possibility to show the on-path and off-path wetness on my Galaxy S3?

I googled a lot in the hope there's an app to be costumizable enough to show it or an app to use my phone as a second PC-Monitor to show real time telemetry on it and maybe zoom to the part where those parameters are shown. But I didn't find anything helpful. Do you freaks have an idea?

 

[Julius Fahlbusch]

Has anyone an idea if there's a possibility to show the on-path and off-path wetness on my Galaxy S3?

I googled a lot in the hope there's an app to be costumizable enough to show it or an app to use my phone as a second PC-Monitor to show real time telemetry on it and maybe zoom to the part where those parameters are shown. But I didn't find anything helpful. Do you freaks have an idea?

how i do it.
my pc is connected to my tv. so i have 2 screens even though i only use one most of the time. my tv can be on standby while doing it (more or less off, needs just to be powered my pc still recognizes it as a second screen)

(i should add that i cant view my tv from where my simrig is - so its not an option to look over there)

the only application that goes on to my second screen is realtimetelemetry.

i have teamviewer on my main gaming pc and on my macbook. while racing my macbook is connected with teamviewer on to my second pc screen. so my macbook shows me my realtime telemetry app.

as far as i know there is an android app for teamviewer. could be possible to do it the same way.

good luck
julius

 

[Richard Hill]

I can't help you unfortunately Reik I'm new to android and only use it for dashmeterpro.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone for helping I have now used an android phone I picked up for £40 and have made a mount. I can upload a picture later on if I can it says the file it too large at the mo

 

[David Turnbull]

scale it down in windows paint or upload it to photbucket and copy the link here

 

[Tim McIver]

I've not been very active on the forums lately but it would not be right if I didn't post in this topic, even if it is a bit late!

I went down the t500 route. It was much cheaper here to buy the t500 then the addon F1 wheel rather than the package (which makes absolutely no sense as for the cheaper price you also get the GT rim.)

I also already has the bodnar SLI-Pro which I was running on my g27. I set about modding the Ferrari F1 rim. I didn't do the cleanest job, but I'm pretty happy with the results. I have the LED screen working well and have also removed the plasticly looking fake rotaries and replaced them with real working ones (which run through the SLI-Pro. They are all rotary encoders rather than switches, which means they have left, right, and a push. I'm very happy with them and would never need a button box with the number of buttons this wheel now has available.

The whole thing was good fun to build, I learned how to solder, learned that I should have planned better, it was cheap, but it looks good. I'm not faster because of it.

I did also encounter the double shift issue. I've replaced the switches for the shifts and adjusted the springs a bit. It's annoying though, because you need to do all your adjustments, then put the wheel back together, then realise its not quite right. But it is fixable.

I'll try and upload some photos...

Tim.