What Board to use on a DIY wheel and Fanatec Podium Hub?

Jmoses77 · Jan 20, 2021

I am in the process of building a DIY wheel that I would like to be able to attach to a DD1 base via a Podium hub. As far as the physical wheel I have it all planned out as to how it will attach to the hub. What I am a bit lost on is what board/boards I will need to enable the buttons and paddle shifters to work with the Fanatec base. Is this even possible? I am fairly confident that the wiring will be possible once I know which board to get.

Cheers

NeoGrotesk · Jan 20, 2021

I think you have two options. First one, find out what the connector is that fanatec use for their button clusters and wire the buttons directly to the podium hub. You'd be limited by the number of inputs the podium hub has (six plus the shifters, I think, from looking at the online manual).

The second option is to use an arduino or a board from Leo bodnar (or similar). This would allow you to have as many buttons as you want, within reason, but you'd need to plug the wheel in with a USB cable. If you don't want to solder, then leo bodnar have a board that has sockets on it, or you could get a cheap USB joystick board which also tend to have pre-soldered sockets.

AmazingReflex · Jan 20, 2021

I achieved some button inputs to my PC using an Arduino Micro board https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07FQJW2KN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

There is plenty of info on the net regarding how to download the relevant software to the board and how to wire up some digitals and some other inputs to do with a couple of dials (never looked into exactly what was involved with the dials).

You effectively end up with a USB HID that you then setup as a separate controller on your game for button inputs alongside your wheel.

You can mount the board on a screw terminal adapter plate or just solder direct to board but you will still end up doing a bit of soldering initially to solder the initial pins to the board.

I'm not an expert on this. I just looked up AMStudio and Boosted Media on youtube and found out what I needed.

I haven't got as far as building a button box yet but I did initial tests with AC and F1 and it seemed they were both happy with multiple input controllers (FFB Wheel and Button Device) for mapping different controls to.