Making my own Force Feedback Pedals (FFB) Pedals

To Start with I have Fanatec CSL Elite Load cell Pedals.

I wanted to add some more realism without spending a huge amount of money.

To start with I had my son's old PS4 controller that was going to be thrown out since he got his PS5, so I took that apart and removed the 2 rumble motors.

I then wired and soldered some longer wiring for later.

The weights were a bit lop-sided with 4 large weights on the left motor and a 1/2 weight on the right.

With some gentle hammering I was able to remove 1 of the heavier ones from the left and added it to the right. It was a bit loose, so I used a hot glue gun to ensure it wouldn't fall off.

That left me with with 1.5 weighted motor which I intend to use on the accelerator pedal and 3 weighted motor for the brake pedal.

Next I had to source how to drive these motors. The simple answer is SimHub and Arduino.

Simhud is the free software that gets the data from the sim and passes it to the Arduino. I donated to get the licensed version, if you can afford it, you should too, it's well worth it.

The Arduino required is the UNO V3, in addition it needs a  Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino v2 Kit. This is the bit that actually controls the motors once they're wired up. One board can drive up to 4 motors. I found and ordered these, along with a USB cable, from the PiHut.com. That cost cust over £40 with delivery.

There are no screw holes on the back of the Fanatec CSL Elite pedals so I was struggling to think how to mount the motors, luckily someone had already though of this and produced and shared the following 3D printable Models.

I upload and ordered via Treatstock.co.uk, where I found the prices quite reasonable. My choice cost me ~$20 for a set on 2.

Simhub have a very detailed Guide here on setting up the Shield and UNO - here

A very useful Youtube video from amstudio - here - showing how he put his together and was my inspiration for this.

if you can't be arsed doing it all yourself, for ~£100 you can buy a setup from Sim 3D - reviewed here

£100 is not a bad price all things considered, by the time I've got satisfactory 3D mounts printed and delivered I'm probably going to be at that mark.

Your also going to need to do some soldering, so if you don't have a soldering iron et al you're going to have to fork out for that too.

Anyway, I've soldered the Shield connectors. A magnifying glass would have been useful but I managed to get it done and then check the finished points by taking a picture on my phone and zooming in.

All looked good, so now the big test. Added power (12V 3w), wired up the heavy brake motor to M1 and the lighter accelerator to M4, powered it up and plugged in the USB to the PC.

The it was a simple matter of firing up Simhub, launching the Arduino configurator. Choosing the Shield and Arduino and then applying the sketch the UNO. That went off without a hitch and was surprising simple to do. Next was to get to Simhub and press those test buttons. It worked!

Now I have to wait for the arrival of the 3D mounting kit and putting the UNO is suitable box so I can then mount and install the motors to the pedals.

Google Chrome & SSD 'waiting for Cache' system lockups

I have for a very long time suffered on my home PC with this extremely frustrating problem in Google Chrome.

Every so often my frustrations motivated me to  try to resolve the problem, I failed each time, gave up, waited a few months and then tried again.

The common factor seemed to be those of us with SSDs.

First I had cloned my old OS drive to the new SSD, so there was that to consider. But a clean install of Windows 10 didn't solve it.

I removed all the plugins, failed.

I switched to x64 installation of the Chrome. No Luck.

Checked trim settings. Nope.

Then last week I applied the Windows 10 anniversary update. This then started with a similar ~30 system lockup soon after boot time.

A look through the system and application logs showed errors with access to webache log timing out and complaining of a hardware fault as the cause.

A few Googles trying to find a solution and I stumbled upon the Eureka moment.

My system, the Motherboard, to be more precise still had my SATA connections set to IDE mode!

Of course you can't just change to AHCI as Windows will fail to boot. Thankfully there is a simple fix for that here.

Since this change, I've not had the problem and Chrome has in 3 days so far not locked up with 'waiting for cache' issue!

My Wii Remote Demo

Here is my youtube Video of me playing with my Wii Whiteboard.


That's my homemade Wii Pen.

The Laptop is an HP nc8430 Running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Release Candidate and Wii Whiteboard 0.3.3. Most of the Compiz Fusion Eye candy is enabled.

Laptop screen resolution is 1680*1050.

The initial picture in the background is some of my doodling and some drawings from the 4 year old son.
He asks me every day now to draw on the computa!

Wii Remote Whiteboard pen

I was totally amazed when I saw Johhny Lee's demonstration of the things he's been able to do by hacking the wii remote. I first saw it at www.TED.com.



He also has some video's demoing his stuff on youtube. His project site can be found here.

Truly amazing stuff, but most importantly accessible at very low cost to everyone who wants to give it a whirl. So that's what I've decided to do. Luckily there are a ton of people out there who have already tried this and I found a number of useful youtube videos of people showing how they built their devices.

The whiteboard pen is simple enough and has the best practical use with the wii Whiteboard.

My first test was to get the wii remote connected to my laptop via bluetooth. I managed to do this simply enough by enabling bluetooth on my laptop and booting into my Ubuntu Hardy Heron RC (8.04) installation. I then downloaded and installed the wii whiteboard software from here.

I got it connected by simply running the wii whiteboard software, which detect the wii remote after 1&2 button press on the remote to get them synchronised. Then a crack at the calibration. I had to use the wii sensor bar as my infra-red pen. It took a bit of trial and error but it definitely worked. A proof of concept if you will. So I was ready to spend some time and money on this little project.

I started digging around and found I could source all of the required components from a local Maplins in the UK.

However after a bit of scrummaging around I managed to find an old remote which I took the infra-red LED out of.
I found a suitable pen case in a highlighter pen (thanks kids).

The only thing I really needed was a suitable push-to-make switch. I could have easily gotten one out of an old mouse but had unfortunately thrown my old mouse away a few weeks ago. So after a quick trip to Maplins I had my switch. I also purchased single battery cases for a AAA & AA battery. The AAA housing fits perfectly in the highlighter pen housing. Total Cost £1.72.

The most expensive bit of this whole project so far has been the Soldering Iron and Solder - grand total £14.

So a little over 90 mins later I had myself a fully functional infra-red LED pen that looks something like this...



The most difficult and time consuming bit was the soldering and putting it all together. Making sure the was enough space and wiring to allow all the bits to connect together and then all cram together inside the pen casing. So after cutting 2 holes to accommodate the switch (a large whole to allow the whole device to slip inside the case and a smaller for the button to protrude through).

I then used my mini tripod for the digital camera to mount the wii remote in a favourable steady position pointing at the laptop screen. Again no extra cost, I had some spare Velcro cable management strips left over from the my new PC case, which I used to secure the remote onto the handle of the tripod.

I've made a video of my and my 4 year old son playing with it, I just need to do a bit of editing before uploading. Watch this space.

I now need to source a Ubuntu Linux compatible USB 2.0 bluetooth dongle for my desktop PC, so I can get this working on the 22" Samsung - Yeah baby!

Oh and finally, a BIG thank you to Johhny Lee!

Sony DAV-DZ230 and Sky+ Remote Codes

I just bought the Sony DAV-DZ230 from Curry's to replace my ailing DAVS500.

I had the usual panic trying to get the remote codes sorted out so that I can use the sky+ remote control to control the the volume directly on the AV unit and this how it's done.

STEP 1

Turn the AV unit on.

Press the TV button on the sky remote.

Press and hold the Select button and zero at the same time until the red led blinks twice.

press 0000 to enter the code (this is a Sony code for the sky+ remote)

Press the < (left navigation button on the sky remote), this should turn the AV unit off. The up and down arrows show control the volume too.

At this point it's OK but not great since for it to work you have to keep switching between the SKY mode and TV mode. Not good when you are playing back sky+ recorded programs since it stops the playback and put it's back it live mode.

So to tell the remote to use this code for volume control while in SKY mode do the following.

STEP 2

Press the TV button

Press and Hold Select + 1 together until the red Led flashes twice.

Press the Sky button and test the volume control, it should now control the DAV-DZ230 volume!

Note: I have a rev.6 Sky remote control.