Motorized Joyrider

[TronicGr]

Hello, I just want to show you my motion cockpit based on joyrider but with a big difference. Its moved directly by car wiper motors.

In the video I also used the TrackIr4 pro flying an F16 in virtual cockpit.


Full motion Flight Sim + TrackIR4 Pro on a F16

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBD9Juqx7PI"]YouTube - Full motion Flight Sim + TrackIR4 Pro on a F16[/ame]



Full motion Flight Sim + TrackIR4 Pro on a Cessna182

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL124Kew4c4"]YouTube - Full motion Flight Sim + TrackIR4 Pro on a Cessna182[/ame]



motion flight simulator 2 axis operational

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDOSoz1QL9A"]YouTube - motion flight simulator 2 axis operational[/ame]




Added some more (15-6-2007):


Full motion sim on Cessna v2:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e44LdBINYWw"]YouTube - Full motion sim on Cessna v2[/ame]


Full motion sim on F16 v2:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SX_oBSGoKk"]YouTube - Full motion sim on F16 v2[/ame]



Have fun!



Thanos

[Jim NZ]

Great stuff Thanos.
Things are working.
What did you use for the interface ??

Jim

[TronicGr]

Hello Jim,

I used Basic Stamp2 running a special proportional servo code that sets the rotation speed and direction of the HB-25 motor controllers that drive the motors. Of course the BS2 also reads the feedback potentiometers placed on the rotation points to know the angle of each axis.

Its awesome that the Basic Stamp2 does all the required measurements, calculations and driving the motors while the serial transmition rate is only 2400bps!! Right now it retrieves 6 bytes of data on each cycle while the refresh rate of Keith's Portdrvr is 54ms!

The BS2 command that reads the data:
SERIN 16,396,500,timedOut,[WAIT("KD"),HEX2 Lights,HEX2 Pitch,HEX2 Bank,HEX2 turncoord]

Any more questions are welcome!

How is your motion cockpit going?


Thanos

[Jim NZ]

Sounds fantastic Thanos, and boy, are you going to regret allowing more questions !!!

Motion is one **** of a thrill when you finally get it going ,,, I would never go back, thats for real.

Your post is real good timing for me as at the moment I have the motion base all built, electrics, drives, some electronics all in place and am poised to finally decide which way i am going to drive the thing.. Been looking hard at velleman or picaxe but keith's portdrv kept nagging in my brain.

I have allowed the next 4 months to have something operational, so time is running out fast.

A few questions to start with ...
Are you using the commonly available portdrv or is it a newer one ?
Will it work with FSX ??
If I went down the same road, would I be able to get the basic stamp code ??

I got to admit, never researched the basic stamp at all and in the last few minutes, had a quick search and it certainly looks interesting.

Trying to hold back my uncontrollable curiousity here !!!

Thanks for the info, Thanos, its great timing.
Cheers,
Jim

[TronicGr]

Right now I'm using en experimental version of Portdrvr that has some motion washout routines implement but need perfection. This new version outputs a ton of info. More than you can ever needed:

KD{booleans}[pitch][bank][airspeed][rpm][turncoord][vertspeed][gforce][altabovegnd]{CR}

Its under development and not ready yet for public release...
See more info on http://www.etherealsounds.com

It doesn't work yet with FSX as microsoft changed the gauges to XML style and needs conversion. I hope Keith will make a FSX compatible version soon.

As for the basic stamp2 servo code, I can sent you a copy to use on your cockpit. Its pretty simple, on connections too, just two potentiemeter inputs and two servo outputs. No end limit switches needed! The only limitation is that it is designed to drive HB-25 motor controllers, I can't say for sure how it can react on other servo systems...

Regards, Thanos

[Michael Carter]

That's great work. I think Hans would be interested in this.

[Jim NZ]

Hi Thanos, Yes thats more than a good chuck of the data you need for a motion platform and Keith has really got the speed going well.

The basic stamp and the HB-25 look to be a good combo, but the HB-25 isnt available in NZ so might have to source from overseas if I go down that road. Not cheap though !!!!

I cant believe the timing of this, just hovering as to which way to go and this is certainly another option.
I will have a study of the code etc (I got your e'mail) and go from there Thanos.

The "return to center" will sort itself out as time goes on as long as Keith keeps working on it, and Im sure he has his finger on the pulse with that one.

Any idea when the portdrv you are playing with will be released ???

Cheers ... Jim

[TronicGr]

Hi Jim,

I also had to purchase the HB-25 motors directly from parallax (overseas) but its the best available motor controller for what it does... It can handle up to 25amp of current and motors sized up to 1/2 hp!! Plus it needs only one servo pulse to keep rotating the motor to the desired speed and direction!!

If you decide to go this way, you will have as much help from me is needed to make it move in less than a week. It took me only two days after I connected the motors to program it and tune its proportional servo code...!

If you like you can contact Keith and became a member of the Beta testing crew!! We need feedback from different motion cockpit designs to fine tune the washout code (aka return to center) so it can used in as many as possible.

The next version may take some months to be released, as many routines need to coded together and tested thoroughly since some motion cockpits may became dangerous if this gets out of control! If you join the beta team, you can play with what we have so far!

Send me your email address so I can sent you the BS2 code to look at it.

Regards, Thanos

[Roland]

Just as a side note:

Thanos' setup makes use of readily available hardware, which is not very expensive either. Seeing the result, it has a lot going for it.
Keith, Thanos and I have been discussing / working / testing to improve the portdrv utility for having more options on different types of motion platyforms.
Currently I'm redesigning my platform for 3doF: Pitch-Roll-Heave. All pre-development tests (software and hardware) have shown promising results, so I'm pretty confident that it will be succesful. I'll update my website regularly.

Roland

[kjg71]

Thanos,

Do you have any shots of the motors. couldn't really see them or how they were hooked up from the videos.

The pitch one must be moving with the whole pitch cable unit?

Are the wiper motors newer model motors or the older ones that have worm gears that hold position when under pull?

I am currently working with power window motors but would like to explore all options.

...also the HB-25 looks good, but I am under the assumption that it is only works with microcontrollers that support pwm frequency changing vs strait pwm voltage changing right?....as an example I am current working with the velleman K8055 board.

great job on your setup very smooth!!