Dachs Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 Came by my old dustgathering TM Ferrari FFB wheel today, and got (the humble beginning of) an idea. What I'm wondering is, if it's possible to use the FFB signals from the wheel to drive a bass shaker? That way it would be possible to get feedback similar to what SimVibe does for racing titles. Anyone here got some knowledge on the electronics side of things? I'm guessing there will be a need for some kind of specialized amp, or converter if you will? System: Asus z270 A Prime, Intel i7-7700K 4.8GHz, 32GB DDR4, RTX2080, Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD. Valve Index VR, TM Warthog Throttle & Grip, Virpil MongoosT-50CM2 base, TM TPDR Rudders. OS: Win10 Home
KLR Rico Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 That's a pretty neat idea! I have an old logitech ffb wheel I'd be willing to gut to try this out. The hardware would be easy to sort out, but all the magic will need to happen in software, that's where I'd be stumped in this little project. i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS
Dachs Posted February 12, 2013 Author Posted February 12, 2013 See, thats the thing, no software besides the normal drivers for the FFB device should be neccesary. It'll just do it's FFB thing as normal, only the signals would be sent to a shaker instead of the FFB motors! But, I don't think a shaker or the shakers amp can translate the raw FFB signals to anything meaningfull. If I can't find some info on the internets, I'll take the wheel apart one of these days, and see what kind of signal it puts out. Who knows, maybe it turns out to be a simple thing to do.. System: Asus z270 A Prime, Intel i7-7700K 4.8GHz, 32GB DDR4, RTX2080, Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD. Valve Index VR, TM Warthog Throttle & Grip, Virpil MongoosT-50CM2 base, TM TPDR Rudders. OS: Win10 Home
KLR Rico Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 Oh ok, I think I get you now... I was thinking of using the existing FFB motor/controller as an actuator or shaker running on a dedicated channel. I'll do some experimenting with this and see how it works out. Maybe it's enough to use the existing motor with a weight for the effect ( like a scaled up phone vibration motor), rather than a bass transducer... One caveat I can think of is that (as far as I can tell) you'll need to be using a FFB stick as well, since enabling FFB in the game affects the trim behavior. i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS
KLR Rico Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 Quick test... Plugged in the wheel (Logitech Wingman GP) and hopped in an F-15, and the wheel responds to FFB effects, along with the stick (MSFBB2). Shakes at high alpha and all that good stuff. :joystick: I'll gut it next and see if I can rig it up to the bottom of my chair or something. Are you just looking for some "seat of the pants" feedback, or is the bass transducer do something more? If you're just looking for a bit of rumble, this seems like it'd do the trick. I think it would be really neat if you could send the wheel hardware a separate FFB channel, to get engine vibes or other effects not normally sent to the stick. i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS
Dachs Posted February 12, 2013 Author Posted February 12, 2013 It's really because I already have a shaker mounted under the seat, driven by sound. I was hoping guns, gear down, landings and of course stalls and buffeting would be better by using FFB. Well, guns are actually pretty good just using sound. Hm, maybe your idea about using the motor as a shaker has potential, that way the sound powered shaker and the FFB could be combined. System: Asus z270 A Prime, Intel i7-7700K 4.8GHz, 32GB DDR4, RTX2080, Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD. Valve Index VR, TM Warthog Throttle & Grip, Virpil MongoosT-50CM2 base, TM TPDR Rudders. OS: Win10 Home
KLR Rico Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 Well, if you want all that, then you need someone that can work out the software side of things, because some of those effects are not currently sent to FFB... i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS
Dachs Posted February 12, 2013 Author Posted February 12, 2013 Ah, ok, I see. So it's only flight effects that is sent to FFB then? Well, then the FFB and the sound shaker combined might just be perfect then :pilotfly: System: Asus z270 A Prime, Intel i7-7700K 4.8GHz, 32GB DDR4, RTX2080, Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD. Valve Index VR, TM Warthog Throttle & Grip, Virpil MongoosT-50CM2 base, TM TPDR Rudders. OS: Win10 Home
KLR Rico Posted February 12, 2013 Posted February 12, 2013 Well, I had a good thing going... FFB guts mounted to the bottom of the chair, and got it to put out a good rumble. Unfortunately, at some point while I was working on fine-tuning the setup I did something that broke the controller board. Now the power supply makes a high pitch whine and the H-bridge on the board gets really hot. :cry: Well, I did learn a few things before that point. At first I put some weights on the 1st stage of gear reduction. The effect was "meh"... Not very noticeable. Different amounts of weight, from 1/2 oz to 2 oz, but it made more noise than vibration. Tried putting weights directly on the motor pinon, same deal. Next I put a screw through one of the holes on the gear, so the shaking gear would slap against the screw and transfer the vibration directly to the chair. That worked pretty well. Next I went to grab a piece of tubing to put over the screw for a bit softer effect, and when I came back, that's when I found it didn't work anymore. I think maybe I bumped the pot, which would have put a constant load on the motor for those few minutes. :doh: Overall, I think the idea had some good merit. I was able to turn down the stick shaker force on the actual stick, and transfer the effect to the seat. i5-4670K@4.5GHz / 16 GB RAM / SSD / GTX1080 Rift CV1 / G-seat / modded FFB HOTAS
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