Yesterday I started on my H pattern gear shifter for racing sims. If any one here is into sims they may have heard of a japanese company called FREX GP. Well one of their shifter units costs £200+ shipping etc. so I decided to produce my own version for a lot less money Most of the work is done on my bench mill. Here is what I have put together in the past two days: Picture of all my materials: At the moment it won't make much sense, but hopefully it will soon start to come together.
so is this going to be native USB HID compatible? dunno if what i just said makes alot of sence (bad tech english )...
Bascially it will be 8 momentary switches linked up to a USB controller board, either homemade or stolen from a gamepad Is that what you meant?
yeah... i once tried to plug my n64 gamepad to pc via usb i found schematics and all and got most of the part but couldn't get my hand on the correct IC i needed. 4kb uv flashable rom which would have some code in it which was available on net and all. would have been cool but i just bought a proper gamepad..
Personally, I'd make it a 6-speed controller with room for reverse. Look something like: 1 3 5 R |-|-|-' 2 4 6 But how many games can take advantage of such a controller? L J
Why six speed? This will be used for up to 7 forward gears and reverse. Most racing games can use them. There is a range of software available from other companies. If you change the name of your USB device in the registry to the same as the companies product, then you can use their software. You run it in the background along with a game and the program tells the game what gear to be in.
update time Been trying to do a little section each day, so that it steadily comes along. Tomorrow I wont be able to do so much though seeing as I have to make a garage door Ok so today I started on the casing. I really don't like using sheet metal because I dont have a metal shear and always seem to scratch aluminium with my jigsaw etc. Its also a pain to get on the mill because it flaps about so much. Todays pieces were reasonably small though, so that was ok. Here are the two end pieces I made: Heres the rod going through the dry flange bearing, to give you a better idea of what is what: The edges still need to be de-burred, which is why they might look a little rough.
Doh! Thought you were going to make a 4spd H pattern without reverse... Now what'd be really cool would be to make some led labels, like 1st 2nd 3rd gear and so on. Put an 8 led (you know, for numbers) display where the gear number would normally be, so that if you only have a 4spd it would display 1-4 then R in the 5th gear spot and so on. To make things even more slick even put som solenoids in so when your only using a 4sp you cant move the shifter to the unused spots. Granted that'd be a real pain to do, but it'd sure be pretty cool. L J
Well the shifter stick wont actually have a plate around it so labels wouldnt work. The gates are internal. Although saying that someone has designed a circuit which I have partly made, to show the selected gear on a 7 segment display. I wont be using it on this project because there is no need. But I will use it for a sequential shifter I plan to make after this. I have a few ideas about blocking off gates like you say, its actually quite simple Acid burn, an h-pattern shifter is like a manual gear box in a car.
Milgo, BTW the idea to use solenoids is not mine, but meerly "stolen" from my car, it uses 2 solenoids, one to block off reverse (I love that one for obvious reasons. ) and the second solenoid is part of a "skip shift" where if your speed is this low in 1st gear and your accelerating between x% and x% then a light comes on the dash, the shifter won't move to 2nd (unless you move to neutral than back to 2nd) and your supposed to shift to 3rd gear for "more economical driving". But for $40 worth of parts I can disable the feature, I think I'll save my $40. Personally, I kinda hate the skip-shift. Economical driving? I didn't want a 300HP V-8 in a light body for economical driving... BTW, this is like 90% off topic, but do you know if there is any H-patter shifter (or way to make such) for a PS2? 'Cause thats where all my good racing sims are. L J
Unfortunatly I dont think there is I have only seen them available on the pc. Do you have a usb wheel for your ps2? If so then you can use that on the pc, and buy some for that.
Just another small update today, made a another small panel. This one is internal and holds the other end of the rod.
update even though there seems to be a lack of interest Ok top and bottom plates drilled, 5mm angle milled, drilled and tapped and the back plate was milled to make it a little smaller. So today all that was fixed together, feels really strong already and I havnt fitted the front or middle plate (which I will do tomorrow). Here are some pictures: The screws petruding from the rear will be filed flush with the surface. I had to do them this way because of the clamping mechanism. All the plates still need to be properly cleaned and de burred, which I will do after I know they all fit properly.
I'm certainly interested, but at this stage it's hard for me to figure out how it'll all go together. I'll reserve judgment until it takes shape. I'm sure a lot of other readers feel the same. Keep up the good work though, this looks a lot better than my DIY gear shift ever did.
Heh cheers Yeah I understand, thats what I thought really. Hopefully a in a few days it will make more sense.
I hate to be a PIC whore, but that would be so easy to do with a PIC, just wire the switches in to some of the inputs. the 7-seg to some outputs and thats it. The code would be really easy to (I would even be nice enough to write it for you). But if you already have the circuit partially done...
Yeah i already bought all the parts, and the circuit is a counter one. So it counts up with one button and down with the other. But thats not for this project anyway. Thanks for offering, but since i bought the stuff already I will leave it. Arnt those chips quite expensive? I know nothing about electronics.
