uncletom wrote:Using the 'flaps' for gas & brake is OK, unless you really get used to it and try to promote the idea to the car manufacturers.
Anyway, it's very .. .Dreamcastlike.
My main issue with the feet petal is I find my reaction time with them is too slow since they are light and can be pushed around easily and the feel being obviously too light in comparison to a car. =P
Flaps should hold up well in ridge racer due to drifting. =D
Haven't tried them out yet though. I got done with the wiring at 1am and haven't had the chance to plug it all up again and try. =/
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Neat. I tried out the rigging for Gas & Break and it works fantasticly. Had to swap one pot around but as long as you hit the init menu it sorts it out just fine.
I also found something interesting out. You can play with the motor off. After you get past boot and get to the title screen, when I unplugged the motor the game still ran just fine. I was able to sort of play 2 races. I sadly sucked really bad at it since the wheel slides all around with out being mounted to the desk. One other interesting thing is in my first pass of testing I noticed my wheel was inverted and when I unplugged the pot to fix it I immediately got an Motor 10 error. So odd it picks that but not the disconnected motor (maybe does test when it idles between games).
Also since my drive pot was backwards after switching it I found out I need to also switch the motor wires (red to black, black to red) to get it to boot past init. I guess my setup is kind of inverted from a normal rig. =/
Last bit, I spent some time fixing the problems I created early on when wiring it up. I was only concern with testing so I didn't wire it with the Pc stuff still working. I'm in the process now while going forward is binding my wires in where I can so that it's still fully functional on PC while working for RR5.
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uncletom wrote:Did you unplug the motor itself? Or the 100VAC? I think I did try something like this before, and got a motor error. But now I'm not sure.
I unplugged the wire that goes from the STR-PCB to the motor it self (the red & black wire).
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I'm having a somewhat related issue with my Indy 500 pair. I don't have the FFB PCB, just the motor and I'm trying to reverse engineer it to work with the Logitech PCB. The original PCB also uses 100VAC and I can't figure out how to even get the motor running. If your board also takes in 100VAC, why transform it down to 20V, 24V, 90VDC? My motor has no identifying marks on it, just a 3-wire output. I can't even tell if the motor takes straight 100VAC or if it gets transformed down to DC. It'll be interesting to see how your project shakes out, maybe it'll give me some insight into my setup.
Is there a transformer on the Indy driver board? I can't remember. The motor is super big anyway so I would guess it takes a 100V. Those Happ uses and others are smaller motors. Either way, same size takes 90VDC, 24, and 20.
I wouldn't worry too much about the feedback. I've played Indy500 plenty without, and I want to say that the game plays best with a simple Happ 270 analog wheel.
I don't have the board and I can't seem to find any pictures. I was trying to use the Logitech pcb and some electrical trickery to drive the motor for use with a PS2 or PC. Right now it just spins freely. FFB would have been nice but if the circuit is ridiculously complicated then I'll just forget about it. Thanks.
shess wrote:I don't have the board and I can't seem to find any pictures. I was trying to use the Logitech pcb and some electrical trickery to drive the motor for use with a PS2 or PC. Right now it just spins freely. FFB would have been nice but if the circuit is ridiculously complicated then I'll just forget about it. Thanks.
Sega use servo motors, not a simple DC motor setup like the rest..
Wasn't the Daytona/Sega Rally motor a DC motor coupled with a clutch? I know the Daytona 2 motor is a servo motor (500W servo) but there is no info on the Indy 500 motor housing. It also has 3 wires coming off of it and they don't give me any clue to how the internals are constructed.
Still, it's a set of magnets on a shaft with coils around. Servo or motor - if it's big, it eats alot. Sort of like me, although I try too cut down.
I would imagine that the difference between a servo and a pure motor is that the servo is built in a way that it can change direction swiftly and without much loss of momentum. Contrairy to a motor which only needs to spin i one direction to 'drive' things.
However, we see that the Happ wheel mechs, and Konami's wheel mech both use "DC motors" as a servo, as the motor changes direction frequently and quickly.
Worth mentioning about the Model3 500W servo is that it has its 'encoder' attached. Unlike Happ's where you have just a plus and a minus pole. The 'encoder' would be on the motor-board in Happ's case.
Indy's motor has three wires, and a GND. The GND seems to be Earth. The three wires I would imagine are a "0", or center tap for the other two which would be the voltages alternating, thus AC(high)-0-AC(low). These then give, for example, 100V+ and 100V- with the 0 as reference, spinning the motor left or right.
(the +- 100V is ofcourse variable (perhaps 10 to 85 Volts), to give the force variable strength.)
Interesting, I never thought about +100VAC and -100VAC. When I did some testing a while ago, I did apply the voltage between all combinations of the 3 pins. I only had two wires from the transformer so I never connected anything to GND. Every combination of 100VAC on the 3 pins only caused the motor to hum and the shaft to resist rotating. Take away the voltage and the shaft spun freely. This is what lead me to think it was a switched reluctance motor, but maybe it's not. I remember taking ohm measurements and it was the same (90 ohms) between all three poles.
Looking at it, it does seem to be a SRM. Spontaneously I would think there would be several more leads to the coils of the motor, but three are enough, to control directions anyway.
OK. I'm not that familiar with the force characteristics in Indy500, Touring Car or Lemans24. Could you please tell me if there is any rapid shaking in these game's feedback?
Presumably the M2 emulator force feedback would respond in a similar way to the real Indy 500? Otherwise I don't have the means to check it. Maybe some kind Indy 500 owner on ebay will be able to tell me if the M2 emulator isn't accurate enough.
Looking at it, it does seem to be a SRM. Spontaneously I would think there would be several more leads to the coils of the motor, but three are enough, to control directions anyway.
OK. I'm not that familiar with the force characteristics in Indy500, Touring Car or Lemans24. Could you please tell me if there is any rapid shaking in these game's feedback?
It's a servo motor and encoder board, same as Model 3 - except the force is applied directly to the shaft, I assume sega changed to the drive belt because if the shaft breaks you need a whole unit.
So if that's the case, no electrical trickery will let me interface the Logitech PCB with it? Presumably I'd need an arduino or something to convert the electrical pulses from the Logitech into discrete steps for the motor?
Aha! So the did consider me? But unless people would think I was a very suspicious guy bringing a saw with me to the arcade, I would have even more steering wheels than I do today.
I was thinking more about this. If this is a servo motor, shouldn't one of those 3 wires on the motor be a control line? I thought the pots on the back of the motor provided that piece of information, or are they just redundant? Three wires for the motor and then 3 wires each for two different pots. I think one pot goes to the motor control board and the other goes to a different board for the steering wheel.
shess wrote:I was thinking more about this. If this is a servo motor, shouldn't one of those 3 wires on the motor be a control line? I thought the pots on the back of the motor provided that piece of information, or are they just redundant? Three wires for the motor and then 3 wires each for two different pots. I think one pot goes to the motor control board and the other goes to a different board for the steering wheel.
If your talking about Indy 500, then it has 4 pin molex which carrys the 100VAC, then it also has a 10pin wiring which connects to the encoder box on the servo motor which controls the servo direction/strength etc
Sounds like interfacing this motor with the Logitech is more trouble then it's worth. I should just keep on the lookout for a Happ DC motor or the equivalent. Thanks.
It is often the case with SEGA that it's more trouble then it's worth. I have been suspicious about them from the beginning about this. Especially when Atari, Happ and others made their custom gamecontrols alot simpler, yet just as funcional and precise.
Point is: Why make things as complicated and expensive as SEGA always have? Is it a coincidense, or just a way for them to brag about how good controls they use? Or because they were too stupid to keep it simple (and cheap) like Happ?
No. Stupid they were not. And as for cheap? Well, this whole thing started years before SEGA existed. Read on.
Ever since the end of WW2, and Japan being defeated by the US, they've been doing stuff for the US. Officially and in secret. Given the fact that Bromley started this 'game affair' with Japan, backed by Allen-Bradley, who by the way were involved in the business of warfare along with Motorola and other big companies, it is quite easy to see how SEGA (later conducted by David Rosen) has become this kind of industry giant, dominating the market throughout history.
It is, ofcourse along with being a successful creator of software and game-hardware (and various toys), a cover up! Yes. A total and 100% successful cover for the US millitary experimentnig in both hardware and software! Have you seen the joystick for Afterburner? Or the Galaxy Force stick? Or just have a look at the force feedback mech for Model 2, and also Model 3. Massive beyond any credible reason, heavy (shipping must be a killer), durable.. well, I've already said massive. Environmentaly friendly? - No chance in hell!
There is only one, and one reason only for this kind of wasteful handling of resources: it is the United States Army.
