DIY-Sim-Racing-Active-Pedal

This DIY active pedal design is based on the original design from @tjfenwick.

Disclaimer

This product is essentialy a robot. If not interacted with care, it may cause harm. I'm not responsible for any harm caused by this design suggestion. Use responsible and at your own risk.

Discord

For better communication, a Discord server has been created. Feel free to join, research before you build and ask questions.

Hardware

ESP32

The embedded code of the DIY active pedal runs on an ESP32 microcontroller. Some PCB design, which hold the ESP32 breakoutboard, the ADC breakoutboard and connectors are uploaded to the Wiring directory. They were used to proof the concept. The regular ESP32 is currently recommended over the ESP32 S2, as it has a FPU and it performs better with the stepper library. ESP32 S2 is losing steps currently.

ESP32 PCB	ESP32 S2 mini PCB

A more sophisticated custom PCB is currently under development and tested. Please refer to the Discord for up-to-date designs.

Mechanical design

Here are some examples of mechanical designs awesome DIYers have done:

Design	Link
	Tjfenwick design
	Bjoes design
	GWiz design
	ChrGri design

BOM

The BOM refers to the pedal design which I have choosen, see here.

Software

ESP32 code

Architecture

A Doxygen report of the sources can be found here.

Install ESP32 driver

The drivers can be found here here.

Flashing the ESP32

There are two recommended ways to install the code on the ESP32. (a) built the sources by your own via Arduino IDE or (b) flash the compiled binaries via webflasher.

Built from source

1. Install the ESP32 dependencies in Ardiono IDE, see e.g. here
2. Install the libraries
3. Flash the code, e.g. via Ardiono IDE to esp32.

Flash prebuilt binaries via webflasher

The prebuilt binaries for the regular ESP32 can be found here. They can be flashed via the ESP webflasher.

Memory adress	File
0x1000	Main.ino.bootloader.bin
0x8000	Main.ino.partitions.bin
0xe000	boot_app0.bin
0x10000	Main.ino.bin

iSV57T-130 servo config tuning

The iSV57T allows parameter tuning via its RS232 interface. To tune the servo towards this application, follow the instructions.

SimHub plugin:

The SimHub plugin was designed to communicate with the esp32 to (a) modify the pedal configuration, e.g. the force vs. travel parameterization and (b) to trigger effects such as ABS oscillations.

To install the plugin, copy the plugin binaries content to your SimHub directory, e.g. C:/Program Files (x86)/SimHub

Misc

Pedal kinematics calculation

To get a better understanding of the motion and forces, a python script for simulation of the pedal angle, the pedal angular velocity and maximum pedal force has been written. Feel free to tune the pedal geometry as needed. The simulation result for my pedal geometry looks as follows:

Todo

• Add Doxygen + Graphviz to the project to automatically generate documentation, architecureal design overview, etc.
• Add automatic system identification of pedal response
• Add model-predictive-controll to the ESP code for improved pedal response
• Add build manual
• Create video describing the build progress and the features
• gin66/FastAccelStepper#194
• br3ttb/Arduino-PID-Library#138
• GUI design improvements for the SimHub plugin
• SimHub plugin: Bugfix for COM port selection wrong, when switching between pedals
• Send SimHub data via wifi to ESP
• Automatically generate the bin files and refer to the ESP32 webflasher