Homemade peripherals - check my new setup

Ok, so I just finished building this thing and I had to share it, also I'd like to know if someone has any experience making homemade DIY peripherals, be it top-quality or guetto as hell as mine.

This is the overall setup. It has a G27 with a custom wheel and a buttonplate to not lose the facebuttons, I like the big wheel even if I lose a bit of FFB strenght. I ditched the G27 shifter for a Thrustmaster one, and kept the shifter buttons frankensteined to a 12-keys usb button box. 4 of those buttons are wired to an external blinker. I also made an analog handbrake. The shifter/handbrake combo is bolted to a stool which is fixated to the wheel base with a couple of PVC pipes that I can quickly disassemble. Now it's time for cable management!



Here, a closeup of the handbrake. It's a 12 buck aliexpress handbrake bolted on a piece of wood, with an old joystick circuit on the side. I connected the potentiometer of one of the axis to the handle. Also I used an analog camera trigger wire to make the button for the rack, so it actually stays in place and makes the racking noise until I push the button.



Now, the franken-buttonbox. It has many types of buttons, the coolest one is the key, which actually works as a car key. Also a return-to center big switch, and an on-off little switch, and a bunch of standar buttons. It's actually bolted to the top of the old G27 shifter.



But that's not all, 4 of the buttons of the square buttonbox are wired to this aberration: I did make a blinker handle with 4 directions: up to right blinker, down to left blinker, back to flash lights and front to whatever I feel like. It's made with the base of the joystick whose circuit I used for the handbrake bolted to a piece of wood, the top of an arcade joystick with 4 switches, some metal tube, 2 allen wrenches welded together and the tip of a bike handle.



It's the most guetto setup you'll ever see, but it works as intended.

Right now I'm thinking on some way to mod the pedals, specially the clutch. I'm torn apart between dumping the money for clubsports V3 pedals or go again the DIY way and make some kind of degressive mod for the clutch, I've seen some interesting things on the internet.

If you've come this far without getting bored I really appreciate your attention. I'm open to any suggestion to improve and also willing to exchange any kind of knowledge or information concerning this weird hobby.

 

Is that blood on the handbrake "seat"...????

"On the Off-Topic Topic": Great setup! Wish I had it.. xD

 

Thanks man! about the stool it's a long story but I used that stool to make this wonderful masterpiece of fine contemporary art many years ago:



It was for a joke exposition at my uni parodying conceptual art, the stool was surrounded by signs that said PLEASE DON'T SIT ON THE STOOL, and there was blood everywhere and a trail of blood leading to the restrooms, similar to this:



Fun times.

Back on topic, I didn't even spend too much money on that, but I did spend a lot of time xD

The g27 is second handed and I bought it "broken" (just the power supply cable). The base is the cheapest I found, also second handed. The rest is literally junk I pieced together, hah

 

on that console what does the key do?

 

@St3v3th3d0g it's a button like any other button, but instead of pressing it you turn it and it comes back to position by itself (you only can remove the key at the rest position)

I usually map it to any "engine start" function if a game has it. On beamng thanks to the More Features Mod I can have the satisfaction of turning the key and hear that engine starting, hah

 

oh ok cool I use a 458 Italia wheel its for Xbox but its better than a key board right?

 

You bet it is! Honestly I can't imagine playing beamng with a keyboard

Btw, and I almost forgot to mention this, now that you say that you use a Thrustmaster wheel, if you happen to get the thrustmaster shifter and feel a bit weirded out by the fact that there's 7 gears instead of the usual 6 or 5+R, you'll see there are people that sell expensive custom machined plates for the shifter...

Or you could do like me and go the cheapo way, get some tupperware and a small hinge and install a custombuilt instant plate switch for 20 cents:

 

Cool, a handmade shifter. I have a similar idea myself but i'm considering taking a Justy ECVT gear lever to make a automatic transmission gear lever, like the one in the Covet, i.e D on the ECVT lever is D ingame, Ds = 1st gear and so on.

Lucky you for getting a G27 that only had a power cord broken! I had two G25's 2 years ago and both of them were scrap, they had no FFB at all anymore.

 

That sounds neat, If you haven't yet decided what kind of usb system to use I suggest you look for "zero delay arcade usb encoder", they're like 9 bucks, and let you have 12 buttons + 4 D-pad directions. You only have to solder the cables to your on/off switches and it's plug and play. No analog, but you wouldn't need analog for a shifter



In the hypotetical situation that you wanted to also make an analog handbrake, I'd suggest to just buy a cheapo dualshock-like direct input controller, disassemble it and combine its buttons and axis to make a shifter-handbrake combo (I wish I had done that so I could have 1 less usb port used)

 

This is fantastic, your fabrication work is quite good not to mention this entire build shows some great ingenuity ;p

 

Intresting, where'd I get buttons?

 

Thanks man! Improvisation can lead to interesting things, even if they're not very pretty, hah

And @Justy4WDTURBO at hardware stores they usually have buttons, electronic shops tend to have a wide assortment. On the internet there are always options, I bought a bunch of my buttons on a spanish website; the catch about that is that usually buttons are so cheap that you usually pay more shipping than actual product.

On a quick search I found this:

https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/145?page=all

Also, you'll generally want to look for "momentary" push buttons, unless you want something that stays on position until you push it again (or a lever, switch, you know). I only have 1 button that's not momentary (the small switch on the buttonbox)

And try to avoid circuit board buttons, as they are meant to be connected to a perforated circuit board (you can use them anyways, in fact my keybutton is one of those, they're just a bit more of a hassle to work with)

For your auto gearbox, maybe you should look microswitch like these (that's the same I used for the blinkers)

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9414

Easy to bolt on any surface at a variety of angles, make a satisfying clicky sound, and use FASTON connectors so you don't have to solder anything if you don't want to.
Here's a detail of the microswitches on my blinker

 

Those look like microswitches Miele uses in their door locks.. hmm! Might take a few apart to get cheap switches then lel.

The connectors? I have a hobby box full of them and use them regularly.

Now to buy a Justy ECVT gear lever.. can't be arsed to goto the car scrapyard, yet.