F1 real pedals

[ultimate]

Hey i recently bought a csr-e pedals that has load cell feature on brake pedal
i m wondering if in real F1 car, they use such technology
in the crs-e pedal, brake pedal is incredibly stiff
in comparison, i can push brake pedal from real car, slightly stronger.
however i maintain nearly similar force as i do with racing game.
crs-e brake pedal has shorter distance for pressuring ur foot on
i owned also a csp v1 on the past, i cant remember well because i did not using it much time
do they use nearly same things (pressure, resistance load cell stuff...) in brake pedal?

 

[MagpieRacer]

No they don't. A load cell is replicating a real car brake by making it pressure based rather than pedal-angle based. If that makes sense.

I believe real life F1 pedals also have a very short travel, maybe just a inch or so.

 

[gordie44]

I'm pretty sure that while F1 cars don't have ABS, they do have power brakes, which would mean they're hydraulic system.


If you look at the Sauber cut in half video, you'll see what looks like half a master Cylinder below the drivers in knees. Look for the twist-on cap.

 

[mykem]

If you want the best pedal actuation and feel, Frex makes something call SimCALIPER to go with their HydroBRAKE. The latter is essentially adjustable load-cell brake add on their pedal but the former adds the "feel of Caliper Pods to Brake Rotor and pipe expansion."

 

[ultimate]

thanks for it,
when i watch F1, i ve been highly impressed by the roughness of braking
these cars are reaching over 300 km/h then suddenly at braking point, it sightly decreases to 65-80 km/h
well with load cell feature, it feels strange
so what do you advice me?
inverting brake and clutch?
clutch travel is just perfect to me
also much less stiffer than brake pedal

 

[MuchoJimbo]

You can (what I did) is move the brake pedal bolt behind the pedal down a hole. It will be the last hole towards the bottom. This will allow for more travel in your brake. I think that is what you mean?

 

[ultimate]

yes i find travel too short in my brake pedal
thanks for this help

 

[Jav]

F1 brakes are purely mechanical meaning there are no electronics assisting or doing the braking. It's pure hydraulic pressure with no vacuum assisted boosters, it's good old fashioned man displacing fluid trough a cylinder/lines/calipers by pushing on that pedal!

 

[gordie44]

F1 brakes are purely mechanical meaning there are no electronics assisting or doing the braking. It's pure hydraulic pressure with no vacuum assisted boosters, it's good old fashioned man displacing fluid trough a cylinder/lines/calipers by pushing on that pedal!

Sorry yes that's right, I said power brakes but I meant hydraulic.

 

[ultimate]

should i use clutch pedal (which has longer travel and sightly softer) instead of brake pedal with load cell for being close to real F1 pedals?
i will remove completely my csr-e pedals from base and fix them on a plate.
since f1 cockpit offers no many space, three pedals might no fit inside.

 

[posimosh]

Ok, so I just got my hands on the pedals pictured... Does anyone have any idea how to power the hydrolicfluid pressure transducer via USB (or serial for that matter)? I'm trying to make these bad boys usb standalone but I'm having trouble getting the Hydrobrake to read when pressed...

 

[left888]

Talk to Derek Speare about that, I believe he builds controllers designed for that very purpose. You can contact him here as he is a member.

 

[posimosh]

I think I should have been more specific... Does anyone have frex pedals as stand alone usb or "coupled" with a wheel that does not use the frex wheel controller box.
Derek has a load cell module amplifier available on his website. I'm looking to power the pressure transducer that I believe needs 12v to function. Though it is possible that it would function without the 12v (but wouldn't show the pressure reading in number form, which is fine.) I just need to know how to hook it up to the usb joystick controller.

 

[left888]

Ah, got you. Sorry I thought you needed something else (lol) On this thread I posted links to pedal sites that iRacing members have built. Perhaps you already know of them, maybe someone their can help you.

 

[posimosh]

Yeah, thanks man... I have taken a gander at places like insidesimracing.tv, x-sim, the way I play, and here, but as far as I can tell, the problem that I need to solve is getting the proper amount of juice to the pressure transducer via a compactor.
Basically, frex has a power module and signal box that acts as a hub for their components. It is basically a reworked serial port (it looks like a d-9 plug which passes 12v to the pressure transducer in the form of the usual 0-5v that a pot would pass. A normal serial console has both 5v and 12v depending on the pin you use for power.. I have read that frex uses their own pinout standard for this db-9 connecter and, because I don't have the frex signal hub anyway, I was just going to make them usb standalone using a bodnar joystick board.
I am about to modify one of the many power sources I have lying around to power the 12v transducer, but I'd like to at least talk to someone who had done this sort of thing before. Anyway, plenty of folks have "heard of people making these pedals stand alone", but no one that has actually seen or done it themselves. Perhaps I'll start a thread here or at iracing with some pics.

 

[left888]

Have you tried http://www.symprojects.com/, Christiano is pretty good at that kind of stuff.

 

[posimosh]

Yeah, but I get the feeling that they aren't really reading my questions when I send them. It's understandable though, they likely get a plethora of boneheaded, "can I plug the power source for my wheel in to my ps3 and play gt5?" Questions daily. Plus I'm afraid they will sell me something that, although I may use, won't fix my particular problem.
I'm thinking I might go post on the iracing forum, a more detailed description of what I'm trying to do. I did get it to work with a pc power source for a pc I had laying around. I'm afraid it's kinda overkill though.

 

[eKretz]

You will need to buy or build something to get more than 5v from a USB cable. You need a boost circuit that can kick the 5v up to 12v if you want to run it from the USB cable without an external power source.

 

[posimosh]

You will need to buy or build something to get more than 5v from a USB cable. You need a boost circuit that can kick the 5v up to 12v if you want to run it from the USB cable without an external power source.

Yeah, I figured as much... Right now I'm using a pc power supply for the time being, but am searching for a more elegant solution. I know there are usb to 12v boosters but I'm afraid that that sort of jump for what is otherwise not really a power source oriented medium will be problematic. I was kinda hoping someone else here had this particular setup.... Thanks for all of your input though guys!

 

[eKretz]

Well, what kind of amperage do you need for your device? If it's any more than an amp or so you probably won't be able to power it from USB, because as you boost the voltage to 12V you will have less amperage available than at 5V.

 

[posimosh]

Well, what kind of amperage do you need for your device? If it's any more than an amp or so you probably won't be able to power it from USB, because as you boost the voltage to 12V you will have less amperage available than at 5V.

Yeah, it's pretty difficult to find accurate information such as pinouts and schematics for frex stuff. Even the stuff I have found is written in a certain dialect of japanglish, a dialect that I do not speak and is vague when it comes to specifics to say the least.
There are some DIY solutions to get 12v out of a usb (which, as you said starts at 5v and around 1.5 amps, or 3.3v at 2-2.5 amps... Or at least that's what the usb specification is. So basically you would need some major capacitor type doohickey for it to carry enough and sustain anywhere near the kind of current that the little pressure transducer box asks for. But even this is a bit of a mystery because the transducer box only says "black & white=led out" "brown=12v", "pink=analog" and "blue=0v". What compounds the mystery is the rather large box with 4 prongs and what looks like one big capacitor and a small circuit board type object in it (which probably is just a means of regulating current via some encased resistors. The writing on that says something to the effect "24vdc" as well as some circuitry schematic. It additionally says 10a 250vac and 30vdc as well as tv3 (n,o) and something about amperage. Perhaps I will include some pictures so that you guys can give your best guesses on what the best solution is. The first pic is the transducer, the second is the capacitor.

 

[eKretz]

no pics for me.

 

[posimosh]

Hmm ok I'll put a photobucket link up... Hang on, I'll edit the post as soon as I get them uploaded.

 

[eKretz]

OK they're showing up now. Looks like the first pic (the "mystery box" LOL) in your last post is a normally open relay. As far as the Frex part, you're looking at Brown as your power in, from 12-24VDC; Blue is your ground; and Pink is the analog output that varies from 1-5VDC depending on the pressure applied. One way to check how much power it needs would be to run it off your external supply and put a multimeter inline with the Brown wire while using it. Then just see what the max amperage draw is during heavy braking.

 

[novadave]

Ok, so I just got my hands on the pedals pictured... Does anyone have any idea how to power the hydrolicfluid pressure transducer via USB (or serial for that matter)? I'm trying to make these bad boys usb standalone but I'm having trouble getting the Hydrobrake to read when pressed...

The transducer must be powered by an AC/DC power adaptor - 12volts at 2amps or higher would be more than enough
usb power from the computer would be used to run a analog/digital usb converter board.
I have done some calculations and the transducer power draw is less than 400MA.
Do not attempt to take power from the computer usb port.
no matter which way you go you are going to need the required usb analog/digital conversion signal board.
without this board there is no way for the computer to process the data.
all the transducer does is produce a variable voltage output depending on the amount of pressure that is applied to it.
in the pictures you provided I see the transducer and the variable rate power relay - this is for running a electric motor such as a vibration unit on the pedals.
do you have a wiring schematic to make the pedals standalone if not I could make you one.

 

[posimosh]

Ok yeah man, that would be awesome. It's been a really long time since I was in electrical engineering class back in college. Anyway, I should probably explain a bit more about the setup as well as give you an idea of what I would hope to achieve with this project.
Currently, I have the transducer running straight off of a pc power supply using molex connecter and a wiring schematic I found online. This allows me to pull a consistent 12v to power the transducer. The solution is, needless to say, sub-optimal though, if I'm honest. It's bulky, difficult to use, and not exactly the most convenient setup I have ever used. In fact, I ended up picking up a set of clubsport v2's in a fit of rage one day just so I could come home from work, turn on the wheel and go racing.
As you may have guessed, this is less than optimal and quite cluttered, and I'd like to get the pedals down to an Ac power plug and a BU0836X 12-Bit Joystick Board which translates the signals from the pedals to the pc.
In a perfect world, I'd like to be able to use an old modem/router/external hdd/cellphone/whatever plug to power the transducer and output a signal via serial cable so that I can use the pedals with my wheel on xbox or ps3. If this is not possible, just taking the huge boxy power supply out of the equation would be ok by me.
Anyway, I can figure out a wiring schematic but if there is anything special I need to know, if you would be so kind as to add a bit of an explanation that would be swell.
As of now, I have the accelerator running off of a Hal-magPOT which seems to run between 0v-4.7v depending on the pedal position. The transducer has a led light that can be incorporated in to the chain of wires that go to the transducer. The light used to be hooked up to that box shaped capacitor doohickey I took a picture of, but I took it out of the chain for the time being. It serves as a "lock up" light so it may be of some use if I can get it to work properly. If not, no biggie. I'll upload the wiring schematics I have found but I must warn you, they are in a dialect of japenglish that is a bit difficult to make sense of because at times it can be puzzling and is generally ambiguous. Thanks for your help!

 

[posimosh]

The transducer must be powered by an AC/DC power adaptor - 12volts at 2amps or higher would be more than enough
usb power from the computer would be used to run a analog/digital usb converter board.
I have done some calculations and the transducer power draw is less than 400MA.
Do not attempt to take power from the computer usb port.
no matter which way you go you are going to need the required usb analog/digital conversion signal board.
without this board there is no way for the computer to process the data.
all the transducer does is produce a variable voltage output depending on the amount of pressure that is applied to it.
in the pictures you provided I see the transducer and the variable rate power relay - this is for running a electric motor such as a vibration unit on the pedals.
do you have a wiring schematic to make the pedals standalone if not I could make you one.

No dice eh? Just to be clear, the variable rate relay is the box with the 12-24v writing on it correct? Also, I forgot to mention, there is an led light that looks to be installed in-line with the signal cables (presumably the +/-, just cuz the wires are black and red). Supposedly, this acts as a "lock up light" of sorts that looks to be adjustable via the transducer box. Anyway, in the interest of simplicity, I left it out of the loop in the installation I'm currently using with it. Anyway, I say a picture of the frex "super power control module, and it looked to be a dev/DIY power supply with a 12v rail or two and an optional pcb that rubs the motion rig and wheel (all of which I don't have). What I do have is a pc power supply that I rigged to work without the molex connecter going to a mobo (basically I just bridged the circuit that says to the power supply "give me all the juice u got big boy") then I wired up the 12v wires of the molex connecter to the wires that were marked as such and voila, it worked.
In a perfect world however, I'd like to wire it up so that the serial db9 cable that frex uses (which looks to be similar to the Logitech wiring scheme) for tidiness' sake. Of course I'll have to have a 12 power cable as well but that's a heck of a lot less than I have now.
Lastly, keep in mind I have some clubsport v2's I can transplant stuff off of and or use to help me conceptualize how to do this as well. If that helps... I'm not sure it will...

 

[novadave]

Sorry - I completely forgot to send you a schematic for your pedals.
Will do so right away.

 

[posimosh]

Sorry - I completely forgot to send you a schematic for your pedals.
Will do so right away.

Dude, you are the man Mr. Dave. I appreciate it very much!

 

[novadave]

You are welcome. hope it helps.