The wiring up starts....

So the buttons have been wired up now. Next will be the rotary, instead of resistors and transistors to make it work, we may be looking at a 2nd chip to do the job instead.

Rotary switch test board

You will need volume to hear the clicking, but below is a demonstration of a rotary switch, wired to the  chip via various wires and then wired to the LED's representing the D-pad.

The Chip is then programmed on each rotary position to light up the LED's in a preset order. You can also skip past Rotary positions without triggering that sequence.

How the electronics are coming along...

We have made many steps now including;

* Working Rotary on a test bed doing a sequence of LED blinks based on rotary selection

and now also got it to talk to the xbox and when a selection is made do the required sequence.

Should have video's shortly of it and testing on the xbox itself. I'll then get a more in depth technical blog from the guy doing the work.

Part 2 ... electronics

Now the following Blog Posts after this will be info passed to me and wont be my images, but I thought I could start. The xbox board itself will need wires wired in to each pad (D-pad and Buttons), ive sent the wheel off today with all the buttons ready to be soldered up. The board had already been sent off and heres the first image of the soldering, more will appear over the next few days as the pads are all soldered, buttons connected and chip put in.from the test bed.

Electronics Proof of concept

So the man in the know to electonics has it on a test bed. The below video shows the chip programmed for basic commands(at the moment F1 2011 commands are unknown)

So the switch on the left is the equivilant of twisting the rotary to different positions, so 4 points...bit like the 4 tyre selections and the LED's represent the D-pad. As you can see changing one switch then does a required pattern.

Completed Wheel (physically

Below is a pic of the completed wheel, the blue,red,green,yellow will correspond to the buttons ABXY. The 4 buttons at the top are to use as a normal Dpad for menu navigation. And the rotarys will be for the fuel and tyre selections.

Im going to wrap the gear paddles in carbon fibre as well to give them the completed look to go with the wheel, I will only wrap the top half as to not effect how they work as they can be tempremental as it is!

Button test placement

The piece isnt as strong as id like but it will do I may use some Araldite on the back once moulded to brace and strengthen where I can. (if the back looks ugly it doesnt matter you dont see that bit although i will keep as neat as possible)
So button placement it was always going to be tricky as im not removing the old wheel structure from behind, this is to keep the strength, ive got X,Y,B,A on there and the 2 rotarys for the programmed options, the xbox button, start, select will be in the centre as normal. So.....

The D-pad - you need these for the menu options and I was going to use 4 of the smaller buttons as the options, I just need to decide where to put them now.

Casted peice and test fit

Below is the outcome of the first cast, you can see the downfalls of not vacuum moulding because it can leak outside the peice, but they are thin and can be snapped off, cut and then sanded. you can see how important it is to put your original model in as smooth as possible the air bubble was so smooth it made the resin shine, i wasnt bothered as I will be covering the peice.

So after a little sanding a basic test fit...... fit looks good

Mould Completed

So I pulled the Mould apart last night and the mould still hadnt set even after 32hrs, you can see this in the top right corner of the mould its a lot more bumpy compared to the others. This wont cause an issue though.

The release agent between the two halves (vaseline) worked well, however the prototype itself bonded on one side as you can see, this is the back half so will cause little issue. Also the main front got an air bubble trapped in the middle I knew with the way i was creating the mould its a risk, however other then creating me a bit of sanding to do no issues either.

You can see the keys which are used to line up the two halves when casting. This helps make sure nothing moves.

The next stage is to source alot of tight straps, elastic bands etc... I will then pour water into the mould to find out how much it holds, I will then know roughly how much resin is required and also can test for leaks without making a mess. When casting it only takes up to 20mins for it to set.

Further finishing and Mould

Yesterday I covered the silver motor housings in carbon fibre wrap, I got a really good finish with these, heating the wrap so its very stretchable is definitly the key and allows you to retry your work as well. I have positioned the peices inwards slightly from the gripsyou may notice, this is to make the grips feel like they stick out rather then just part of the wheel.

As well as completing that I filled the mould up to cover over the actual faceplate prototype. In total i used 2Kg of silicone. Not cheapest stuff in the word for moulding but means I will be able to use the mould multiple times to make many copies as things are added to the Wheel.

When the silicone has cured (takes between 24hrs - 36hrs) I will then pull the 2 peices apart and remove the protoype, leaving me with my mould.

The finishing Touch...

The one thing ive learnt with moulding is getting a top quality finish from the word go is near enough impossible for an amateur and of course I wanted the proper racing look. So i started work on the finishing touches to the peices I could.

My biggest tip for this...heat with a hair dryer, it gives it a good stretch.

Creating the Mould...

Now the prototype is smooth enough to level it needs to be. (It doesnt need to be perfect as the wheel is going to be wrapped in carbon fibre.) we can create a mould from it, the slightly better way although a little more expensive is to use silicone.

You create a box frame, i use lego as it means you can take the box apart when the silicone has set easily, by placing kitchen film inbetween means its leak proof as well which is obviously very important.

the first half will take 36 hours to set, I will then cover it in vaseline as a release agent so when i do the 2nd half it will come apart and I can remove the prototype.

The prototype

Whilst the electronics bit took place, I got on with making a prototype. It was a nightmare I needed a material easy to work with that could be sanded, molded but at least have a srong base.

I tried thick cardboard but no good, wood was too thick. So i ended up with hardboard. i then used wall filler on the top to make the required shapes. This meant I now had a good idea how my wheel was going to look. Here's a picture prior to the final sanding and filling (you can see at the bottom I didnt have the legs lined u at this point. Also you'll notice the two silver bits have been moved from the bottom to the top this is to allow the incorporation of the vibration motors.

You get a good idea of the shape and it will fit perfectly over the current wheel.

The Electronics Outcome

So after speaking my electronics guy we have a plan of action.

The buttons will be relocated without any issues.

The D-pad can be done without any issues using a 16 bit microchip inbetween to make sure the commands are sent the right pads at right time. This will be done using simple coding in BASIC.

The twist.... we wont be using buttons...but rotarys.

The best way to describe them are these are the knobs you see them twist on the cars, so one rotary will do tyres and have 4 settings, the other will do fuel. If i need additional buttons I can add them or of course another rotary but hopefulyl that should be enough.

So we wanted to do a proof of concept, below is 4 LED's representing the buttons on the D-pad doing a programmed sequence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s1zf1HtCGU

What I wanted the wheel to do.... the benefits

Once I knew my wheel design, I had to decide on the layout and how I wanted it to work.I had seen some button relocation blogs before for the X,B,Y,A buttons but not for the D-pad. So what did I want to gain from this wheel;

* Easy ability to press DRS & KERS at same time
* Easy ability to use the buttons - full stop
* Easy ability to switch tyres without pressing the D-pad alot & now with fuel mapping this yr the D-pad would be used more then ever.

So the Kers / DRS buttons were easy, thye would be relocated to the top of each grip - Simple. The other buttons were not as critical so could be moved around.

I then came up with the idea that down the bottom of the wheel i would have 4 buttons.....Prime, Option,Intermediate,Wet. When pressed they would send the required sequence (Left > Left > Up) to the wheel so rather then fiddling with the D-pad i could just push a button.

Time to talk to my Electronics Guy.....

Move the template along....

Paper was all well and good but stuck on top of a full size xbox wheel didnt give me a sense of what it would look like, so I decided to work out the required size for the grips to allow me to hold it comfortably and also cover at least to the top of the paddles. I used a junior hacksaw and the pimples on the grips to make sure each side was identical. I then made a very rough template out of cardboard....

This was to purely to confirm I had got the look right... and the look was heading in the right direction (you will note I still have the issue of where to put the vibration motors)

Ideas & Design

So now I needed to decide if I was going to start from scratch or use the original wheel in design. A few things were the deciding factors;

* Incorporating the current vibration motors
* Rubber Grips
* the fact the wheel was perfectly symetrical and strong
* the wheel could mount on to the base and use the paddle shifters already

So I decided to use the original wheel although 'hacking' bits off. So I started with some paper designs, which would be laid over the top of the wheel, below is one design as it progressed to become simplier for construction purposes. At this point measurements and accuracy wasnt important it was all about Look and Feel.

How it all started

Im a bit behind on starting this blog, so I will go back to the beginning. I had a failure of a paddle on my xbox wheel, the standard failure where my paddle broke and with the official wheel no longer made I wanted to replace it but how.

So I found out about silicone moulds and plastic resin casts. So I decided to give it a go, below is the first outcome, I strengthened the arms so they wouldnt break, this is prior to the final clean up of the arms;

This got me thinking if I can do that for this why cant i create a faceplate for the wheel to make it in a more racing style...time to get on with the design!