Home made pc steering wheel and pedals

[melonsmasher]

Hi there i want to try and make a steering wheel and set of pedals to control driving games on my pc. I have come across 2 ways of doing this 1 using a usb games controller and soldering extension wires and using micro switches witch is fine for brake but for throttle and steering wheel this is no use as far as i am aware there is a way of connecting a pot to the analog controllers and using them but i am not sure how it works the second way is to use pots and micro switches and wire them directly to a pc game port but modern computers do not have game port and as i am running Windows an adapter would not work. I can not find any other idea on the web about this so and recommendations would be appropriated i would also like to stay away from integrated circuits and Aquino if possible.

Many Thanks

 

[melonsmasher]

This is a post i found about making one from the games controller however his description of how he did it was useless and i cannot understand where he soldered all the parts to on his controller and i don't understand how the pot is controlling both left a right movement of the wheel.

 

[GreenGiant]

if I was going to do this myself I would get a controller (probably an Xbox controller for PC) and find the button layout of the game that I was going to play, or make sure that you can change the button layout, then remove the joysticks, the triggers, and the buttons. The joysticks and triggers work via potentiometers, so if you can figure out the values for the triggers you can just place those value pots into the pedal(s) probably only need a pot for gas, since most games brakes are either on or off, you could potentially use the whole trigger setup as the gas pedal, you would just need to modify it so that it had a longer travel. Then take the pot for the joystick and use that for the steering wheel, for this having the pot centered would be going straight, and you would need to decide how many turns of the wheel you want for fully turned.

This is going to be very complicated and difficult, those are the two easiest steps, the buttons, being rubber with contact onto pads will be very difficult to bring out onto an assembly, and you will need these for handbrake, and gearshift if you need that, among other things.

 

[melonsmasher]

Hi there thanks for the reply most of what you said is what i have planned i have an old ps2 style usb games controller hanging around i am going to try it with that. The game i intend to use it with most is farming simulator 2013 witch does have variable steering and gas just but not brake as i have don't it before with my joy stick. i intend to take the controller apart and find the value and type of pot then buy some new ones witch can be mounted on a surface i still have to figure out the gearing but i want to be able to turn the wheel twice to get full lock to give me more accuracy when reversing trailers. As for extending the wires i plan to destroy the - track and run a set of cables back to a common ground on the controller then at each contact on the board run a wire up to a micro or ptm switch then back to ground and this would make contact activating this function.