I can already imagine this being applied to a "Formula RC" with FFB steering wheel joystick and VR glasses, on miniaturized tracks to avoid fatal accidents
As a 1/8 buggy racer this would be amazing. Of course you have by experience some sort of feeling when the car is about to get loose or get a sidebite, but to feel it in the transmitter would be cool, especially on tracks with alot of different track materials like loosedirt, astro, hardpacked. It would make tuning on the car much easier.
This channel is becoming one of my favorite subscriptions. I love the way you explain the unique problems you run into, and your appoach to solving them without getting bogged down by minutiae. Also it was cool seeing all the high tech electronics mounted on an OG RC10 chassis!
I wouldn't be surprised if any hobby grade manufacturers started reaching out to you soon regarding this technology. Frankly, this could become the next big thing in the sport, especially if they can manufacture custom load cells that'll fit on the smaller vehicles. You should try implementing this into a track built car and let a pro racer try it, to see if it improves their lap times!
Yeah. I can’t believe it’s something that doesn’t already exist. Apparently it has been done before many years ago but never made it into production. I’d love to get this working in a smaller car so someone with real driving experience can try it out.
It looks like a ton of work. I'm hoping you developed some code for us to try. Hardware parts gonna be easy for me but the software might be a little confusing. I've dealt with home automation projects with the esp32s@@IndeterminateDesign
This is genius. I was thinking about the possibility of this on a gimbal radio for drone/wing flying a year or two ago. I never really explored it more though. Then I see this. Super cool to see what you are doing with this..
I always look forward to your updates and this is an excellent addition to RC control. While I understand the desire to pursue 'commercial applications', it would be great/appropriate to feed the code back into the Simple FOC project as this has freely given you so much.
I had this idea too sort of. But mine was replace the servo with an foc motor and use torque from it rather than load cell. Much like you said at the start. I however haven’t implemented anything tho. Well done!
Yeah, I'm not sure why it never became a commercial product. Maybe cost or something, but the parts are relatively cheap compared to a high end RC car chassis.
@@IndeterminateDesign I realize the jump from a working prototype to a viable product is large. However, if you eventually manage it, I would definitely buy the system, and you would change the rc hobby forever. Great project.
I bet this would be a game changer for you. I’ve thought about putting a gyro at the bottom so you have haptic feedback with what the rear is doing too.
@@IndeterminateDesign you know, being totally blind that kind of feedback I can really get into because I almost have that now with some of the products I have
The steering resonance can be issue on real cars, too, if they don't have power steering rack, which dampens a lot of unwanted movement. I read a book about development of Skoda Favorit, at one point, they had issue with resonance when the driver removed hand from the wheel. Eventually they found out, that steering wheel manufacturer used solid rod instead of tube in its frame, so whole steering wheel was too heavy, matching resonance of the rest of the steering mechanism.
That makes sense. I never thought about the relative weights. I’m still trying to work out exactly what causes on this car. The slop on RC car tie rods doesn’t help either.
Haven't seen the video yet, but dang that a great idea. You could also add a gyro sensor to measure vibrations of the car and send the info to a vibrating thingy im the remote to get a feeling for the driving surface
I love this application - Like you, this is something I've spent a good deal of time daydreaming about and doing that initial research on, kudos to you for taking the time to execute on it! I do expect this to be the norm for RC transmitters in the future. Heck gaming controllers have benefitted from force feedback for years.. The time has come.
Yeah, that's the best part when you drift a car. Still working on it a bit because the wheels and steering mechanism have almost no weight it tends to overshoot more than you would have in a full size car.
@@IndeterminateDesign I image if it doesn’t already exist it wouldn’t be too difficult for you to create with two cameras. That would be really cool. You would basically have a full simulator in your hands at that point. The remote alone would be worth a fortune if you could commercialize it.
I don’t know much about load cells, but I think because I’m only reading the load cell at 80hz. I know they have some noise and resonance. I want to try a simple amplifier circuit and an analog to digital converter to see how the signal actually looks at different sample rates.
With the servo I’m using, it takes 80+ grams force to see a current difference and the servo responds differently in each direction. (Also can’t tell what direction the force is in unless I modify the servo). The load cell is accurate to about 5g. The plan is to try and test measuring servo and see if it makes a difference in a real world test.
Would it work to measure the ampere draw and voltage of the servo motor to calculate the torque of the steering servo? i think then you dont need the loadcell
I definitely think it’s possible. My initial tests with current didn’t work, but I need to setup a test where I log the current of the servo and the load cell force while driving the car so I can compare them.
I wanted to comment the same. But thinking about it, servo also consumes power just to move itself. That'd probably create weird "springy" feeling during fast movements. Plus, you still somehow need to measure direction - you can do that on brushed servos, not sure about brushless ones.
What is the rc car you are using for the hyprcar. I really want to do something similar with the aerodynamics and 3d print it. Thanks for the inspiration
I custom designed the car because I could find an off the shelf car that would support the aerodynamic loads. I did a series on the development of the aero and the suspension. makerworld.com/en/models/526878
You can turn the servo itself into the load cell relying on its inherent flexibility, or introducing some. This video shows an example of how to. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LoqGDTH75jY.html
Saw this the first time here in this video thats now 10 years old and was wondering how its done cause i wanted it + the superscale Suspension module😅 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-s__nDwhDLSs.html
Yeah, I just saw that video after posting this. I don't know exactly how they're sensing force. I think there's a bunch of different ways to do it. I think the hard part is determining what way works best and doesn't add a lot of extra weight to the car.