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DIY Wind sim with Arduino Uno Rev 3 and Arduino Motor Shield Rev 3

Day VReamer · 2022-08-05T19:14:25Z

Hi all, after watching a tutorial by Boosted Media, which can be found here:I went ahead to build my own and came up with a few problems, and from looking at various forums it seems like there are a number of issues, and only one post briefly mentioned a possible solution, but not many people seemed to be able to figure it out. So after getting it figured out I thought I'd share it. Total cost for project was £120. Please forgive some of my terminology/explanation, this is my first Arduino project, I haven't done many electrical projects at all (definately nothing like this) and this is my first time using the Simhub. Anyway... It will be worth watching part 1 and 2 of the tutorial via the link above. Now the changes to that tutorial: The Arduino Motor Shield Rev 3 looks like this:I got the following parts: Two fans, with grills:Note that the Arduino Motor Shield Rev3 can provide up to 4 amps, 2 amps per motor channel, but once 2amps total is reached the voltage drops to 9v. My fans are apparently 1.4amps per fan, so they breach the 2amps total, but the wind force is still enough at 9v. Power supply:Arduino Uno Rev3 Arduino Motor Shield Rev3 - Later swapped to a Cytron MDD10 (for dual channel), or MD10 (single channel), as these can provide more power to the fans, and I would recommend these instead of the Arduino Motor Shield. See my updated post below for details re the Cytron motor shield. Other parts can be found easily enough on ebay/amazon as per the youtube tutorial. I have tried the 120mm to 76mm reducers, and vent hose/pipe, however I found that the fan airflow significantly dropped, so I have now removed that and am using the fans on their own blowing straight at me. I would recommend doing this, and just reducing the % power to the fans later in Simhub if you want to reduce the noise level. In the tutorial it mentions about the jumper, this is done differently with the Rev 3. On the back of the motor shield, there is a part which says Vin connect. See the following pic:There will be three dots of solder above it. The left two square pads of solder (circled in red in the pic above) are connected by a copper trace between them which you cannot see. To make sure each board is being powered seperately (the arduino uno by the usb cable, and the motor shield by the power supply), you need to take a craft knife and run it between the two square pads of solder (marked in green on the pic above), to cut through the copper connection. Before you do it, get a voltmeter if you have one, and test for continuity between the two pads. You should get a low reading of something like 0.2 to 0.4. Then use the knife to cut the copper, and check for continuity with the voltmeter between each attempt of 'scoring/cutting'. When the voltmeter stops giving a reading, you have managed to cut through. Next job is to connect the wires. So follow the tutorial and cut the wires and strip the ends for the fans and power supply. With the fans, one of the wires will have white lines along it, that is the negative wire, whilst the other wire without the stripes is positive. With the power supply, the white wire goes into the vin terminal, and the black wire goes into the ground/negative terminal marked GND (bottom left of the picture of the board above). Once they are all connected it should look like this:Now connect the Arduino Uno rev 3 to the Arduino motor shield rev 3, plug in the power supply, and plug in your usb cable to the arduino uno and PC. Download the Simhub software. Once you have the software open, complete the following steps: - On the left hand side go to settings, and turn on/activate the arduino section. - On the left hand side, go to Arduino, then click 'my hardware' towards the top left. - Click on single arduino, then click on open arduino setup tool. - Towards the top right, select your board (Arduino Uno), and select the Arduino Serial Port that you are using (this will be the usb port). Tick the box that says 'I understand...' - On the left hand side, under General, name this Arduino setup, then scroll down to SHAKEIT PWM Outputs. Click the plus sign so it shows 2 (if you are using two fans). For PWM Output 1 pin, select 3. For PWM Output 2 pin, select 11. I left the other options at default. - Towards the top right, click 'Upload to Arduino'. It will then run the process and complete. - Go back to the main simhub. Click on ShakeIt Motors on the left hand side. At the top there should be three tabs, make sure you are on the Effects Profile tab. Scroll down and enable Speed. Move the volume slider to 100% (you can vary this later). Just to the left of the 'Speed' heading, there is an arrow, click it to expand it. The details under here are explained in the youtube tutorial, but I set it to manual, then effect low at 20, and effect high at 150. - With the three tabs at the top, go to 'Motors Output'. Enable 'Arduino Motors and Fans', and click the arrow to the left of this to expand it. Scroll dow...

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Sebekonne

(@sebekonne)

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Joined: 9 months ago

Posts: 2

25/08/2024 12:43 am

@jblondin You are my fauvorite person right now!!! really thank you!! it finally works with the design of thingiverse.

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Knobby

(@knobby)

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Joined: 4 months ago

Posts: 2

22/12/2024 5:41 pm

Great post.. Wind Sim all setup and keeping me cool under my Quest 3..

I couldn’t find a 3D printable case that fitted the UNO R3 and Cytron MD10 so I amended a similar one..

Link for anyone else who needs one..
<a title="Large case for MD10" href=" removed link " target="_blank" rel="noopener"><a href=" removed link "> removed link

This post was modified 4 months ago by Knobby

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Micka35

(@micka35)

Active Member

Joined: 2 years ago

Posts: 6

23/12/2024 8:27 pm

@knobby Hi, thanks for sharing but we can't see your link, would it be possible to have it please?

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Knobby

(@knobby)

New Member

Joined: 4 months ago

Posts: 2

23/12/2024 9:13 pm

@micka35

Can’t see to add a link.

search thingiverse for the following

Wind Simulator Case for Arduino Uno Rev3 And Cytron MD10 Motor Shield - Larger Case

This post was modified 4 months ago by Knobby

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MyronNL

(@myronnl)

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Joined: 3 months ago

Posts: 1

04/02/2025 10:20 pm

Hi everyone,

First of all, a big thanks to the creator of this post! Thanks to your guide, I upgraded from a Chinese Uno motor shield to the MDD10, powered by a Meanwell 12V 150W PSU.

With the motor shield, everything worked fine during testing, but due to the power demand of the fans, I decided to upgrade. I followed every step as described, but now I’m facing an issue:

Nothing happens until I reach 130 km/h, and then the fans suddenly go full throttle. Even when I maintain speed, they keep ramping up to max and stay there.

I’ve tried adjusting the speed settings, but the only difference is that as soon as they activate, they go crazy.

I’d really appreciate any ideas or suggestions you might have! Thanks in advance for your help. 😊

Game: ACC
But with BeamNG same story

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tonup

(@tonup)

New Member

Joined: 2 months ago

Posts: 2

18/02/2025 1:48 pm

@mbrown278 I bookmarked your awesome video to build my wind sim, bought all the parts, and now I'm back to do the build but your video is now gone. 😥

Is there another place I could watch so I can put my wind sim together?

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Day VReamer

(@mbrown278)

Eminent Member

Joined: 3 years ago

Posts: 36

Topic starter 18/02/2025 7:35 pm

@tonup sorry about that. I had given up the YouTube channel due to available time but still got a lot of comments/queries on them which I couldn't continue to manage, so I set all video's to private. I have changed the channel name, but have now set that specific video to unlisted for you and this is the link:

I hope this helps and good luck with the build 👍

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Day VReamer

(@mbrown278)

Eminent Member

Joined: 3 years ago

Posts: 36

Topic starter 18/02/2025 8:03 pm

@myronnl sorry you're having issues, have you managed to sort it? This now feels like so long ago that I made this video/guide, and I stopped sim racing a while ago. So from my now relatively vague memory - have you lowered the minimum force setting? Try lowering that until your fans just start up and are able to stay on at that level. If you set it too low then the fans could cut in and out when maintaining a constant low speed. Hope that helps and hope you sorted it or that someone else can assist

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tonup

(@tonup)

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Joined: 2 months ago

Posts: 2

19/02/2025 5:50 am

@mbrown278 Truly amazing! I appreciate you and your work very much. Deepest thanks.

Day VReamer reacted

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felixfive

(@felixfive)

New Member

Joined: 2 months ago

Posts: 1

27/02/2025 3:45 pm

What's the general feeling on reaction time / lag of the wind sim compared to the actual speed in the game?

Besides the post from @ferrari2k on the first page I could not find any complaints regarding that topic.

I recently set up a wind sim with PWM Fans (120mm 4000rpm with intakes and the Noctua airflow multiplier) and it feels like they lag behind a couple of seconds compared to what's happening in the game. I used "higher rpm" fans to get more powerful motors, but it seems like they'd need much higher power for better tracking of the input. It makes sense that these fans have not been designed for dynamic speed changes, but I was hoping for it to be a bit better.

Has anyone experience with the reaction time of PWM fans compared to normal 12V fans of similar power that are controlled via the motor shield?

This post was modified 2 months ago by felixfive

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Aaronfrancis89

(@aaronfrancis89)

New Member

Joined: 5 days ago

Posts: 1

26/04/2025 5:46 am

I have followed every step, and then re done again multiple times but I cant seem to get my fans to even spin on test. Im using the original instructions with the motorshield and rev3 uno as the mdd is quite difficult to find in au. Following every step I cant get them to work.

Edit: got it working by reversing the polarity for some reason.

Now the fans are buzzing when functioning. Anyone know how to resolve that?

Fans im using are sunon 12v dc 120mm fans

Thank you all

This post was modified 5 days ago by Aaronfrancis89

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