Home Motion Flight Simulator By Thanos

I want to present here my first attempt of making a cheap and functional motion simulator. Its a small, low profile construction, that can be placed and used in home. It uses small DC electric motors that are quiet and fast in response. And the best, of all its parts are easy to be found in the market everywhere.  The is no need for special workshop to make this, as all parts can be assembled in home. Its an fantastic DYI project for anyone that can handle simple tools like hacksaw, electric drill, jigsaw, screwdriver and wrenches. Its electronics are ready of the shelf products that can be installed easily without the need for great knowledge of electronics. 

About the other motion simulators: 

There are many ready solutions for motion simulators out there but all are really expensive to obtain. The hydraulic systems introduce other issues that makes them not suitable for home use, like the need for extra room for the support machinery which can produce too much noise that can be annoying for either you or the neighbors and its also dangerous in case of leak of the high pressure hydraulic oil. Their electronics often came with ready programs that you have no control over them and you have to pay extra for customizing it later. Pneumatics on the other hand may seem cheap and powerful but the noise from the compressor and the valves switching can be really annoying. And it's almost impossible to reach accurate positioning or speed control of an pneumatic actuator cause of the attribute of air to compress easily under load. Only servo pneumatic valves and servo control electronics for pneumatics can reach the motion quality of DC-motors but they are too expensive for a DIY project after all. 

About my motion simulator:

Its based on the old manual operated motion cockpit, the Joyrider for which plans can be found here: http://www.acesim.com/  for a small (symbolic) value.

You can obtain these great plans and make the PVC base in less than week. Then you can follow the steps bellow to add the motor mounts with the cable pulley system and the rest of the electronics and be ready to fly it in less than a month. I know it sounds like a lot of trouble but it isn't. It took me more than a year to complete it because I had no room to place it permanently but since I moved to new house with the necessary extra room, I finished in less than a month mounting the motors and the lcd monitor. I used free motion software that is available from some time now, and was developed along with my simulator (yes, I was actually beta tested them!).  The code for the BS2 interface  I used on it is now Open-Source! This means that you can do your own programming on it or fine tune it to your needs.

I still make changes on it mostly to upgrade its endurance and decorate it with flight controls and panels. But the most important upgrade will be total remake of its electronics. The new Pro version has new AVR microcontroller that receive the data in 115200bps speed and new PWM motor controller. The new AVR electronics (AVR motion controller v1.5) is finished now (see the links page) and it wont be long before it is presented here too.

All parts that compose this full motion simulator can be found on hardware stores anywhere. There is no need to weld parts as they are all just bolted together. And a  list of the most basic parts can be found below:

General Hardware:
-PVC Pipes for the joyrider motion base
-Four wheel casters with double set of ball bearing. (square base is preferred)
-Metal dexion parts (30x30 and 30x60 several meters)
-Car Bucket seat (or plastic cart seat with high back)
-Two large metallic Pulleys (12cm diameter)
-Six small pulleys with ball bearing (updated)
-Several meters of plastic coated wire (for the pulley system) (or a 210mm belt from bus engine, see upgrades!).
-Two car windshield wiper motors (I used the model B-11 from a Nissan 85')
-Various hardware (bolts, nuts, angles etc)

Electronics list for the basic version:
-Parallax's Basic Stamp2 with education board
-Two HB-25 motor controllers (Parallax)
-Two ADC0831 ADC chips
-A max232 serial buffer chip
-Two 250K potentiometers with 90 degrees reduced rotation. (for the axis position feedback)
-Two 400watt computer power supply's (PSU) (a 12V car battery is preferred here due to the ability to deliver large amounts of amps when the motors are loaded)

The total cost for constructing the basic project is about 800 euro although you can save a lot by using recycled parts like an old office chair, PSU units from old computers lying around to power the motors etc.

And after the photos, here are some video of the flight motion simulator to see it in action.

If you wish to contact me for help with the basic stamp2 code or for help interfacing it with various motion software email me at:

If you like my work then please make a donation to help with the developing costs. Reasons why? Read this: Tronic's contribution evolution of personal motion simulators.

Copyright Thanos Kodoyiannis,  Athens, Greece,  2008