Engineering Projects - Hardware · Electronics
A direct-drive force feedback wheel, custom magnetic pedals, and a folding rig - built from scratch over a summer using a hoverboard motor, open-source firmware, and a lot of troubleshooting.
The summer after my freshman year I wanted a proper racing simulator - but a commercial direct-drive wheel and rig setup runs into the hundreds to thousands of dollars. Instead, I built my own. The result is a direct-drive force feedback wheel generating around 15 Nm of torque, a set of custom magnetic pedals with an Arduino-based controller, and a folding stand that fits everything together. The whole system cost a fraction of a commercial equivalent and taught me more about motor control, embedded electronics, and mechanical design than any class had at that point.
The first attempt used a belt-driven design - 775 motor offset from the wheel shaft, connected via a belt and pulley. It was cleaner in layout but introduced consistent slipping under high-torque FFB outputs, which made the wheel feel notchy and unreliable. Switching to direct drive, where the wheel mounts directly on the motor casing, eliminated the slipping entirely and dramatically improved the feel.
Belt drive (left) abandoned for slipping under load - replaced with direct drive (right).
The motor came from a disassembled hoverboard - the hub motors in hoverboards are brushless and surprisingly capable once you bypass the proprietary controller. I used an ODESC 4.2 motor driver to run the FFBeast open-source firmware, which handles the force feedback signal translation from the game into motor torque commands. A 480W (24V 20A) DC power supply provides the headroom needed to hit the torque peaks without voltage sag. Getting the firmware configured and the motor tuned took significant trial and error - motor calibration, encoder alignment, and FFB curve tuning all interact with each other.
The ODESC 4.2 motor driver, power supply, and wiring harness behind the wheel mount.
With the wheel working, I needed pedals to actually test it properly. Rather than buy a set, I designed and built my own from scratch. The pedals use magnetic encoders to read pedal position - more durable and precise than potentiometers, and with no physical wear over time. An Arduino Leonardo handles the USB HID interface, making the pedals appear to the PC as a standard game controller without any drivers. The whole pedal assembly mounts on a folding stand I built that also holds the wheel, so the entire rig folds for storage.
Pedal design in CAD, assembled pedals with magnetic encoders, and the full rig folded for storage.
The wheel works - it produces real, strong force feedback and the pedals are accurate and responsive. The main limitation is software compatibility: most major racing titles only accept input from commercially certified wheels, so the sim doesn't get as much use as it deserves. That's a frustrating but real constraint of the DIY route.
The completed rig — direct drive wheel, magnetic pedals, and folding stand.
What I didn't expect was how much this project would shape everything that came after. Building it alongside an electronics internship the same summer created a feedback loop - problems at the internship informed the sim build and vice versa. The motor control concepts, the embedded firmware work, the hardware debugging - that summer is where my interest in electronics stopped being casual and became a genuine focus. Almost every electronics project since traces back to the confidence and curiosity this build kicked off.