With SimuCube selling tons of boxes at this moment, it is time to see what is going to happen in the near future. Simucube project born with the many purposes, one of them was to replace MMOS firmware and take advantage of the more advanced capacities of the board and the controller. Now, with a possible firmware release in the next months we would like to remember what this means. Tero Kontkanen at the end of March declared:
“The goal in the new OS FW is to utilize SimpleMotion connection to IONI drive to take advantage of higher resolution encoders, effect processing drive etc. So running it on non-SimuCUBE setups probably would require wiring changes to make it work.
However, as it will be open source, anyone can create a branch of it and maintain a different version for existing setups. if it’s not too complicated, we could maintain a “backwards compatibility mode” in the firmware.
A separate GUI will be made for the FW.”
Non IONI devices will be out of the main scope of this development. Anyway, new firmware will be available as an open source project, so who knows what it can be done with some community effort and support.
More things. IONI has a new firmware available since a few weeks ago. I don’t like to feel as a guinea pig but this time give it a shot before I expected. Coming from a 1.4.x I noticed an improvement in the overall FFB. Better, definitely. Here you have a technical analysis about one of the changes.
And here the file
One last thing. Do you know about that little flashing blue light in the discovery you must turn your wheel at the start until light goes out? Good. Here are some notes from Jason Jodarski to avoid this repetitive procedure, being done in the phasing phase at the start instead.
“Cycle power on the wheel (make sure the estop is released by turning it with a CW twist also make sure your drive enable switch is on), the motor shaft should move slightly CW/CCW and stop. Now check to see if you have a flashing blue light on the Discovery board. If you do slowly turn the motor shaft either direction until the light goes out. This is the “Index” point of the motor, use a marker and mark the motor shaft at this point (I put a dot in the 12 O’clock position) Power the wheel down and mount your steering wheel so that the wheel is close to the 12 O’clock position (between 11 O’clock and 1 O’clock is good) when the motor is at it’s index point.
If you did not have a flashing blue light when you looked it’s likely because you just happened to have the motor shaft in the index position when you powered up. Upon power up when the motor phased it shut the blue light off. To verify this you can cycle the power on the wheel and watch the Discovery board. When you power back on you should see the blue light on momentarily and will go out on it’s own, your motor is in the index position and your wheel can be mounted there.
Once you have your wheel mounted power the controller back on and launch MMo’s. After the wheel has phased and the blue light is out hold the wheel exactly centered and click the “Center steering and save offset” button. You should see an offset value appear to the left. Save to the eprom and save to the default and close MMo’s.”
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Any word on whether this “replacment for MMos” was actually something they intended to do or just PR hype to sell more boxes?
Not that MMos is bad, it’s a little disappointing that we are over a year since this ‘promise’ was made.
Many of us are left wondering what the Simucube (Ioni Pro HC) could actually be capable of with a more advanced FFB system? I do hope they are actually doing something, especially with Accuforce releasing their V2 wheel, which I’m not at all worried about since it’s still an inferior stepper motor. Hybrid they call it, but it’s still a step down (pun intended) from an OSW with real servo motor. There’s rumors of Fanatec bringing their own DD wheel to the market, but it will likely be very overpriced and not close to the quality of a Simucube with say a 10K resolution MiGe motor. Sure, Fanatec has a nice ecosystem of wheels, pedals and other accessories but I don’t see myself buying one!
Would love to hear of any news regarding this potential MMos replcement.
Anyone heard anything?