Some thoughts from the author

October 5, 2024 ยท View on GitHub

Looking at the content and extension of this project you may think I am a young do-it-yourself enthusiast with strong motivation on building my own steering wheel for sim-racing.

Well... you are wrong.

Nor I'am young nor I want a custom-made steering wheel.

What? So, what is the point of this project?

Genesis

At some point in a conversation with my fellow sim-racing partners, the question about purchasing a new steering wheel arose. No doubt most steering wheels in the market are high quality (this sentence does not include you, Fanatec), but the prices, starting at 550 euros ($ 600, more or less) are too high for the average sim racer in Europe.

Believe it or not, I started this project to demonstrate whether those prices are justified or not (more on this later).

As a software engineer I already had some skills on digital circuits, but had no previous experience in Arduino, nor in open hardware, nor in do-it-yourself projects. Zero. None.

Motivation

Despite such a senseless starting point, I found strong personal motivation to work hard on it, but has nothing to do with sim-racing:

  • I'm committed to my profession enough as to lead by example:
    • I wanted to demonstrate that test-driven development works, even if you don't have a popular testing framework, even if your are not able to automate your test, even if hardware is involved, even if you don't have professional tools.
    • I wanted to demonstrate how transcendent good software documentation is.
    • I wanted to demonstrate that high-quality software takes less effort than shoddy work.
  • I wanted to leverage my knowledge about GIT, configuration management and the GitHub platform.
  • Arduino has been around in chit-chat talks for many years. It was time to learn something about it.
  • It's nice to have a new hobby.

Did you get any help ?

None. Zero.

I asked for help in a well-populated sim-racing community with no success. I announced the project at even more populated sim-racing communities, but no attention.

To my personal opinion, sim-racing community sucks.

Is a commercial steering wheel worth $ 600?

In short, yes.

You can build a DIY steering wheel for half the price, but there is much more to do in a commercial work that takes money:

  • Building many units is not the same as building a single unit. You need a factory and a supply chain.
  • You need retailers.
  • You need transportation and logistics.
  • You need customer support.
  • You need employees.
  • You have to pay your taxes.
  • Etc.

Sure you get to the point.

However, I can assure that electronics are not a significant part of the cost of a steering wheel.

Why ESP32 ?

My first attempt at this project was based on Arduino Nano 33 and the Mbed operating system. Soon, this turned out to be a wrong decision, even when I achieved a working prototype based on USB connectivity. The hardware capabilities of such a DevKit were below my expectations (especially the built-in ADC), but, worst of all, developer support was very defective (as you can still see here). I ended up stuck in a third-party software bug.

For the following reasons, I now focus on the ESP32 architecture: