General / Off-Topic I'm building a game seat

[SnowGhost]

I've been looking for a gaming seat seat for a long time. I have an Xbox 360, the wireless racing wheel and enjoy running around Forza. I also am eagerly looking forward to the release of the upcoming Elite : Dangerous space sim, and sometime after that, Star citizen.

I played with Egosofts X2 a lot and could never get comfortable in the office chair, and the desk made the joystick to high as well.

I want a sim seat that can cope with everything. I'm pretty sure I can add a HOATS stand on either side of the seat.

Some years ago I discovered this build thread http://insidesimracing.tv/forums/topic/681-simul8r-rig-2-pvc-schedule40-mark-ii-plans-on-pg-9/ but never did anything about it. Sometime later the guy there changed the plans to make it more solid around the front.

There was this thread at another site, which linked to the obutto sim seats, but .... they are expensive in Australia. The revolution is $1000 ..... beyond my up-front budget for a seat. The Wife Acceptance Factor is out of bounds at that price. But they look like everything I'd want.

So I've come back to the PVC rig. And decided it's time.


The plans call for 2" Schedule 40 PVC. Australia, being a modern country is metric and no such pipe exists. After quite a lot of research, I discovered what Australians want is 50mm class 18 pressure pipe. Class 15 will work as well and be cheaper, but it's not a common stock item. A list of sizes, diameters and thicknesses can be found at http://www.plascorp.com.au/pipemaster.shtml#PressurePipe

Surprisingly, 50mm pipe isn't 50mm in diamter, it's about 62mm and the internal diameter isn't 50mm either. It seems the 50mm size is just made up.

Bunnings has it, but at a frightful cost. $7 for a single T fitting. So go find a rural irrigation store and ask. They probably won't have the number of items needed in stock, but will be able to get it easy. You can also get the fittings from http://www.pipeonline.com.au/subcatDisplay/PRESSURE++FITTINGS++PVC but you will need to get the pipe locally.

If you want to go and build it yourself, go watch the insideracing.tv build & review at http://insidesimracing.tv/forums/topic/4921-isr-diy-rig-2-simul8rs-pvc/

My first step was to consider how to cut the stuff.
My first thought, because it is pretty much a one off, was go cheap and get
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/PRECISIO...33404277?pt=AU_Hand_Tools&hash=item53f76d0b75

But I decided a manual saw was silly when for the same price I could get
http://www.bunnings.com.au/products...P6290179.aspx?filter=categoryname--Mitre+Saws

So a powered mitre saw it is.

Next .... what to put on it : ie, Seat. Looking around the auto wreckers, ebay, etc, used car seats tend to be expensive and crap. Also the mounting brackets can be very funky.
Supercheap auto have an aftermarket SAAS seat. http://www.supercheapauto.com.au/on...ual-Recline-Sports-Seat.aspx?pid=271516#Cross
Its normal retail is $189 but they had a sale and dropped it around 25% to $148. So I could get a new non crap seat or a used seat for about the same price. Not a hard choice really.

With regards to PVC glue, I've used it myself a small amount and it sets damn fast. As in, 2 seconds after you insert a pipe into a coupler, it isn't moving much. It's cheap and common. And if you want to allow yourself some room to make a mistake, it's no good.

I've got a bottle of the stuff and won't be using it. In fact I don't think I'll glue it up until I'm happy all is good.

Anyway, that is my plans for the moment.

 

[SnowGhost]

OK. SO I finally got around to organising a photo hosting site. Amusingly, I've been signed up to Microsofts SkyDrive for long enough that they give me 25GB of space, yet I've never used it. Anyway ...

I created an excel spread sheet to sort of guess how much pipe I'll need and track other bits.

Just so you know what it's supposed to end up looking like. This is what I'm HOPING to end up with, except having the HOTAS joystick mounted in front of the seat.
Because this isn't mine, I've spoilered it.

Spoiler

 

[SnowGhost]

I've bought 1x 12m class 18 length of PVC pressure pipe.
I've cut it up into bits & pieces and assemebled most of my frame.
I'll need more pipe.

When you cut the PVC you get a lot of PVC 'snow'. It goes everywhere and is very staticy and sticks to everything. Walls, floor, skin, clothes, dogs. Cut outside.

The end result will look a lot like, the original

except I will have 90 degree bends on the top, rather than 'T' pieces, and I don't want/need the diagonal. Though that probably does add some strength to the overall thing. I'm also planning the following differences
-about 90cm high stands behind the seat for rear speakers
-about 15cm high stands to the immediate left & right of the front of the seat to mount the HOTAS joystick bits (Saitek X52)

It looks like this at the moment, as a very rough mock up. Monitors go in front of the steering wheel. I've acquired 3x 1280*1024 LCD monitors. The joystick is sitting on it's original packaging. Which looks like it's about the right height for me. The throttle is sitting a little low.

I watched the inside sim racing build video and I think they built it backwards. They started gluing at the easiest end and worked their way forward. By the looks of it, I also think they did the whole thing in 4 hours. This didn't leave enough time to think things through.

I started cutting and assembling at the main end.

First up, I'll not build the seat half initially. I can add that on easily, later. So I"ll only initially be glueing the bits in red in this image

 

[SnowGhost]

I bought the seat. And had a hard time trying to figure out how to mount it to the frame.

After looking at a number of different sites and photo's, I've discovered that there is probably one cheap chinese seat company making a lot of different seats using the same sliding rails. They probably have the same mounting width as well. So there is a good chance my setup will copy across to other cheap, 3rd party 'racing' seats.

When I mounted the rails to 70mm wide pine lengths, I discovered that they foul the main seat mount end T's by about 2 mm. Garrr. 2mm. Crud. A whole 2 mm.

Options I had at that point
-Widen everything by 2mm (not going to happen)
-hack little divets in the pine to make it fit, but I didn't know where they should go.
-Shave off a little bit to make it fit
-I even thought about buying a large piece of plywood to fit to the frame and then glue/screw the seat to that. It seemed a bit excessive.

What I did was simple. I remounted the pine so it's not centered, but instead sits flush with the outside edge of the rail. It still looks neat enough and a trial fit shows it fits nicely now. I'll use some wall pipe fittings to attach the pine to the pipes.

The seat didn't come with any instructions at all.

You mount the rails to something (pine in my case) and then mount the rails to the seat. You can't do it the other way around.

The slide rails actually only go on the seat in one way. The lever has to go to the front, the spring on the rails goes to the back, and the bits the slide lever hooks onto has to go on the inside.

I'd take photos, but getting the slide lever on/off now that the pine is there is actually quite tough. So I'm not going to take them off again. (Note to self : take more photos)

Seat with my Co driver in it.

The rails mounted on the pine wood. This is the front end

And the other end. Showing the springy bit that locks the seat in place.

 

[Alien]

I might have a go at building one at some point, but make it so I can change it from driving to space sim.

How do rudder pedals fit in?

 

[SnowGhost]

I might have a go at building one at some point, but make it so I can change it from driving to space sim.

That is what I'm doing. The steering wheel is kind of optional for me. I don't have anywhere to put the xbox & TV in stead of the 3x DVI monitors I'll be using.

How do rudder pedals fit in?

Go where the steering wheel pedals would fit. So, at the front (left side of most of the images) under the steering wheel in the completed photo.

 

[SnowGhost]

So I ran out of pipe initially and had to buy more, which took a week to turn up.

A few more cuts, some more cleaning up of PVC snow (good gawd does it stick to everything ....) and I was nearly done.

A semi mock up and poking about made me figure out I'd need to cut some more. I also decided that having some vertical pipes behind the seat as rear speaker mounts for the cheapo logitech 5.1 system won't work. It would look very ugly. I'm currently leaning to using some 2x1 wood attached to the back of the seat in some manner.

I also hunted out the cut out that the builders left behind when building the house, after they cut the sink cutout for the kictchen sink. It's just about the perfect size for the front deck. It's way to thick, but it is the right size.

Anyway, here are mock ups of it near complete so you can see what I'm aiming at.

Here is the side view.

I'm still to work out what I'm going to do about the keyboard & mouse. But the view from the drivers seat.

And I may also have to
1. shorten the length between the seat and the front complex.
2. Lower the front complex by about an inch (or possibly raise the seat the same amount).

Also the uprights for the HOTAS are to tall, but I can always cut them shorter, but making them longer it harder. On the good side though, I have plenty of pipe left over.


Still to do

1. figure out keyboard/mouse mounting (Done)
2. figure out steering wheel mount
3. mount the pedals (Done)
4. test (Done)
5. glue it all together (Done)
6. spray paint it so it looks pretty (W.i.P. Looks ugly currently)

 

[loststargirl]

Your co-driver is adorable

 

[Voyager_NL]

May I suggest that you think up some sliders for your HOTAS placement? In that case you can do some trial and error on the correct height for them as indeed currently they're looking to be a bit high.

Mayby two pipes that slide over each other with holes in them so you can put something through them to lock them to a certain height.

Just a thought! Nice project and it's looking to be nearly finished.

 

[SnowGhost]

Your co-driver is adorable

Yes he is.

I've got pictures of him from about 6 months ago, playing ooLite. He wasn't very good, but he did figure out how to get it to go 'pew pew'.

May I suggest that you think up some sliders for your HOTAS placement? In that case you can do some trial and error on the correct height for them as indeed currently they're looking to be a bit high.

Mayby two pipes that slide over each other with holes in them so you can put something through them to lock them to a certain height.

Just a thought! Nice project and it's looking to be nearly finished.

I might just raise the seat an inch first. Which will resolve the "table is to high for the steering wheel" problem.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

That's really cool.

for the kb/mouse i would suggest a using hospital bed table as a base as they are height adjustable and also tilt. you should be able to pick one up on ebay easily enough, something like this:



a bit of work with a disc cutter is all that's needed to remove the legs and you can mount it to the side of the chair by slotting it in a piece of pipe that's just a little bit wider and you have a push away swivel.

 

[SnowGhost]

I've made some changes. After I stuck it all together, I let it sit and played around with the setup.

I decided the seat was probably to low, so I added a single length of wood to raise it up about an inch.

There is also a week point where the connectors from the seat section join the front section. Because I'm using a HOTAS, I added a second level of support back from front to the HOTAS stands.

A picture of the modifications and pointing out the identified weak spot.

I've also discovered that it's a damn good thing to not do this quickly, unless you are sure that the plans are exactly what you want. If I'd glued it together a week after I mocked it up I wouldn't be able to add the extra bits.

Also I haven't yet cut the HOTAS stands down. I probably won't until it's all glued down.

 

[Kerrash]

Loving the work you've done here, jealous of your 3x display set-up too
How are you do like the X52? I got one this year, love it.

 

[Nagual]

Well done for giving this a bash, looking good so far! With regards to keyboard and mouse, I'd be tempted to try and make some sort of swivel thingy, so you could easily move them out the way etc. Not unlike some desks have at college or uni.

 

[SnowGhost]

Loving the work you've done here, jealous of your 3x display set-up too
How are you do like the X52? I got one this year, love it.

I've had the X52 for a fair number of years now. I quite like it. The only problem I've had with it is, either a lack of time to use it or lack of a system to use it with.

With a brand new bubba girl coming home tomorrow, I can't see the time issue resolving itself. However I do plan on somehow buying a new setup for Elite (and Star Citizen) late this year. For that I need new motherboard, CPU, RAM & Video card. I have the other ancilliary bits & pieces already.

 

[SnowGhost]

I've been pondering the keyboard and mouse for ages. I've come up with numerous ideas varying in quality of idea from silly to stupid.

The sliding rotating hospital table posted above, by AndyB is a possibility, but I'm wanting something neat and compact and self contained in the system itself.

I eventually came up with what I feel is a brilliant solution. You just have to think about your problem until you get to the solution.

Sliding drawer rails. Mounted directly underneath the table top with just enough gap to put a keyboard.

However I have access to something very similar to this sliding keyboard monitor stand. It's beige, but should spray paint nicely. Another option would be a 19" rack mount sliding keyboard drawer. Which is what I would probably do if I didn't have the other option available for nothing.

Unfortunately, I don't have it to hand so I can't be sure it will fit, but I'm pretty confident I can mount it just fine. And if what I have doesn't fit, I know the 19" rack stuff will fit, as the PVC is slightly more than 19" wide.

The only negative is I won't be able to use the keyboard AND a steering wheel at the same time. This isn't a problem for me, as the only racing games I have, that I use a steering wheel for are Xbox games, and well, they don't have a keyboard. And If I do need a keyboard in a game I could probably hook up a Xbox controller with keypad as the Xbox gamepads work just fine in Windows.

 

[SnowGhost]

The other problem I've solved is how to mount the ply board for the HOTAS bits. Now, this isn't hard, I just clearly like doing this the hard way. I'd been looking to somehow fill the middle of the pipe with something strong enough to screw the board to.

As you can see, that's kind of a stupid idea.

After a lot of stuffing about I did the simple thing. I was always going to use the flared end of the pipe. So I just cut 70 mm length of pipe, and glued it into the flare. I'll cut this back just enough so I have a nice even cut on the end. This gives me 10mm of wall thickness to screw 90 degree 50mm brackets onto. Pictures to come when I've actually done it.

 

[SnowGhost]

The baby has sort of settled. But more importantly, the weather cleared up and stopped raining after near on 3 weeks of constant rain or wind or cold or all three.

Given some sunlight and time, I made the final cuts in PVC pipe. It still sucks to clean it up.

I cut 70mm out of the section that joins the seat to the front. I also cut the joystick uprights to length. I decided that 150mm is right for those, in my situation.

I attached the four 50mm brackets that the joysticks will sit on. They look like.

You can see the thin seam where the blue glue is between the out pipe and the inserts. It's 10mm thick. With 2 screws on each bracket and the pipe clamp it's somewhat over engineered. I needed the clamp to get the screws in somewhat accurately.

All mocked up, it looks like

 

[Nagual]

Looking sweet! Should be a pleasure to use.

 

[AndrewF]

Looking really good. How comfortable is the car-seat?