PT-1 Pedal Set - Discussion

Why did you use potentiometer instead of hall sensor? I find flat pedals really uncomfortable to use unless they are articulated on an accelerator where there's quite a lot of travel. Your ankle has to do twice as much work unless the pedal plate tilts or is curved. Looks like a good bit of kit though, keep going!
 
Murtaya said:
Why did you use potentiometer instead of hall sensor? I find flat pedals really uncomfortable to use unless they are articulated on an accelerator where there's quite a lot of travel. Your ankle has to do twice as much work unless the pedal plate tilts or is curved. Looks like a good bit of kit though, keep going!
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Hey there, Murtaya,

We used the potentiometer because they are industrial grade and they're rated for millions of turns. These are the same POT's used on the CST pedals.

With respect to the the flat pedal face, we found that most people prefer the flat version, but you'll be able to choose which version you like. You will also be able to adjust the angle of the pedal arm. We'll be going over this in an upcoming video, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks for the comments and compliment!
 
Hey guys,

In this video, we show you all of the possible adjustments you can make to the accelerator pedal. We hope that we covered everything, but if you feel that we didn't, or you have any questions regarding adjustments, feel free to leave a comment. Enjoy!

 
Won't the fact that you have offset axes and different degrees of travel between the pot and the accelerator itself lead to a non linear output from the pot, I know you can correct for that in this software, and you could probably do something electronically to rectify it, but was wondering if you had checked that side of it? Plus resolution, you want the pot to use as much of its travel as possible. This is why I wondered if you had considered hall sensor as in theory they don't fail, dust should never be an issue, and it would make your life easier wouldn't it? I would have thought so anyway. I enjoyed seeing model heli pushrods utilized though, top tip if you end up with this design as final, get some carbon tube cut it to the length of the exposed part of the metal pushrod and use it to encase the metal. It will look better and suit the rest of the construction. Whilst you and I both know how tough those links are, (and would never fail) it does look quite thin when you compare it to how industrial everything else looks.
 
Murtaya said:
Won't the fact that you have offset axes and different degrees of travel between the pot and the accelerator itself lead to a non linear output from the pot, I know you can correct for that in this software, and you could probably do something electronically to rectify it, but was wondering if you had checked that side of it? Plus resolution, you want the pot to use as much of its travel as possible. This is why I wondered if you had considered hall sensor as in theory they don't fail, dust should never be an issue, and it would make your life easier wouldn't it? I would have thought so anyway. I enjoyed seeing model heli pushrods utilized though, top tip if you end up with this design as final, get some carbon tube cut it to the length of the exposed part of the metal pushrod and use it to encase the metal. It will look better and suit the rest of the construction. Whilst you and I both know how tough those links are, (and would never fail) it does look quite thin when you compare it to how industrial everything else looks.
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Those are all great observations. You have a good eye for this sort of stuff :)

A couple of points I'd like to make...

The linearity of the Potentiometer is really not a concern of ours. If it were, we would have used linear slide pots instead. It's just not something that we feel is a deal breaker. They were used in the exact same fashion on the CST pedals and the CST's really got no complaints.

As far as the metal rod that connects the arm and POT... We don't feel there will be much of an issue here. We've been testing them for the past week, and we haven't seen a single issue with them. Still, it's only been a week. So, we'll keep an eye on it. Covering up that rod is something we thought of doing, but that might make it harder to do adjustments. Something else that we didn't mention in the video is that we'll be drilling a number of different holes in different positions on the pedal arm so that you can place that rod in different positions. This may help with linearity.

We'll look into something for that rod, but if it never comes about, I don't think we'll lose customers over it ;)

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions! The feedback from the community has been amazing!


Chris
 
I spent years messing around with model helicopter geometry, servo arms to offset crank arms, plus a bit of messing around with datalogging and modifying on my real car. Nearly was an engineer but youthful interests didn't allow it. Put it all together with current interests in simulators (and the youthful stuff a distant memory) and I can't help but look at all the bits of hardware available, and wonder how I might do things if I had the kind of motivation and tools that you guys do. Until then I shall hold the blueprints for all my awesome (never getting built) stuff in my head, and watch as others actually do.



How long before you know a price and release date do you reckon?
 
Murtaya said:
I spent years messing around with model helicopter geometry, servo arms to offset crank arms, plus a bit of messing around with datalogging and modifying on my real car. Nearly was an engineer but youthful interests didn't allow it. Put it all together with current interests in simulators (and the youthful stuff a distant memory) and I can't help but look at all the bits of hardware available, and wonder how I might do things if I had the kind of motivation and tools that you guys do. Until then I shall hold the blueprints for all my awesome (never getting built) stuff in my head, and watch as others actually do.



How long before you know a price and release date do you reckon?
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You sound exactly like me!

I come from a family of engineers. My grandfather worked on the very first space shuttle, and other NASA programs. My uncle is an engineer at Boeing. I suppose that's where I get it from. I've been working with my hands all my life, and I just love to tinker with things. As a kid I took things apart to see how they worked. My parents really didn't mind it that much, and in fact, they encouraged it. I never had the motivation to go to college, so becoming a real engineer was just not in my future. But I do have that engineering spirit. There's just something wonderful about being able to visualize and solve a problem, or design a new part, in your head.

We are nowhere close to a release date. If I had to guess, I would say we are still months away. As far as price, we're keeping that a closely guarded secret for now :)
 
Hey guys,

We finally have a working prototype of our new pedals and here we get a chance to do some preliminary testing. Enjoy!

 
GTFREAK said:
Hey guys,

We finally have a working prototype of our new pedals and here we get a chance to do some preliminary testing. Enjoy!

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What about the brake pedal?! You haven't made any video about them and how does they work?! Load cell?
 
Hey guys,

Doug Meyer over at SimRacingReview is an awesome guy, and he just released a special video that showcases our new brake pedal along side the throttle pedal. Keep in mind, the pictures you'll see are of the prototypes, so they'll have some wear and tear on them. Nevertheless, I wanted this to be sort of a surprise. Doug and I have been in contact with each other through email and I offered to send him a set of our new pedals once we have a "final" version ready to go, so he'll be part of the beta testing crew :) You can get a glimpse of our new brake pedal in this video, but we'll have a lot more details on how this works in about a week or so. Check out the video!

 
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Hey guys,

Here's another video of our pedal testing. It's going very well, and as you can see, we're using a clutch this time :) We'll have more details about this clutch very soon, but before we do, we're going to be showing you how the brake pedal works. So stay tuned for that!

 
Looks nice, I think you (if that's your feet) could do with the brake and accelerator being slightly closer together, and also the brake being slightly higher than the accelerator when not depressed. This would make your blipping easier. Nothing to do with how nice they look though. Good job. I'm still convinced about curved plates though!
 
Murtaya said:
Looks nice, I think you (if that's your feet) could do with the brake and accelerator being slightly closer together, and also the brake being slightly higher than the accelerator when not depressed. This would make your blipping easier. Nothing to do with how nice they look though. Good job. I'm still convinced about curved plates though!
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The brake and throttle pedals are only about 2 inches apart. So, they're relatively close to each other. The brake pedal is also closer to me than the throttle, and therefore is slightly "higher" than the throttle when depressed, but it's not perfect yet. I'm still experimenting with the correct placement, but I definitely agree with you there. It needs to be slightly higher.

You still like those curved plates, huh? Some people did like them, but most people preferred the flat versions. So, that's probably what we'll go with in the end. We may offer the curved plates if we can figure out a way to do them correctly. We're just not convinced that those edges are something we want to go with. Too many people were concerned about them, and perception is reality, unfortunately. We'll see if we can come up with another "curved" version.

We'll have another video out soon with details on the brake pedal. You've already seen it, but we want to go over some changes we've made to all the pedals, plus highlight some details on how we built the brake.
 
I would just offer the flat ones drilled for and with the Tilton pedal tops rather than machine curved ones. I guess people will just do that to them if they want it.


Maybe it was just the camera angle but it looked like you almost got your foot stuck or missed the blip with your outer edge foot twist thingy you're doing there, which was why I said a little closer together (only 5mm probably).

These are looking really close to ready anyway, you must be quite excited.
 
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Can't wait for the newer video's, I think the technical stuff is awesome to watch and even for one who is not technical, comprehensible :)

If you're going to think about a new project after this, I have one in mind already, which hasn't been done before :p
 
Murtaya said:
I would just offer the flat ones drilled for and with the Tilton pedal tops rather than machine curved ones. I guess people will just do that to them if they want it.


Maybe it was just the camera angle but it looked like you almost got your foot stuck or missed the blip with your outer edge foot twist thingy you're doing there, which was why I said a little closer together (only 5mm probably).

These are looking really close to ready anyway, you must be quite excited.
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You're right. I was doing some testing tonight and found that I need to move the pedals a little closer to each other. Which presents a bit of a problem... The mounting blocks (those things sticking out the sides) are in the same position on all three pedals. That means that they can only be about 10mm closer to each other before those mounting blocks hit each other. I'll have to see if I can figure out a solution for that.

We don't feel like they are ready just yet. We've got some serious testing to undergo. It will at least be a few more months before we start to think about selling them. But yes, we're very excited :)

Do you happen to know the dimensions for those Tilton pedal faces? I'd be interested in knowing the mounting hole dimensions, just to see if we can accommodate those at some point. Or, perhaps we'll offer our own versions when we switch over to CNC. That said, we really like the flat faces. They're working out quite well so far.

During our tests, we found some problems with the tie rods we were using, as well as some noise that we'd like to get rid of when the pedals hit the stops. We think we've come up with a nice solution, but we'll have to put it under some stress testing before we call it good enough. Testing is actually going very well. Each day we're finding new ways to improve them, and we're very close to having a nice solid version. But again, we still have to do some serious long-term testing before we know we have a good product. Time will tell :)
 
Hey guys,

We're starting to make some great progress. We've had a finished brake pedal for about 3 weeks now and we're finally getting around to showing you how it works. We hope you like the design. Let us know what you think!

 
Looking great and very sturdy :)

One question though, the amount of throw you have on that pedal still seems like a lot and I can see people
want to have less of it. As I understood, this was the minimal throw you can have, but it would be nice
to have less as well.
 
wgeuze said:
Looking great and very sturdy :)

One question though, the amount of throw you have on that pedal still seems like a lot and I can see people
want to have less of it. As I understood, this was the minimal throw you can have, but it would be nice
to have less as well.
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The amount of travel shown in the video is the maximum travel at that tension setting. Keep in mind, I was pressing on that brake pedal harder with my two hands than you would with your foot. It took everything I had to make it go down that far. The only reason you would get more travel than that is if you were to place the tension adjustment on the bottom settings. I'd suggest keeping it at the top for maximum stability.

We tried going with a harder polyurethane bushing, but it was almost impossible to even get the pedal to move. I don't think people would like that very much. The bushings we're using at the moment actually perform VERY well. However, we have one more option that we're going to try. If that works out better, we'll go with that.

We might actually do another video that concentrates on pedal travel. I'll see if i can do another "Pedal Testing" video that shows how much travel you have in "real world" applications. Fair enough?
 
Hey guys,

I managed to get some more testing in this afternoon, so I figured I would go ahead and get it on camera. This video demonstrates how much travel the brake pedal has in a real world environment. A couple of people have commented that the brake pedal may have a bit too much travel. We hope this will alleviate some of those concerns.

 
GTFREAK said:
The amount of travel shown in the video is the maximum travel at that tension setting. Keep in mind, I was pressing on that brake pedal harder with my two hands than you would with your foot.
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I think you really underestimate how hard you actually push with your foot!

It took everything I had to make it go down that far. The only reason you would get more travel than that is if you were to place the tension adjustment on the bottom settings. I'd suggest keeping it at the top for maximum stability.

We tried going with a harder polyurethane bushing, but it was almost impossible to even get the pedal to move. I don't think people would like that very much. The bushings we're using at the moment actually perform VERY well. However, we have one more option that we're going to try. If that works out better, we'll go with that.

We might actually do another video that concentrates on pedal travel. I'll see if i can do another "Pedal Testing" video that shows how much travel you have in "real world" applications. Fair enough?
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Yeah I can see different bushings would give you a different result and may also shorten travel a fair bit. A "real world" application video would very nice indeed, especially for people who are riding the fence
on purchasing this for their rig, I'm sure there are still questions for them to be answered as well (just as with the mysterious mounting plate on the throttle pedal). Would be nice to see :)

edit
wow that is weird I didn't see the new video until after I posted this reply, forget there was another page I guess!

edit2:
That does look much better in practical use, especially suits the car driven I think. For openwheelers though it might be worth finding a stiffer bushing where you can supply
two bushings (or three) to suit people's needs in terms of stiffness (soft/medium/hard). Some brake pedals felt like kicking a wall at times, but they sure as heck worked great for the virtual car they
were driven with. Thanks for doing this video, again, looks really good! In one of bangers videos he is reviewing a Emery modified Tilton set which uses a combination of bushings to get different while
while leaving the rest stock, there probably are the same possibilities for this brake pedal as well.

Not trying to nag or anything, I just think people who are going to purchase these pedals want to be able to tweak them 100% to their liking, and so far I think that will be
very much possible :)

nice driving by the way :)

edit3:
Although I think the secondary spring is a great feature, which I haven't seen on other pedals, in my opinionl it's more fit for road cars. For purpose built racecars or openwheelers,
I don't know it's applicable, so an option for people to 'fix' the secondary spring would be nice as well.
 
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wgeuze said:
edit3:
Although I think the secondary spring is a great feature, which I haven't seen on other pedals, in my opinionl it's more fit for road cars. For purpose built racecars or openwheelers,
I don't know it's applicable, so an option for people to 'fix' the secondary spring would be nice as well.
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I don't think we mentioned this in any of the videos, but there is a spacer at the end of the brake pedal rod (the rod that goes from the tie rod to the back plate - through the bushings and spring) that you can remove to eliminate that spring altogether. We'll be sure to show that in an upcoming video.

Also, we're thinking of offering different bushings for different brake tensions. Also, don't forget, you can adjust the tension of the brake just like you can with the throttle :)
 
Hey guys,

We've finally reached a milestone in our development process. We now have all three working pedal prototypes! In this video we showcase our new clutch pedal design. It has some interesting mechanics, and we hope you like the design. It has a good firm feel at the top of the stroke and it gets lighter as you push further down, which is what you want in a clutch pedal. Enjoy the video!


PICTURES REMOVED
 
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I really dig the secondary lever action going on there, seems really to work well already when you push it just with your hands :)
 
wgeuze said:
I really dig the secondary lever action going on there, seems really to work well already when you push it just with your hands :)
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Yes, it does work quite well. We're still tweaking things a bit. We're testing different positions to make sure it functions properly.

The only real side effect of having this mechanism attached is that it's a little more difficult to make a pedal arm angle adjustment. If you adjust the angle so that the arm is at more of an angle, you'll lose some travel. However, this doesn't really hinder the operation of the clutch itself. You merely have to be careful as to what angle the pedal arm is adjusted. If you adjust it too far forward, the clutch mechanism won't work as intended. It simply won't reach the "tipping point" where you get that lighter feeling. However, we don't feel that this will be a deal breaker in any way. We're going to be making the holes into "slots" so that you can make minor adjustments when needed. You'll just have to be sure that you tighten the bolts down tight enough so they don't slip. We'll be producing some very highly detailed instructions that will be shipped with the pedals so you get a better understanding of how to adjust things, and what everything does.

Before I forget, we're going to be announcing our pricing structure very soon ;)
 
Just to give all of you an update on what's happening...

We're going to be announcing something fairly big within the next few weeks. Until that time, we're going to concentrate on testing, testing, and more testing. And we'll put out a few videos that highlight that testing.

I just want to say thank you to all of you that have participated in this thread, given us such great feedback, and have helped us to develop our upcoming pedal set. It hasn't been an easy road, and we've had our fair share of adversity along the way. That said, we've come quite a long way since October of 2013, and we're honored to have had the opportunity to show all of you what went into making these pedals.

Sincerely,

Chris Smith - Co-Founder -
PST_LOGO_SMALL.jpg
 
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:cool: I have followed your project from the beginning and I'm really happy for you and wish you a big succes! I don't know if I will make these pedals mine, because I have already the G27 pedals modded(SST brakes and another mod for the accelerator pedal) but who knows!
 
GTClub_wajdi said:
:cool: I have followed your project from the beginning and I'm really happy for you and wish you a big success! I don't know if I will make these pedals mine, because I have already the G27 pedals modded(SST brakes and another mod for the accelerator pedal) but who knows!
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We hope that the price will help a lot of people make that same decision.
 
Today we're testing the pedals again. This is going to be an ongoing series. We have weeks and weeks of testing still to do, and we'll try to show you as much as we possibly can. We've even chosen a beta tester so that we can get some feedback from an outside source. We'll have more details about that later, but for now, just enjoy the testing :)

 
Hey guys, we had a couple of requests to do an actual race, so I managed to get some footage of a race that took place this afternoon. I'm not the fastest driver out there, but I know my way around Summit Point. My lap times aren't the greatest. Still, my PB is 125.770. That's not too terrible :) Enjoy the video!

 
Hey guys, this is yet another race with our new pedals. This time I managed to get second place. So far, I'd have to say that I'm doing quite well in this series. We'll see how well I do when I start getting into races with the guys with a higher irating. We'll see. Enjoy the video!

 
Hey guys, this is yet another testing video. This is the Mazda cup at LRP. This time, I happen to win the race, but not without some incidents. The two cars in front of me were having a real scrap, and I managed to get around one of them cleanly. The other car and I had an incident going into a turn and I really screwed up. I was trying to brake hard, and my car almost pushed him off the road. I apologized for it immediately afterwards, twice. However, there were some words that were said by some other drivers, and I decided to black that out as to not call out anyone.

It was a low percentage move on my part, and I should have waited until the front straight to make a move. Lesson learned.

Anyhow, I had some problems with rendering, so the video is a bit choppy. I apologize for that. Hopefully the next video doesn't have these issues. Enjoy :)

 
Hey guys, today we're testing out Assetto Corsa. This is the first time we've tested this sim with our pedals, and I have to say, I'm really starting to like this sim. I think the FFB still needs a bit of work, though. It feels a bit flat in the front end. It seems to me that rFactor 2 really nails front end feedback. You can really feel what the front suspension is doing. In Assetto Corsa, it just feels like there's no feedback coming from the front suspension at all.

It could be my settings, or it could be the sim itself. All that said, Assetto Corsa is certainly a strong racing sim. Once it works out the multiplayer issues, I think this will be a great addition to the sim racing family.

 
Hey guys, today we get a chance to check out Project CARS. The Zakspeed Ford Capri is probably one of my all time favorite cars, and I wanted to test it out in this sim. It's an absolute blast to drive, but it's a little scary :)

Nevertheless, I managed to do a few laps around "The Green Hell". It was a lot of fun. Enjoy!

 
Header_1.jpg


Official Press Release 6-28-2014

ProtoSimTech unveils the PT-1 Pedal set for serious sim racers!


Today, ProtoSimTech has unveiled it's very first sim racing pedal set, nicknamed “PT-1”. ProtoSimTech's first sim racing product comes

with loads of features and tons of adjustability that allows you to tailor the set to any specific driving style.

To be clear, these pedals are not your average "set them down and start racing" pedals. These will require a significant time investment in order to
obtain your perfect driving style. If you like slapping a set of pedals down and hitting the track, these pedals might not be for you. However, we hope that
you give them a shot. We feel that you won't be disappointed!

Logo2.jpg




Features

● Powder Coated Finish
● Aluminum and Stainless Steel Construction
● 50KG Load Cell – Brake Pedal
● Industrial Quality Potentiometers (rated for millions of turns) – Throttle and Clutch Pedals
● Multiple Pedal Face Positions
● Adjustable Pedal Height
● Adjustable Spring Tension
● Adjustable Pedal Travel
● Adjustable Potentiometer Travel
● Adjustable Clutch “Feel”
● Can Be Inverted or Placed Right Side Up (with each pedal separately)
● Many More...

For more features and technical information, visit our website at http://www.protosimtech.com

Pricing Structure and Available Options

These pedals will be available in two different formats with different prices for each format

Two Pedal Set – Throttle and Brake - $319*
Three Pedal Set – Throttle, Brake, and Clutch - $379*

* + Shipping and Handling

Each set of pedals will include all the necessary hardware needed to make adjustments to each pedal. An extra hard brake bushing

will also be included for those that want a much harder brake feeling. ProtoSimTech will also be including instructional videos filled with information

on how to make adjustments to your pedals, and how to properly care for them.

Release Date

This pedal set will be available for pre-order this fall. No official release date has been set. Be sure to check out www.protosimtech.com for information

regarding an official release date. The official release date will be posted on the website when one has been determined.

(We are shooting for October)

Pre-Ordering

Pre-Orders will be limited to a total of 20 complete pedal sets, and they will be first come, first serve. This limit is to help ensure that we are able to build

all 20 complete sets within a reasonable time frame. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Pre-orders will only be open for a short period

of time (TBA). Once the orders have hit the 20 set mark, no more ordering will be possible.

After all 20 pedal sets have been built, tested and then shipped, we will open up our ordering process for another batch of 20 pedal sets. Check out our

website at www.protosimtech.com for information on why we are building them in batches of 20.

Lead Times

Lead times will be approximately 8-10 weeks. While this may seem like an unusually long period of time, we are a small operation, and we would like to

ensure that each pedal set matches the quality that you expect out of a sim racing product. Over time, these lead times will grow shorter.



Closing Statement

ProtoSimTech was started in May of 2012. It originally began as a quest to build a set of pedals that could be tailored to any driving style. Along the way, it quickly

became apparent that this venture was more than just a passing interest, and ProtoSimTech was born.

Christopher Smith, Co-Founder of ProtoSimTech, has been hard at work designing, building, testing, and making critical changes to their first sim racing

product, for the past two years. Recently, in October of 2013, Chris put together a series of videos documenting the entire process on YouTube. You can head over

to ProtoSimTech's YouTube channel and check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ProtoSimTechnologies

For more high res images, videos, and tons of extra information about these awesome pedals, head over to ProtoSimTech's website at:

http://www.protosimtech.com

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So these are all hand made by you and or your team in the U.S? If so that's a screaming deal on these pedals.
 
Jamie Shorting said:
So these are all hand made by you and or your team in the U.S? If so that's a screaming deal on these pedals.
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At the moment, these are hand made. However, when we start to sell them, all of the aluminum pieces will be cut using a CNC machine. They will be assembled by hand, though.
 
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