Racing “video video games” might be extremely real looking lately, with each aspect of the automotive’s physics and their interplay with the asphalt programmed in. These racing sims might present a totally immersive expertise — if the participant wasn’t sitting on a immobile sofa utilizing a controller that doesn’t resemble a automotive’s steering wheel within the slightest. To rectify that challenge, highschool pupil Pranshu Agnihotri constructed his dream racing wheel.

Agnihotri tackled this mission for a senior mission in his Ideas of Engineering class at Irvington Excessive College. Its goal is to supply a extra real looking interface for racing video games and sims. It doesn’t have any pressure suggestions capabilities, however it would work with any PC recreation because of the Arduino that lets the consumer simply rebind controls. These may even emulate keyboard and mouse inputs for video games that weren’t designed to be used with steering wheels.

The mind is an Arduino Leonardo, which Agnihotri selected for its Microchip ATmega32U4 microcontroller. That’s configurable as a regular USB HID, so any laptop will acknowledge its inputs with none particular drivers or software program. The steering wheel and electronics enclosure have been 3D-printed in precisely the form Agnihotri wished. An M8 threaded shaft acts because the steering column. A potentiometer offers steering angle enter, whereas restrict switches detect when the participant presses the paddle shifters. The Arduino reads these inputs, then sends out the corresponding gamepad, keyboard, or mouse instructions through USB.

We have now to imagine that Agnihotri aced this project, and now he has an superior steering wheel to race with.