I have built my own Force Feedback system (I have called it FFair).
The FFair system has a central unit, then you connect encodesr, motor drivers, etc and you get a complete system for MSFS (and xplane, p3d).
It works in three axis. Aileron, Elevator and Rudder.
This is a video working with a2a piper comanche:
Now I can code and setup the effects and behaviour as I want, for every type of aircraft.
Arturo.
Wow. I absolutely love this sort of work.
I’ve not delved into doing anything of this nature for MSFS, but the electro/mechanical engineering is definitely a part of my world.
I’m very impressed by what I see here. The smoothness of the mechanical action is what really stood out to me. I love your “head” unit for settings, too.
Nicely done…CONGRATS!
Very nice. Is this something you intend to bring to market or share with the community?
What motors are you using. I have a cheap 775 on my rudder pedals but it whines from the PWM signal. I can’t hear it, but my wife can.
Also, if you intend to bring this to market, what is the FFB patent status now? Can you sell it without licensing the technology? Sony lost $97m over FFB patent infringement for its FFB. Which is why there are no more PlayStation rumble controllers. You should check on this before you go into any kind of product production.
775 are fine, but perhaps a little weak for rudder pedals.
The whine sound it is not related 775 motors, but motor drivers. You need some motor drivers (and microcontroller) supportting 20 to 25khz signal. My central box can manage 25khz.
Nobody have seen my system can hear the sound, but my dog can 
I use cheap MY1025 MY1016 dc motors. 250-350W. 12v.
I have been using cheap BTS7960 motor drivers, and not so cheap Cytron 30A motor drivers. Both work great.
And cheap lpd3806 encoders. These are all the components you need.
Patents have been expired:
US5831408A - Force feedback system - Google Patents this one is assigned to Immersion Corp, Status: Expired - Lifetime.
US5742278A - Force feedback joystick with digital signal processor controlled by host processor - Google Patents this one is assigned to Microsoft, Expired - Lifetime.
US20010043847A1 - Force feedback and texture simulating interface device - Google Patents this one is assigned to Immersion Corp, Expired - Lifetime.
And I am not selling the system. I have sold some central boxes, just to friends wanting to build their own home cockpit system.
I am not using the direct input API. Everything is self coding.
The purpose of the video is not to sell anything. Just to show my system and what I have achieved, because I am very proud of it. You can see in my channel working real HSI, real DME, real Desynn gauges etc… it is just a hobby.
(Microsoft… Immersion Corp… dont waste time with me. I have no money. Thanks 
)
Arturo.
Very impressive setup. Please keep us updated on your progress.
Note that you may be hearing your motors being constantly driven by your driver circuitry. This can be very power consuming. Check for a null range setting.
HTH
It may be the cheap PWM drivers too. I am using an Arduino board as the control. It has an adjustable PWM frequency generator. I also do not know how to code so I’m using Mobiflight to control the forces. It seems to work well. The main issue is that as the PWM frequency increases the motor torque decreases.
This sounds about right because as the frequency increases, the driver has less time to apply the voltage, maybe because of high capacitance. However, this might also occur because the pulse WIDTH is being shortened as a means to reduce the period, i.e. the on/off ratio may be something like 50/50 at some middle frequency but as the frequency rises, only the on time is reduced. I bet you have an oscilloscope, right?
It didn’t occur to me that they might be manipulating the duty cycle of the Uno’s PWM signal to achieve to higher frequency. I’ll definitely have to bring my scope home from work tomorrow.
Kind of stuck using this board because of the not knowing how to code thing.
I did just read this though.
"And this default frequency can be changed to a value as high as 65Khz and as low as 30Hz by using just one line code without altering the shape of the PWM wave or attenuation.”.
Still going to test it to be sure.
Almost every gauge is installed and working now in MSFS. The migration from p3d to MSFS is going really fast and smooth. I am using fsuipc lua scripts in both systems.
A video with the FFair system doing its work at idle
Arturo.
Nicely done. GREAT work. Thanks for posting…
Looks spectacular!
Hi there. Would you be willing to make this project open source? I am extremely interested in building this for myself and I am sure many others are as well. Do you have this on github?
