The rest of the world has to wait… a little longer.

Its probably not necessary to try to cut the part list to the bare bones but still a good exercise. One of the major mistakes I think a lot of Kickstarted projects make is to start thinking that since they raised 500% of their goal they should now start to redesign the whole project with all this extra capital. It’s far better to deliver what they promised first with some minor improvements and use the extra cash towards the next version, rather than fail to deliver anything. The Oculus Rift DK1 was not what they really promised, but they at least delivered something pretty close and that moved the company forward. Imagine if they had tried to create the DK2 instead…. they would probably have just failed completely.

So the major components now number just 10…. this doesn’t include nuts, bolts and other off the shelf items such as motors,   omniwheels or a seat. Two required small metal parts could probably be found in mcmaster-carr, I just haven’t looked. The rim is matter of bending two aluminium extrusions, cutting to length and drilling in the right places. The base triangles can be laser cut or made quite simply in a carpentry place (assuming they’re made from wood). I’m not sure the turnbuckles are classed as manufactured components either since I could probably order 100k of them from Alibaba quite simply….. 9 parts then? :p

So, pentagon, half hexagon, the connector to hold them all together and the base panel…. 4 tricky parts…. plus the electronics and code.

This is a huge win for the design and manufacturing if we can get it to work. The only downside is that the previous design could be adapted to accommodate larger or smaller spheres, plus it would be possible to only need 3 or so wedges, but this version should be so much easier to use.

This is very cool, we went from 5 different parts that would need to be bolted together (making them still very large for storage, 72 parts in total) to 27 identical components… plus some simple (and cheap) connecting rods. It can also (hopefully) be set up in a few minutes and would lay flat under a bed. Nice.

The design as it stands uses five strong panels and two shiny ones to cover them, these repeat 12 times allowing us to use 3,4 or 6 wheels for movement. It is perhaps possible to reduce these to just two or three.

Using the same interlocking idea for the panels should create a very rigid structure that is also very easy to assemble and disassemble. Both panels could have ‘teeth’ with a hole to allow insertion of a metal rod to hold everything together. Initial tests of this idea for the panels proves it works really well. Another idea is to reuse the internal panel connectors to work as the external safety rim, if this works there would be another saving of two extra components.

All these ideas need to be tested but any chance to combine manufactured components needs to be seized….

edit: While I have some concerns about the strength and rigidity of the following idea it seems like it might be possible to create the base from just ONE manufactured component! Of course this assumes that the motor and wheel are connected by *magic* but I would guess there would be some off the shelf components to easily solve that problem… the top and bottom sections would also interlock (not shown)….

Much better than the ones they replaced, with a lot better grip too. O-rings seemed like a good idea, but they’re not high friction so not a great choice.

One thing is clear though, the amount of moving parts for all of them might make them noisy… and unreliable.

So it got me thinking about whether there is a better way and I might have found one. I’m not going to give away my secrets but if it works then we might have a silent omniwheel with just THREE parts… this could be pretty useful for the future but of course the question is ‘will it work’…. well, I’ll find that out, apply for my patent and you’ll see

I’ve been building the latest prototype and since it’s actually easier to just make pentagons and half hexagons, that’s what I’ve been doing. This is another perfect example of learning by doing, since although what I’m about to write would appear pretty ‘obvious’ to anyone looking at it, no one has bothered to point it out. Building things in the computer is easy, they fit together and are nice and shiny, but nothing beats getting your hand dirty and when you’re faced with bolting a million parts together you naturally look for some shortcuts.

This isn’t really a shortcut, but pretty important all the same. There is no point designing something that costs a fortune to manufacture, not for a startup anyway, so every manufactured part that doesn’t need a process or tool saves a huge amount of time, in producing them and cost in tooling. My initial idea has always been based around three panels and one part on the edges to hold them together. These four parts need to be very strong and very precise in their manufacture. Any defect in any of them means the sphere doesn’t fit together very well, and a ‘wobbly’ sphere is not good.

Well, he’s the obvious part… why make three panels when I can just make two?

The half hexagon is just a hexagon cut in two… so joining two together makes… a hexagon. If the panels are made from moulded plastic their size means the tooling for them would probably run more than $20,000 each, so reducing the panels numbers means a massive saving at the start of the project.

Pure hexagons still look a lot cleaner, but at the start of a project when every dollar saved might mean the projects survival $20k in the bank is an amazing revelation. All that’s needed is four more holes in the half hexagon and another two connectors per hexagon, and if these don’t need to be quick release they could be much simpler (although that again adds another part, which we should be trying to avoid :p).

So, again, if anyone has any other ‘obvious’ suggestions please let us know….

Many thanks to Fateh Merrad for sharing it on Grabcad

Figuring out a simple strong system for armrests and mounting points for controllers has been put off for too long. This isn’t the final solution but the start of the search for it. It needs to be pretty simple, cheap and adjustable, so this at least fulfils those constraints for now. Yes, we know the steering wheel shelf would not be very sturdy, but one of our problems is that you need to get in and out of the chair, and with a steering wheel in the way this is a little tricky. Having a shelf that can be moved like this one (and then locked for use) would be useful.

We also need a method of mounting this platform into the sphere, which uses a similar idea and the same parts… perhaps we’ll show that later

A large elasticated band supports the weight of the user, and platform, and the linear actuator lifts and lowers them. Fast, responsive and most importantly : cheap! Seems pretty crazy that you can spend $4k on an actuator for every motion range except heave!

After a few hours tweaking my original ‘zipper’ design I’m beginning to think that perhaps this shouldn’t be an optional extra after all. I can imagine plenty of reviews telling people that they need to spend ages building the sphere, which isn’t perhaps the best impression to give people right away. Adding quick release tabs to each edge at the factory means everyone could be up and running in half an hour or so. The mirrored design means only one part needs to be created and tooled, and the metal retaining pins should be fairly cheap to mass produce.

A notch in the side gives the pins something to grip so they can’t fall out.

I think I’ll do a orbit render too, my youtube channel is a little quiet

We realised early on though that even though heave wouldn’t be a major focus it would be awesome to add sooner or later. If our average customer is happy to pay X for a sphere they might be happy to pay X again to get that sphere to move up and down. Ideally the mechanism for heave would fit inside the base and be backwards compatible. It seemed like a good principle, but perhaps not the best idea.

We want to get the sphere cockpit perfected, but having to design around a future mechanism makes the task rather more complicated. We would need to actually design and build the heave add on at the same time. This falls into the realm of ‘feature creep’ which is pretty dangerous when trying to make something on a budget, spending a good chunk of your prototyping budget on a future feature isn’t the best plan.

Instead I’ve realised that there is a great opportunity for simplifying the idea behind the heave add on. We always believed that the ‘end game’ for the platform was a sphere mounted on a six degree of freedom platform which would give the most options for users so why not have that as a guiding principle instead. A simple lifting mechanism inside the base doesn’t move us towards that final goal.

We also recognise that while people react well to the sphere lots of people are still in the market for a ‘traditional’ simulator. They still want an affordable 2 or 3 degree of freedom system (pitch/roll + heave) which the sphere design doesn’t fulfil.

So, it makes sense to actually design TWO simulators. The spherical cockpit version and an affordable base with pitch, roll and heave that can also be updated to add sway, surge and yaw. We treat both designs as separate unit that work individually but can also be combined. So users could buy one, or the other, or both. They might decide to upgrade either unit. You also have the option (if you had both) to separate the modules if you had a friend over to play

As usual the philosophy is to ‘keep it cheap’ so I threw together a quick frame version.

  Clearly this is no good, what is the point of making something affordable if it’s too ugly to want?

Instead I think it would be better to have something with more elegant lines. This could be made by bending three sheets of aluminium and reinforcing them with an external frame.

The sphere is already quite large so this would add more bulk to the setup, so instead of three large parts we create smaller ones with the center missing, as demonstrated by the right hand picture below.

This means the heave add on is much smaller when used separately, perfect for your own chair or with a ‘playseat’.

If you want the whole setup you could use the same parts but add three panels to fill in the center of the platform. It’s possible these could be dispensed with since the base for the sphere would cover any gaps depending on how it’s designed.

This idea is more like a 3D sketch to get the ball rolling and creative juices flowing, it’s very early in the whole process but I think this could be the way to move forward.

Two platforms that could be used alone or combined would be a great way to give users more choice, as well as increase functionality.

Comments, as always, are welcome.