In the driving simulator community, setups can quickly grow ever more complicated and expensive, all in the quest for fidelity. For [CNCDan], rather than buy pedals off the shelf, he opted to build his own.

[Dan] has been using some commercial pedals alongside his own DIY steering wheel and the experience is rather lackluster in comparison. The build starts with some custom brackets. To save on cost, they are flat with tabs to let you know where to bend it in a vise. Additionally, rather than three sets of unique brackets, [Dan] made them all the same to save on cost. The clutch and throttle are a simple hall effect sensor with a spring to provide feedback. However, each bracket provides a set of spring mounting holes to adjust the curve. Change up the angle of the spring and you have a different curve. The brake pedal is different as rather than measure position, it measures force. A load cell is perfect for this. The HX711 load cell sensor board that [Dan] bought was only polling at 10hz. Lifting a pin from ground and bodging it to VDD puts the chip in 80hz, which is much more usable for a driving sim setup.

[Dan] also cleverly uses a 3d printed bushing without any walls as resistance for the pedal. Since the bushing is just the infill, the bushing stiffness is controlled by the infill percentage. Aluminum extrusion forms the base so [Dan] can adjust the exact pedal positions. To finish it off, a bog standard Arduino communicates to the PC as a game controller.

The project is on GitHub. Perhaps the next version will have active feedback, like this DIY pedal setup.

The remote for [Dillan Stock]’s TV broke, so he built a remote. Not just as a replacement but as something new. For some of us, there was a glorious time in the early 2000s when a smart remote was needed and there were options you could buy off the shelf. Just one handy button next to the screen had a macro programmed that would turn on the receiver, DVD player, and TV, and then configure it with the right inputs. However, the march of technological convenience has continued and nowadays soundbars turn on just in time and the TV auto switches the input. Many devices are (for better or worse) connected to WiFi, allowing all sorts of automation.

[Dillan] was lucky enough that his devices were connected to his home assistant setup. So this remote is an ESP32 running ESPHome. These automations could be triggered by your phone or via voice assistant. What is more interesting is watching [Dillan] go through the design process. Deciding what buttons there should be, where they should be placed, and how the case would snap together takes real effort. The design uses all through-hole components except for the ESP32 which is a module.

This isn’t the first thing [Dillan] has made with an ESP32, as he previously revamped a non-standard smart lamp with the versatile dev board. The 3d printable files for the remote are free available. Video after the break.