Question about the SimuCUBE, regarding connections

Simucube 1 Simucube 1 Questions
1

Hello there,

As this is my first thread/post here, it will be a bit like an introduction/question before making decisions.

I’m in the market to get an OSW, since the old trusty G27 is showing a little wear from time to time. I like to play the usual suspects, love the realism, so AC/rF2/AMS/iRacing (a bit) / and a few other ones.

Now, here’s the point. I have done my share of research, and came to the following.
OSW kit from SimRacingBay. It’s in Europe, just like me, I read good stories about them, and it’s a nice package. I like. A SimLab chassis is also accounted for, and HE pedals.

But, apart from the hardware, I have a few questions about hooking the stuff up. I’ve been looking to the 4 RJ45 ports on the SimuCUBE. And I’ve been looking to the pedals/shifters/H-brakes/steering wheels.
As for the pedals, Heusinkveld offers the nice box where you connect the pedals to and that connects with a USB to the PC. Shifter, same story. H brake has it’s own, if I’m gonna get one. Don’t know yet.

Now, for the wheel, I like the Fantec McLaren GT3 wheel. I’ve found some conversion kits to make that USB as wel to make it work with a quick release. But, this same story goes up for a lot of wheels, since a lot are USB if you get a dedicated one.
But… All these connections, I assume they can be hooked up to the SimuCUBE as well, right? Cut off the USB, crimp an RJ45 on it, with the right pinouts ofcourse, and we’re ready to go, right?

I’ve looked here, https://granitedevices.com/wiki/SimuCUBE_pinouts_and_wiring, but it’s not getting any clearer for me.
Might be asked a few times, but I find it confusing to get any confirmation about this subject.

Have I missed a piece of information? Logic?

I look forward to the responses. Have a nice day.

Regards,

Jacco

2

The RJ45 connectors are meant for analog inputs and buttons. USB is a digital serial bus with many protocol layers and abstractions. The STM32F407 processor on SimuCUBE board does not have USB hardware available in any of the RJ45 inputs - in fact, the only USB hardware is used for the connection to PC.

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the wiki page you linked, please let us know.

3

Just to add on this a bit,

The Fanatec wheel rims, from my recollection, use some SPI-based signals to talk to the Fanatec wheel bases. SPI is another type of serial signaling system, a bit less layered in protocols compared to USB. On SimuCUBE, there is an internal connector (not on the RJ45 inputs) that has the SPI signals available to connect. Even though there is code available (and used on the USB conversions you talk about) to communicate with the Fanatec wheel rims via that SPI signaling, nobody has ported that code to ST Microelectronics HAL API that we are using. This is something that we will most likely not do ourself, as we don’t have Fanatec wheel rims available. We are hoping, that the soon-starting open source effort will spur some development and that someone will port the code to SimuCUBE.