Definitely recommend making sure a USB hub is powered before buying. PC motherboard USB ports may not supply enough power for multiple accessories like screens and LEDs. Also I might be weird like that but I always connect my wheel base and pedals directly to the PC in case the hub has issues. I can afford to lose a HUD, button box or keyboard during a race, but not the wheel and pedals
as someone who found your page literally 3 days ago, I have been binge watching all of your content. I am so excited to be a future sim racer when I get my setup in two weeks!! Thanks for these amazing videos, also just a question. Would you be open to doing a beginner guide for someone wanting to get into formula and how to learn to get better in that pathway? Because on iRacing I really want to get into formula (I enjoy all formula) and some indycar! Keep up the amazing videos and remember to keep having fun!
Just a reminder with usb hubs, a computer can only handle 7 tiers of usb. Typically your computer will have 2 tiers internally, each hub is two tiers, a usb extender is a tier, usb switches and extenders are a tier as well. If you ever have issues with your computer recognizing devices, check the amount of tiers you're creating in the chain. Spent many hours troubleshooting pro AV systems with unexpected tiers built into peripherals.
HIGHLY recommend getting a 10-16 port POWERED usb hub instead. And plug everything into it except your wheel base and pedals they go Straight to the PC. Just takes the load of the motherboard cheers
you need to be careful with USB hubs to include USB ports tied to the same USB controller. This isn't normally an issue for 99% of users, but for those that are running a lot of data hungry USB devices (Cameras, Dashboards, certain sound controllers) you can easily saturate the USB port and run into throughput issues. I highly recommend isolating high USB devices (Like a HyperP1) to their own dedicated port on their own controller (if possible). You can see how many devices are on a controller with a Microsoft debug utility called USBView. Failure to balance USB Controllers can lead to disconnects of devices and quality for things like webcams
if you don’t have the LED flags like you do, you can use the rev bar for things like spotter - left/right red section for car left/right, or to show when you have the pit limiter on. love it.
Hi jack. New subscriber, love your content. Keep it up! i wouldn't class myself as a sim racer, i bought the kids a g920 wheel for Christmas, and somehow I've had more goes on it than them... didn't see that coming. Think ill need to invest in some equipment for myself soon.
If you've been driving virtual cars, you are just as much a simracer as anyone! and I genuinely mean that, that fun you have while driving is Simracing fun!, Enjoy it buddy! Join my discord if you need advice on things, plenty of real cool guys there!
I actually run my rig for free, most of the time. I have 800W of solar panels feeding a 600AH 12V battery through a 60A MPPT charger, with my battery connected to a 2500W inverter. My rig, computer and VR headst pull about 600W in total at 240V. (600/240)*20 = 50A at 12V (multiplying by 20 is because 12V goes into 240V 20 times) which generally means I can run my rig safely for about 5 hours for free as long as we get a nice sunny day to recharge my battery from the previous nights fun. I'm also running my fridge, TV, laptop, printer, etc on my portable solar setup. I basically run all my plug in devices off grid. When you consider that 600W at 240V is 0.6 of a unit every hour, running my rig and computer on the network would get fairly expensive rather quickly. 5 hours at 600W is 3kW, or 3 units. So the money I have saved, and the reduced power bills, has made the investment certainly worth the cost. Plus it helps the environment. P.S. After watching your podcast where you were talking about setting up your brakes for a good feel, I've been running my Simagic P1000's fairly stiff straight out of the box, so I set my brakes up for a longer pedal and instantly lowered my average lap times around Phillip Island by roughly a second. Thanks for the tip.
Sounds great, but I'll play devil's advocate here, it's not free. You had to purchase your panels, batteries, inverter etc so you have to amortise those costs, then there's maintenance - nothing lasts forever so your going to have replacement costs. Please don't take this as an attack, you have a great setup and I'm a big advocate of alternate (and distributed) power solutions, but it's not free 😢
Your right in that it cost me money to set things up, but that all happened before I got into sim racing, and while I still had a job. The real problem was that my work was unstable, so I initially setup my systems, because I am actually running two, one 40A system and the 60A system I mentioned in my comment, because I keep spending periods of time unemployed and these systems makes it much easier for me to cover power bills on the unemployment benefit. At the moment I'm unemployed again, so my foresight to set up these portable solar systems is really paying off because I can enjoy my sim racing without having to worry about the cost of operating my rig.
Thanks Jack, I was expecting a yawner but found a very good set of useful tips. The power bar for the monitors...I dont know why I didn't think of that. Have a great one
Thanks for watching bud! It's so simple but when I moved place, I used to have it screwed on the side of my 2x2 Kallax from Ikea, then it just came to me, bring the surge protector, to the rig, rather than the rig to the surge protector
I already using a USB hub. But obviously be careful. I got a power surge warning for trying to charge two mobile phones at the same time. And plugging my pedal and wheelbase into the hub doesn't always work and its annoying having to test them each time before booting up a game. If it don't work then I'll have to unplug and re-plug the peripheral again. So I put both the pedal and wheelbase directly to the computer's usb slot instead. Other accessory is shopping trolley wheels! Or wheels on the office chair or under your sofa, etc. The non-rotating one. Stick those on my wheel stand and I can roll it under the table when I am finished driving. Roll it out when I want to do some racing. So convenient! Third one is measuring tape or ruler. If you want to buy extra aluminium profiles but not sure how long or short you need it. Or if you want to buy new springs or elastomers/skateboard bushings for your pedals and you don't know if they fit your pedals. Measure how long you need the spring, how wide or narrow the hole in the elastomer, etc. Knurled thumb screws. I had to remove my wheelbase when I am finished using it and put it away. The thumb screws are awesome! Much quicker and less pain in the ass than getting out an allen key and turn a stinky ass bolt.
Even though I have a triple 32" screen set up, I use 2 rev light bars attached to the bottom of my side monitors and use them as blind spot indicators, like I have in my '15 SRT Challenger. They've saved me quite a few times irl so I figured they might help in sim racing.
Hi mate, been seeing a lot of your content lately. I'm currently designing a type of drawer for cable managment so you can store all the power supplies that you use in the rig in a tidy way and easy to access and change stuff around. If you re interested in getting one to try it out when i get it ready reach out to me. Keep up the good work mate.
Fantastic content! I'd recommend a powered USB hub for certain accessories as they don't like sharing power from one USB. That said agreed it's super useful!
Oh bro, it's a game changer, If you take your time at the back you can make it pretty neat, just stack the transformers for the adapter blocks, your wheelbase powerblock, and just route the cables gentlly, At least with my rig, it has a good side, and the side visitors aren't to see :) Like us all ay haha
My pic is my tablet stand with a clamp and flexible neck. Holds my tablet perfectly in place for Sim Hub dashboards. Got it at the dollar store for $5.
Great tips! I always use a powered usb hub, else I get disconnects from my bass shakers. I have 2 nobsound minis, and one always craps out if not using a powered hub.
I'm brand new to sim racing and i added the simagic haptic pedal reactor with power supply for $83 USD with shipping from simmotion. so idk how important it is without it. But man i love it. sometimes it still goes off in iracing when im not even touching the brake.
Definitely recommend making sure a USB hub is powered before buying. PC motherboard USB ports may not supply enough power for multiple accessories like screens and LEDs. Also I might be weird like that but I always connect my wheel base and pedals directly to the PC in case the hub has issues. I can afford to lose a HUD, button box or keyboard during a race, but not the wheel and pedals
This should be the top pinned comment
100% agree
as someone who found your page literally 3 days ago, I have been binge watching all of your content. I am so excited to be a future sim racer when I get my setup in two weeks!! Thanks for these amazing videos, also just a question. Would you be open to doing a beginner guide for someone wanting to get into formula and how to learn to get better in that pathway? Because on iRacing I really want to get into formula (I enjoy all formula) and some indycar! Keep up the amazing videos and remember to keep having fun!
Just a reminder with usb hubs, a computer can only handle 7 tiers of usb. Typically your computer will have 2 tiers internally, each hub is two tiers, a usb extender is a tier, usb switches and extenders are a tier as well. If you ever have issues with your computer recognizing devices, check the amount of tiers you're creating in the chain. Spent many hours troubleshooting pro AV systems with unexpected tiers built into peripherals.
HIGHLY recommend getting a 10-16 port POWERED usb hub instead. And plug everything into it except your wheel base and pedals they go Straight to the PC. Just takes the load of the motherboard cheers
you need to be careful with USB hubs to include USB ports tied to the same USB controller.
This isn't normally an issue for 99% of users, but for those that are running a lot of data hungry USB devices (Cameras, Dashboards, certain sound controllers) you can easily saturate the USB port and run into throughput issues. I highly recommend isolating high USB devices (Like a HyperP1) to their own dedicated port on their own controller (if possible).
You can see how many devices are on a controller with a Microsoft debug utility called USBView.
Failure to balance USB Controllers can lead to disconnects of devices and quality for things like webcams
if you don’t have the LED flags like you do, you can use the rev bar for things like spotter - left/right red section for car left/right, or to show when you have the pit limiter on. love it.
Hi jack. New subscriber, love your content. Keep it up! i wouldn't class myself as a sim racer, i bought the kids a g920 wheel for Christmas, and somehow I've had more goes on it than them... didn't see that coming. Think ill need to invest in some equipment for myself soon.
If you've been driving virtual cars, you are just as much a simracer as anyone! and I genuinely mean that, that fun you have while driving is Simracing fun!, Enjoy it buddy! Join my discord if you need advice on things, plenty of real cool guys there!
@JACKZERYT thanks mate. Think I'll do that 👍
I actually run my rig for free, most of the time. I have 800W of solar panels feeding a 600AH 12V battery through a 60A MPPT charger, with my battery connected to a 2500W inverter. My rig, computer and VR headst pull about 600W in total at 240V. (600/240)*20 = 50A at 12V (multiplying by 20 is because 12V goes into 240V 20 times) which generally means I can run my rig safely for about 5 hours for free as long as we get a nice sunny day to recharge my battery from the previous nights fun. I'm also running my fridge, TV, laptop, printer, etc on my portable solar setup. I basically run all my plug in devices off grid. When you consider that 600W at 240V is 0.6 of a unit every hour, running my rig and computer on the network would get fairly expensive rather quickly. 5 hours at 600W is 3kW, or 3 units. So the money I have saved, and the reduced power bills, has made the investment certainly worth the cost. Plus it helps the environment. P.S. After watching your podcast where you were talking about setting up your brakes for a good feel, I've been running my Simagic P1000's fairly stiff straight out of the box, so I set my brakes up for a longer pedal and instantly lowered my average lap times around Phillip Island by roughly a second. Thanks for the tip.
Sounds great, but I'll play devil's advocate here, it's not free. You had to purchase your panels, batteries, inverter etc so you have to amortise those costs, then there's maintenance - nothing lasts forever so your going to have replacement costs.
Please don't take this as an attack, you have a great setup and I'm a big advocate of alternate (and distributed) power solutions, but it's not free 😢
Your right in that it cost me money to set things up, but that all happened before I got into sim racing, and while I still had a job. The real problem was that my work was unstable, so I initially setup my systems, because I am actually running two, one 40A system and the 60A system I mentioned in my comment, because I keep spending periods of time unemployed and these systems makes it much easier for me to cover power bills on the unemployment benefit. At the moment I'm unemployed again, so my foresight to set up these portable solar systems is really paying off because I can enjoy my sim racing without having to worry about the cost of operating my rig.
Thanks Jack, I was expecting a yawner but found a very good set of useful tips. The power bar for the monitors...I dont know why I didn't think of that. Have a great one
Thanks for watching bud! It's so simple but when I moved place, I used to have it screwed on the side of my 2x2 Kallax from Ikea, then it just came to me, bring the surge protector, to the rig, rather than the rig to the surge protector
I already using a USB hub. But obviously be careful. I got a power surge warning for trying to charge two mobile phones at the same time. And plugging my pedal and wheelbase into the hub doesn't always work and its annoying having to test them each time before booting up a game. If it don't work then I'll have to unplug and re-plug the peripheral again. So I put both the pedal and wheelbase directly to the computer's usb slot instead.
Other accessory is shopping trolley wheels! Or wheels on the office chair or under your sofa, etc. The non-rotating one. Stick those on my wheel stand and I can roll it under the table when I am finished driving. Roll it out when I want to do some racing. So convenient!
Third one is measuring tape or ruler. If you want to buy extra aluminium profiles but not sure how long or short you need it. Or if you want to buy new springs or elastomers/skateboard bushings for your pedals and you don't know if they fit your pedals. Measure how long you need the spring, how wide or narrow the hole in the elastomer, etc.
Knurled thumb screws. I had to remove my wheelbase when I am finished using it and put it away. The thumb screws are awesome! Much quicker and less pain in the ass than getting out an allen key and turn a stinky ass bolt.
Even though I have a triple 32" screen set up, I use 2 rev light bars attached to the bottom of my side monitors and use them as blind spot indicators, like I have in my '15 SRT Challenger. They've saved me quite a few times irl so I figured they might help in sim racing.
What a great little video , so many great tips in such a short clip. Excellent
Hi mate, been seeing a lot of your content lately. I'm currently designing a type of drawer for cable managment so you can store all the power supplies that you use in the rig in a tidy way and easy to access and change stuff around. If you re interested in getting one to try it out when i get it ready reach out to me. Keep up the good work mate.
That's sounds very interesting! Join my discord and keep my informed!
Fantastic content! I'd recommend a powered USB hub for certain accessories as they don't like sharing power from one USB. That said agreed it's super useful!
I can't believe I've never thought to put the power extension behind the monitors. That would save me so many dangling cords.
Oh bro, it's a game changer, If you take your time at the back you can make it pretty neat, just stack the transformers for the adapter blocks, your wheelbase powerblock, and just route the cables gentlly, At least with my rig, it has a good side, and the side visitors aren't to see :) Like us all ay haha
mine is velcroed under the pedal plate. GT1 evo has a massive pedal plate so loads of room.
My pic is my tablet stand with a clamp and flexible neck. Holds my tablet perfectly in place for Sim Hub dashboards. Got it at the dollar store for $5.
Thanks for the tips and info!
Great tips! I always use a powered usb hub, else I get disconnects from my bass shakers. I have 2 nobsound minis, and one always craps out if not using a powered hub.
That 'air duster' is a bit sus 👀
His racing isn't the only thing he keeps clean... 😂
Id recommend a powered usb hub otherwise you'll run into some weird behavior with devices cutting out.
now time 50-100 and 100-200
I got a plug that has a little foot switch I can hit to turn everything on and off
I'm brand new to sim racing and i added the simagic haptic pedal reactor with power supply for $83 USD with shipping from simmotion. so idk how important it is without it. But man i love it. sometimes it still goes off in iracing when im not even touching the brake.