← All projectsPersonal projectMar 2020
Cardboard Racing Simulator
A racing sim made from cardboard, duct tape and conductive tape when I was 11.
When I was 11, I built a racing simulator out of cardboard. The wheel and the pedals are cardboard, duct tape and conductive tape, wired with alligator clips to a Makey Makey, a small board that plugs in over USB and shows up as a keyboard. To the racing game on the screen, my cardboard wheel was just someone pressing keys.
I have two videos of it, filmed a day apart, and they caught two versions: a bare cardboard wheel on a stand in the driver's lap, then a taped wheel on the desk with pedals on the floor. One is me driving, the other is a friend.
How cardboard types on a keyboard
A Makey Makey plugs into a computer over USB, and the computer sees a keyboard. Each input on the board stands for a key: close the circuit on that input and the board types the key.
So the whole simulator is contacts. Conductive tape on the cardboard makes them, and alligator clips carry each one back to an input on the Makey Makey. Turn the wheel or press a pedal, a circuit closes, and the game sees a key press, the same as if someone hit the key on the keyboard sitting right behind the wheel.
Calculation How much current runs through the cardboard?
| Supply | 5 V | USB power |
|---|---|---|
| Pull-up resistor on each Makey Makey input | 10 to 50 MΩ | Eric Rosenbaum, one of its makers, on Hackaday |
- Open contact: the pull-up holds the input at 5 V, no key
- Closed contact: tape and clips are metal, so the input is pulled down to about 0 V: key pressed
- Current when closed: at most 5 V / 10 MΩ = 0.5 µA
Every key press on the wheel and pedals is half a microamp or less: two strips of tape touching is a clean switch, and nothing on the cardboard carries anything you could feel.
Worst case with the smallest pull-up; rounded.
Two days, two versions
The two clips are a day apart, and the simulator changed between them. On day one the wheel was a piece of cardboard on a taped hub, fixed through a slanted cardboard stand that sat in the driver's lap. The race is on the left monitor.
A day later the wheel was wrapped in black duct tape and moved up onto a cardboard stand on the desk, right in front of the keyboard. Cardboard pedals went on the floor, and a bundle of alligator clips in four colors ran between them and the desk. Up close (the two pictures at the top of the page), the clips gather at a small board on the desk beside the wheel, one lead per contact, and a pedal is cardboard, tape and a clip, nothing more.