Hiya all! Got an email from Michał K. recently, and as it stands out, my old Thrustmaster TX RW arduino rim project is still alive, and I’m really pleased to hear that! Here you are another improvement – automatic flashlights.

Here you are the details Michał sent me:

“Recently I moved from my old G25 to TX. With information you provided I was able to make it in very short of time which is crucial for active simracer (actually I’m retired but back again).

What I had on my custom G25 dash was flash-lights button. Since games (maybe except AC) don’t provide such obvious feature, I had it done using some small digital circuit. But why should I use additional electronics wired in the middle in button connections if I can do that the same programmatically ;)

This is how it works

This video shows the first prototype of program. Right now it has more features:

• fill factor – settable length of flash while interval of lights in disabled state remains unchanged
• multiple flashes on one press – it’s very comfortable if driver doesn’t have to hold button pressed for the whole time. I saw FIA regulations limit it to 4 subsequent flashes. I defaulted it to 5.

I have no blog or something. I can share with small audience on league forums I’m already registered.  …

I started to work on the further modification which allows to switch into so-called configuration mode, allowing assigning buttons/frequency without use of reprogramming the Arduino. At beginning it seemed to be nice to have this feature. But right now, with additional parameters like fill factor or sustain I started to have feeling it’s easier to change config by reprogramming Arduino than blindly follow some steps to reconfigure the program behaviour ;) Yeah, still would be fine to have it possible without disconnecting the wheel ;)”

What can I say? A great addition! As for me it is always easier to re-flash the Arduino code, rather then to press combinations of buttons. But both methods work. E.g. all gaming mice have DPI button – and that’s handy to use it. I can imagine, if we declare several modes (configs) for flashlights and assign a button on a rim to switch between those configs on the fly it can be handy as well (and simpler than full configuration mode).

Here’s the arduino sketch – tx_rw_ferrari_458_wheel_emu_16buttons_flash.zip. Wiring diagram is the same as before – see Part 2 or Part 3 blog posts.

Feel free to leave your comments for Michał below his video on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe if you find this mod interesting.