Instructions specific to Arduino Nano Every Project requires:

• 1x Arduino Nano Every
• 1x SSD1306 128x64px OLED screen
• 2x 8 pixel Neopixel strips
• 3d printed case (STL included in repository)
• SimHub software

I started to get in to sim racing at the beginning of the pandemic, like everyone else who recently got into it. I had been wanting a wheel for awhile and finally pulled the trigger on it. From there everything went out of hand in usual fashion and within a month I had triple monitors, an 8020 sim rig, and a racing seat.



I kept thinking it would be fun to start messing with an Arduino, and that LED's were relatively simple to control. I also really like the customizable LEDs that the steering wheels on the IndyCars run, so I wanted to see if I could make it all come together in a racing sim with my own setup.

I ended up finding the incredibly powerful Simhub software. It taps into the shared RAM or UDP stream that most sims output, formats everything into a common type, then allows you to output that data to a number of different devices.

I used the Arduino capabilities mainly, but you can even use an existing analog gauge cluster from a car to output telemetry to. An example even uses an e36 cluster which I had laying around at the time. Anyway, here's the basic instructions on how to replicate what I did. The repository mentioned can be found on my Github.

Arduino Nano Every wiring diagram

Neopixel setup

• Place 2 strips together end to end
• Flip over, solder all 4 pads straight across
• Wire GND to Arduino GND
• Wire 4-7VDC to 5v on Arduino
• Wire DIN to D6 on Arduino

OLED setup - SSD1306 128x64

• Desolder pins on GND, VCC, SCL, SDA if necessary
• Wire GND to Arduino GND
• Wire VCC to 5v on Arduino
• Wire SCL to A5 on Arduino
• Wire SDA to A4 on Arduino
• SCL and SDA pins for Arduino Nano Every, may change per board

Everything can now be placed in the case.

SIMHUB setup

• Plug in Arduino
• Open Arduino, go to My Hardware
• Set WS2812B leds count to 16
• Set OLED LCD enabled
• Click open in Arduino IDE
• As you can see, the only 2 lines in the includes that aren't commented are the LCD and LED ones
• If you want to modify how the gear selection displays -
  • Go to SHGLCD_I2COLED.h file
  • setRotation value can be changed to change orientation of text
  • setTextSize and setFont can be changed to change the size of text
    • Mine looks like this

    void Init() {
        glcd1.begin(SSD1306_SWITCHCAPVCC, 0x3C);
        glcd1.clearDisplay();
        glcd1.setFont();
        glcd1.setTextSize(2);
        glcd1.setTextColor(WHITE);
        glcd1.setRotation(3);
        glcd1.setCursor(0, 0);
        glcd1.print("");
        glcd1.display();
        }
                 

• Save the files necessary
• Import "LED Strip.ledsprofile" in Simhub under Arduino/RGB LEDs
• Modify part1.ini under SimHub\OLEDTemplate\Ingame\0_Default or overwrite with file from this repository
• Mine looks like this

    [Text]
    X=37
    Y=100
    Color=1
    Text=[DataCorePlugin.GameData.NewData.Gear]
    FontSize=3
    FontType=2
    Align=3
                

• Upload sketch to Arduino from the Arduino IDE
• After you get it where you want, back up the files in SimHub\_Addons\Arduino\DisplayClientV2