CSL DD / McLaren v2 in-game controls lock-up - RECURRING ISSUE

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  • Hi everyone!

    I’ll try to add my experience here but being very busy with work I can practice very little with my gear.

    DD Pro+V3+shifter+GT DD wheel and formula 2.5x... on a TR160, 4 Hours and no issues , GT7 and ACC on PS5.

    Before I was on a csl elite+csl pedals lc (not the “new” ones) and shifter on a Playseat Evolution... yes all metal rig but different motor so no issues in years.

    Because the process to finish the new rig took me months I got all the inputs from the discussions and made everything, in theory, “Emi-proof”.

    Isolated the shifter with plastic washers, placed a grounding cord (I recycled some unused hifi wires) on every component even if is not necessary while everything is bolted up on the same metal structure... but who cares? I did that so I can add/remove single cord section, they all go in the profile and then to a wall outlet with a separate wall plug (of course only the earth terminal has been left).

    oh and of course placed ferrite cores wherever they’re missing... basically in every cable, usb cables usually comes with one at both ends.

    I’m sure that playing on PC is a different story but it can’t be the ‘solution’, so my primary suggestion is: find a way to earth your rig, it doesn’t matter what kind of rig. It could be even a wheel stand pro , I’ve used once for years with the Xbox wheel and pedals and because I was sitting on my couch and the wheel stand pro ‘feet’ were coated by a proper rubber rings I had electrostatic ‘annoying’ me here and there so I grounded the main pole and no issues at all.


    Wish you a lovely Sunday!

    ciao!

  • Useful information, thanks for sharing, Alberto!

  • Hi Gregg,

    I believe the best we can do in this particular 'phase' is to try to help each other as much as possible, sharing our experiences.

    As I wrote in my posts, it's a little frustrating for me not to be able to test as much as I would love to but hey, at least I completed the setup and it's there! 😀

    The only thing that worries me (well, not a real worry let's be honest) it's that, maybe, something will come up and then months and months have passed since I got my DD. It is what it is, and usually I'm, please forgive me, a f***g optimistic guy 😜

    Now my last thing to figure out is to lay down a proper cable management....console, ups 1 and ups 2, stuff...I need an extra kit (maybe 2) of cable brackets for the TR rig.....I already did something but I'm 50% satisfied.

    Always monitoring the forum, it's quite a 'daily' now, nice to learn something new by the other people's experiences and try to help if possible.

    Have a great day!

    Ciaooo!

  • I did the same job. Since I don't have an aluminum profile rig, I scraped off some black paint in the holes I used to connect the wire end rings.

    One thing to take into account, otherwise the paint can act as an insulator.

    Great job and beautiful rig.

  • After solving the big EMI problems, with a PCI Express card, and ferrite cores, I received what I refer to as "jokes" from my CSL DD. Whenever I entered the steering wheel configuration menu, within a few minutes the wheelbase was set to auto mode. In that mode the brake is at 50% while I use it at 80%. Locking the brakes and losing positions in the race the consequences. After understanding the problem I avoided touching that button during the races!

    Then, since I found the time and the desire, I ha e connect my station to the ground. That problem has completely disappeared.

    A couple of days ago, I removed the screw that held the ground wire on the rig, to put it in a more convenient place. In doing so I forgot to scrape off the paint. As soon as I started playing my brakes locked again. I was trying out new settings, and Wheelbase changed the settings by itself, after entering the menus. The problem was back. I tried multiple times and each time my wheelbase changed settings by itself.

    At this point I reconnected the ground wire in the previous hole, the one with the paint removed, and the problem disappeared again. I have done numerous tests, my wheelbase has always kept the configuration.

    I am convinced that most people who have "weird" problems with their DD wheelbases suffer from EMI. Grounding is not only necessary, it must also be done correctly.

  • Yes Alessandro, I have the convenience of the alu profile with the exposed end and threaded holes... for me it’s pretty obvious and I did not mention to take into account the painting/coating in different setups/rigs.

    Ciao!

  • So I appreciate your comment on that, shame on me! 😅

    (this was part of the same message but the first draft was never pusblished , waiting for approval).

    Ciao!

  • I had a strange experience last night with my rig, I'll explain. (Buckle up, this is a bit of a long one).

    A couple of days ago, the UPS that my wheelbase/PC/etc are plugged into started yelling at me that the battery needed to be replaced. Which made sense, since it was about 6 or 7 years old. The UPS model that I have will not shut up if you simply remove the old battery and want to use it as just a surge protector. So, for the day or two that it took for the replacement battery to arrive, I plugged everything into a generic surge protector I had laying around. I did decide, however, not to plug in the wheelbase, and left that unplugged since I didn't want to take any chances considering all I've been through with it already.

    So the new battery came yesterday, I got everything plugged back in and ready to go, and within 10 minutes or so, this old ugly recurring issue of the wheel becoming unresponsive and all USB inputs dying, happened again.

    So as I'm rebooting everything, I noticed that the FFB has felt different since I plugged everything back in. The wheel feels heavier, like there's some sort of extra damping being applied. I was playing a bit of Wreckfest, which I usually have NDP set to 30 to feel nice, and to get that same feeling now, I have to turn NDP off completely. Driver version, Fanalab version, all unchanged since the other day when things were working fine.

    I don't know what could be causing it. I thought maybe it might have something to do with me looping some of the cables a few times through the larger ferrite cores (I previously had placed a few rubber bands along with the cable inside the larger cores to take up the slack), but I undid the loops and put the rubber bands back in: no change.

    Meanwhile, the lockup issue was occurring pretty frequently now... like every few minutes. So clearly something had changed...??? 🤷‍♂️

    I thought maybe there was some stealth windows update that my PC had downloaded that I was unaware of that might have broken things...? So I uninstalled the Fanatec driver (v439), then reinstalled it, was still having issues. Ran BIOS diagnostic checks, chkdsk, all came back clear. I tried changing USB ports, unplugging all other USB devices except M&K... no difference.

    Now when I booted up, Fanalab (v163) wasn't recognizing the wheel. 🤦‍♂️ So I broke out the hex wrenches and did the all-too-familiar wheel removal/ QR reseating/ retightening dance. This got Fanalab to recognize the wheel, but it seemed now like just flipping through the menus in Fanalab was enough for the lockup issue to occur.

    So I decided to uninstall both the driver and Fanalab. I reinstalled just the driver (again, v439), and was able to play for a good 2-3 hours with no further lockups.

    This would seem to indicate that the issue is with FanaLab... but I have no idea how. It's the same version I was using just a few days ago with no issues whatsoever. Everything else was unchanged as far as I know, all that changed was installing that new battery in the UPS. I'm wondering if maybe there *was* some sort of Windows update that maybe screwed up the loading order of programs (I had Fanalab set to open on Windows startup).

    The weird thing is: even though the lockup issue appears to be gone now that I've temporarily removed Fanalab, the issue of the wheel feeling heavy/ overdamped remains. Like I said, it's usable if I turn off NDP or turn down DPR%, but that's a band-aid and I'd obviously prefer to figure out the root cause.

    Hopefully it's not a worse-case scenario being the beginnings of wheel/wheelbase hardware failure... because if it is, I'm out. I don't have the patience for another round of dealing with customer service and waiting for the whole RMA process for a third time.

  • Are the bolts used to secure the CSL DD to a base definitely M6? For some reason I thought they may have been M5? I'm thinking about ordering some of these nylon washers soon but would obviously like to make sure before I do so.

  • The screws are M6.


    Obviously I read everything with a translator, so I might miss something.

    Personally I have never used Fanalab. I have installed it and also update it, but I never launch it. I find it terrible software.

    If you feel a heavier weight on the steering wheel, it means that a signal is coming in. Ferrite cores remove signal, they do not add it. One of the side effects of using ferrite cores is that they can remove some of the good signal and reduce the transfer rate of the USB port.

    As the signal travels both ways from the USB port, your wheel is receiving a signal through the USB cable, I believe. Otherwise you would feel this increased friction even with the wheelbase turned off.

    Many complain about these nasty FFB feelings, and some even got a new wheelbase through RMA, but the problem remained.

    What I thought, when I read that you, and others, with my same problem, got a new wheelbase after RMA, is that the signal travels both ways. Replacing the wheelbase with an identical one does not give results, and replacing it with a different Wheelbase is very expensive, you can instead change the USB interface, with a different one, for little money. Just to introduce a different circuit.

    So I immediately ordered a PCI card with additional USB ports on Amazon, so that I no longer use the USB ports connected to the motherboard. Only later did I buy the ferrite cores, and after more than a month I connected the ground wire.

    I also believe a new USB card costs less than those shoulder washers, and Amazon accepts returns with no problems.

  • Gregg DomainGregg Domain Member
    edited June 2022

    Thanks for the information, Alessandro. Can I ask a bit more about a few things that you seem to have found success with?

    I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to electrical currents and grounding and things of that nature, so please bear with me. With these nylon washers, I just want to make sure that I'm thinking about this the correct way. I made a quick diagram to make sure that I'm not overlooking something:

    (obviously not to scale)

    Does this look correct? Should there also be a flat vinyl washer on the opposite side of the shoulder washer (between the t-nut and the baseplate)? I'm having some trouble sourcing these shoulder washers (I'm finding most places here in the US don't carry them, and if they do, they're in Standard, not Metric sizes). Would it be worth considering using vinyl bolts? I'm only using the 5Nm power supply, but I still wonder if those would be strong enough.


    Also, Alessandro...a few more questions if you don't mind:

    • could you go into a little bit more detail regarding how you went about grounding your rig? What type of wire did you use?

    • Did you use a specific type of fastener to connect it to your rig?

    • Does it matter where on the rig you attach the wire? Should I attach more than one?

    • You mentioned that you attached the other end of the wire to an electrical (wall) outlet? Could you explain how I'd go about doing that?


    Sorry, lots of questions...as I said, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to this sort of stuff. Pictures and/or diagrams would be extremely helpful if it wouldn't be too much trouble for you. Thanks so much for all of your help and suggestions!

  • The drawing you made is not good. Wheelbase must never touch the metal plate of the rig. In addition, the shoulder of the plastic washer is too short.

    I would use normal nylon washers and would do the shoulder with electrical tape. It must be of the right size, as high as the thickness of the plate added to the thickness of 2 washers. You can cut as much with a cutter.

    But I wouldn't use 2 washers, but a washer underneath and a thin cardboard sheet on top, paper is a great insulator. If it works, you can replace it with a sticky plastic sheet or a cut out rubber mat.

    You must completely isolate the wheelbase from the rig, no metal parts must be in contact.

    For the ground wire, I put the photos. Refers to Italian sockets, with the earth in the center. The principle should be the same. If you are concerned about electrifying your rig, connect the plug to a power outlet before bolting it to the rig, and touch the free terminal with the back of your hand. The top of the hand. The electric current causes the muscles to contract, if you touch a bare wire with your fingers or worse with the palm of your hand, the electricity will make you grab the wire. But that won't happen, and either way that would trigger the safety switch. But it is always good to touch the electrical wires with the back of your hand.


    You will see that I used a lot of wires, because I also connected the pedals and shifter. My rig is collapsible and has large plastic inserts between each element. Only one cable should be enough for your rig. If you don't have the ring terminal you can directly wrap the bare wire around the screw. If it works you will buy the rings later.

  • Wow... thank you so much, Alessandro! Your advice and those pictures are extremely helpful! Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to implement at least some of what you've suggested. REALLY appreciate your help mate, thank you again.

  • I'm struggling to understand the logic in isolating the wheelbase from the rig - then grounding the rig.

  • I guess it's a sort of failsafe. I see what you mean though: if one is done properly, the other shouldn't be necessary. For someone like me who isn't confident in his knowledge of electrical/ EMI matters, I'd feel more secure doing both methods, better chance that at least one of them will work. Sort of like having a seat belt and an airbag... if one fails, hopefully the other will still do its job.

  • Either one or the other. A guy on the forum just solved his problem today by isolating wheelbase and pedals with rubber washers.

    Isolating in my opinion is more difficult, especially for wheelbase which is very heavy and has FFB, and for pedals with load cell, because a lot of force is applied with the foot.

    If you grounding, don't forget to scrape some paint off the hole you will use.

  • Ok this may be a stupid question, but when isolating my wheel/pedals from the rig, do I need to be worried about any connecting cables touching the wheelbase and/or pedals?

    As you can see, the cables for the power and USB are strapped to the metal center pole, and then run underneath where the pedals sit, where they come pretty close and may make slight contact with those aluminum runners. (The pedals themselves have approximately 1 or 2mm thick rubber feet on them, and I'm also planning on putting some either rubber or cardboard insulation where the pedals contact the cross-plate that prevents them from sliding).

    Do I need to be worried about the cables? There's a fair bit of extra slack on the cable for the pedals, which I've done my best to bound up, but there's not a lot of room under the pedal plate, and it's difficult to keep all of the cables separated and not touching the rig or each other.

    Do you think I'll be ok like this, as long as I manage to properly isolate the wheelbase from the rig itself? Do you see any problems with how I've got things set up? Any suggestions to make it easier or to improve the likelihood that I'll be able to successfully isolate everything that needs to be isolated? Thanks in advance for any help.

  • The cables have a rubber sheath that insulates them. You only have to worry about metal-to-metal contact. Which means screws, bolts and washers.

    Cable management is done because the coils, that is a cable that winds around itself, produces an electromagnetic field. It might, but it doesn't really do anything. I wouldn't worry too much about that, cables have to go through somewhere.

  • Ok, thanks again Alessandro! I guess with all the trouble I've had, maybe I'm just getting a bit paranoid and over-cautious. Thanks for the reassurance.

    I'll be taking a trip to the hardware store today to see if I can pick up a few parts that I need. The plan is to try isolating things first, then if that doesn't work I'll try the grounding.

    If neither of those things work, then it all goes up on ebay and I check myself into a mental health clinic before I go completely bonkers. 🤪

  • I have the same problem and it has nothing to do with the computer although they try to take it that way, I can do some races without problems and suddenly it's never known when it will happen. I think we have to live with this problem until Fanatec discovers the problem.

  • Yeah it's a strange issue this latest one that I'm having. As I mentioned in another thread, unlike the issue that I first started this thread about, at least this latest iteration doesn't seem to be affecting gameplay at all, so that's good. I've discovered that a way around it for me is to either make sure only either Fanalab or the CP are open at any given time. Or, I've also had success just not running Fanalab at all. But I miss having the easy profile management capabilities.

    Basically, the procedure that seems to work for me now is:

    • Boot up PC

    • Turn on wheelbase

    • Launch CP, check wheel and pedal inputs are reporting correctly

    • Close CP

    • Manually launch Fanalab, load the desired profile

    • Launch game


    It's honestly not THAT big of a headache in the grand scheme of things I guess, especially considering everything else I've been through with this equipment. But it would be nice to figure out what the heck is causing it.

  • Thanks for the tips I don't think anything solves the problem until Fanatec discovers it. I don't use Fanalab so it won't be a problem anymore. I just turn on the computer, open ACC or iRacing and enter the races. My problem is not to spoil a race, I live well with this problem, the big problem is if I ruin someone's race, that's a problem.

  • It sounds like for your issue, you might want to try the ferrite beads. That didn't totally eliminate the problem for me, but it GREATLY reduced the frequency with which it happened. Went from every few hours to maybe once or twice a month.

  • Well well, I see you're struggling again with all this s**t....too bad, I'm really sorry.

    I was pretty busy working, all the info provided by Alessandro are really good, I did post something like that weeks ago....don't get too paranoid though, I would use one wire to ground the rig and avoid all the work for the wheelbase with washers etc etc....once is placed on the rig metal support plate and the rig itself is grounded....that's it.

    I did something like that with the washers (vinyl ones, not shoulder washers) for the shifter....but it's really redundant because what I wrote before....shifter is mounted on a metal bracket, connected to the rig, rig is grounded....that's it.

    Don't overdo, instead add elements if the outcome is not solving the issues, and check again.

    When I put together the new rig I did a lot, now I'm planning to remove unnecessary stuff in the next months....months yes, I do not really plan to use the simrig during summertime, I'll start playing again after summer,.....it will be interesting for all the new equipment....having used it for so very little time....my DD Pro and V3 pedals have literally worked for 3-4 hours maybe. 😅

    Take care guys!

    Ciaoooooo!!!

  • This is a link to the other thread I mentioned, which I created about the latest issue I'm currently having with wheel and mouse going unresponsive if I have Fanalab and the Fanatec CP open at the same time.

    Posting this mainly for myself, for reference, also for anyone in the future who might stumble upon this thread and be interested:

    https://forum.fanatec.com/discussion/26180/system-freeze-when-using-both-fanalab-and-fanatec-cp/p1

  • Hi Alberto,

    Yes, both you and Alessandro have been very helpful with your advice, so thank you very much!

    I did go ahead and isolate the wheelbase the other day. I bought some rubber washers to use between the CSL DD and the mounting plate, and used some nylon washers on the other side of the plate to take up the slack since the bolts are a bit longer than they need to be. I also wrapped the first part of the threading of the bolts with electrical tape to protect them from touching the plate as they pass through it.

    I decided to do this first instead of the grounding wire since I'm not terribly confident in my wiring abilities. So far I've played several hours of Wreckfest and ACC, and no in-game crashes or freezes, so that's good.

    As I mentioned above though, the only thing that's bothering me now is that the system will freeze if both Fanalab and the Fanatec CP are open at the same time. Which is annoying, but easily avoidable.

    This latest issue all started after I changed the battery in my UPS device. I then noticed that the wheel suddenly had started feeling over-damped. For pretty much all my saved profiles, if I had used e.g. 30 NDP, I now need to use maybe 5 or even 0 NDP to get the same feel. I thought maybe there's some issue with the UPS device, so I tried plugging the wheel straight into a wall socket. No difference in feel. Uninstalled/ reinstalled both the driver and Fanalab, no change.


    So basically, TL;DR, my current status is this:

    Noticed wheel started feeling heavy and overdamped a few days ago. Noticed also that system goes unresponsive if Fanatec CP and Fanalab are used at the same time. Isolated my rig/base with rubber and nylon washers. This did nothing to change the overdamped feeling or to get rid of the Fanalab/CP freezing. Thankfully, I continue to to have no issues with freezing during gameplay, which is the most important thing.

  • Hi Greg,


    sorry I just read today your message, I'm soo busy with work .....I'll try to read properly.

    I don't login all the time so I have no clue about notifications on discussions and messages.

    HAve a great day!

    Ciao!

  • Having similar issues as everyone else. CSL DD "disconnects" becomes unresponsive, wheel stays at angle and throttle stays at whatever position it was when wheel becomes unresponsive. It stays like that for a few seconds then comes back , and I can continue racing ..... if I didn't crash , etc. It is super annoying. I have tried the shaft re-seat thing , but is no help. Happens on both my WRC and McClaren wheel. Happens in ACC and AMS2, can't remember if it happens in AC. Seems to happen in high speed corners where wheels are loaded up more often. Started RMA yesterday. Was on 439 updated driver to 442.


    Iim on Win 11, VR G2. I also run SimHub with some shakers. I have ferrite beads somewhere to try , but haven't yet.

  • I'd give the ferrite beads a try. It might help. For me, it didn't solve the problem, but it definitely helped it occur way less often.

    For me, what seems to finally have worked was a combination of the ferrite beads, and isolating the wheelbase from the rig so that there is no metal-on-metal contact. Since doing that, I've only had this issue occur once, which I suspect may have been due to either a dodgy USB extension cable, or a USB port which my hardware doesn't like.

    If you've already got the RMA in progress, I suppose you may as well see it through just to rule out it being a hardware issue. (Though I suppose there is the possibility that your replacement unit could suffer the same symptoms). If you still are suffering from the same issues after the RMA, then to me, that points to something not being right with your setup, i.e. there is some kind of EMI or grounding issue that is working its way into and through your kit, causing these strange things to happen.

    Have a look through this thread, there's some good info and some steps to try. Hopefully something will work for you, and you'll be back out on the virtual track soon.

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