How to Build a DIY Logitech Pedals USB Adapter

The new Logitech racing wheels come in two parts: the wheel “base” which contains the steering wheel proper, and an add-on peripheral with gas, brake, and clutch pedals. This pedal peripheral is quite well built with a metal frame, aluminum pedal faces, and user swappable springs. It even has mounting points for hanging the pedals upside-down or attaching them to a sim racing rig. Despite these perks, the pedals cannot function on their own – they must be plugged into the wheel base in order to work over USB. If you want to use these pedals with a different wheel setup, you need some sort of USB adapter.

I’m going to show you you can how to build your own DIY USB adapter for these Logitech pedals in under 15 minutes using only a handful of parts. This is an easy project and requires absolutely no soldering.

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How to Build a DIY Logitech Shifter USB Adapter

The Logitech Driving Force shifter is an awesome piece of kit. It’s small, stylish, robust, and inexpensive. But unfortunately it has one major drawback: it’s dumb! It has no “smart” electronics whatsoever, just a simple DB-9 connector that absolutely must be plugged into a Logitech wheel base unit in order to function. If you (like me) don’t happen to have a fancy Logitech racing wheel, you have to come up with some other way of connecting the shifter to your PC.

I’m going to show you you can how to build your own DIY adapter in under 15 minutes using only a handful of parts. This is an easy project and requires absolutely no soldering.

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Sim Racing Shields for Arduino

I recently put together a library for interfacing Arduino development boards with sim racing devices such as shifters, pedals, and handbrakes. The library makes it easy to retrieve the relevant data from those devices and send it to a racing simulator. The only catch is that the user has to carefully wire things up themselves, which is a little tedious and results in a somewhat messy final product.

To close that gap, I designed some custom sim racing “shields” which attach to the underside of an Arduino and make it quick and easy to connect to existing sim racing devices.

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Sim Racing Library for Arduino

Simulator racing tech is amazing. It’s an entire genre of human input devices designed to transform your home desk into the cockpit of a racecar. Wheels, pedals, shifters, handbrakes, gauge clusters, wind generators… you name it, you can find it for your home racing rig.

But with all of the hardware necessary for a comprehensive simulator experience, sim racing is expensive. To try and make it more accessible, communities of makers have sprung up to design their own custom racing devices and adapters built from scratch. Owning a bit of sim racing equipment myself, I thought I would join in on the fun and design a software library that makes it easy to interface sim racing devices with embedded development boards. Introducing the Sim Racing Library for Arduino!

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