A quick video of the new spring and centring mechanism.



Cheers

Hello Robbo, i`ve been keeping a close eye on your website and it aint been working recently.....obviously now your back and working on new hardware, your site will have products soon

Looking at this new shifter, it seems the springs dont have much effect when they are near the centre, not a criticism, just an abservation
Is it meant to be that way? or are you still improving it?

I know its early, but have you worked out rough prices yet? And would you be willing to ship to UK? If so, again, how much?

All that aside, shifter looks great and look forward to seeing all your finished goods

Definately less effect towards the centre. I played with several spring tensions and sat im my car and felt the amount tension or 'play' as the stick sat in neutral. They are similar but no doubt, different gear boxes will have different feels and trying to duplicate them all would be near impossible. Just as with any new car, there is a process of learning the feel of the controls and this is no different. It is a fairly intuitive thing to close your eyes and be able to navigate through the gears by feel alone. It does become second nature very quickly. To me it feels much better than the previous springs.

We will freight to all parts of the world but it would be more advantageous to have a local or regional supplier. We are still putting this together with Europe and the US.

The price of the Gearbox has yet to be finalised but I can tell you that the new controller is a more expensive product due to its sophistication over the earlier A1 USB Controller. I anticipate the controller alone will be a little over $100 Australian Dollars. When packaged with a peripheral, it will be cheaper.

looks great, my girlfriend will thank you for the silence!

a few questions.. one thing i noticed in the vid is that the first couple of times you push the new stick it doesn't center right in the middle... is this a deliberate mechanism to try and help the stick into the middle gates without it hitting the in-between gate position?

also, i don't know how the new hall-effect sensors work, but is it possible with the new model to have a gate plate with third and fourth in the center?

and of course the obligatory question... when are they shipping??

I can't say that it is a deliberate thing when the stick stays left or right of centre. The spring is such that it wants to come back to centre but friction and inertia will come into play also and the stick will remain 'centrish'. The example is to display the difference between the old and the new from a perspective of noise and also to show that the stick does still want to come back to centre. When using the GearBox, you probably won't let go of the stick as I have in fact, you'll more often than not, leave it in gear. The point being that the spring acts as a form of feed back to help you negotiate the gates. Clanging the stick between gates will still happen. Even the best drivers will miss the occasional gear.


A bit about the hall effects sensor.

There is no physical contacts in the left and right movement of the shifter. The hall effects sensor measures the change in magnetic field. This on its own is not enough. I had the idea for the mechanism for the GearBox and how the firmware might interpret these magnetic changes. Leo Bodnar, in his usual manner, immediately understood the concept and created a special controller for A1 Racing Gear specifically to interpret these positions. The result is that the user can calibrate the GearBox to detect any left / right position and therefore any gate configuration. So, to answer your question, the answer is 'yes'.

Shipping ...... soon.

I must say your shifter looks ace Robbo.
(Edit: Nevermind, the answer was in the previous post. Note to self: Read all the text, twice.)
Glad to hear that the shifter slots can be adjusted according to the shifter handle position. I for one would like the shifter to be more 'fall into' than 'guided into' 3th and 4th gear.

Have a nice day.

The plate could be modified so that 3rd and 4th could be in the centre but that has no relationship to sequential shifting. The sequential mechanism of my shifter is done by rotating the box 90 degrees and applying a plate with essentially a single gate. Although it works, I am still fine tuning the 'feel' of the sequential option.

I know, my point (that I edited away) was that having the shifter in the middle, for the sequential shifting function, compromised the shifter placement for the h-shifter function. With the new sensors you can have ideal (according to me anyway) shifter handle placement in relations to the slots, for both the seq.- and h-shifter functions.
Will you offer new plates to accomodate 3rd/4th centre?

Have a nice day.

I will definately look at different plate configurations because it is now more feasible to do so.

With regard to H versus Sequential, the mechanism is very different. In H form once the gate is chosen the gear does in fact fall or get pulled into place and once there, it stays in place. ( I will make a video demonstrating this ). With sequential however, the idea is push the shifter into the gear position and have the mechanism pull it back to centre. This is the process I am still working on.

Thanks for the feedback. Looking forward to a new demo. I understand from earlier that the shifter would 'fall/pull' into place once into the gate. My wish was only for the shifter to rest in the 3/4 position so when for instance shifting from 5th to 4th the shifter would slide in to the gate by itself, no need to pull sideways to enter the gate. All good.

Have a nice day.