Yoke
Hardware- 2 Devlogs
- 6 Total hours
This project is the FrontEnd for a sim racing wheel, it will be designed like a Formula1 steering wheel so with a display in the middle an various knobs and buttons.
Devlog #1 — PCB Layout Complete
The layout is finished.
What’s on the board
The Yoke runs on an STM32G491VE (LQFP100) — enough pins for the touch display, the button matrix, and FDCAN without fighting over alternate functions. The wheel talks to the base over CAN, using the TCAN332G transceiver.
Stackup
Signal / PWR/ GND/ Signal. Nothing exotic, but the ground plane sits directly over the bottom signal layer, which gives every fast signal a clean return path right beneath it.
That mattered most for two things:
- CANH/CANL — routed as a differential pair, tight and short, transceiver right at the connector.
- USB — the two datalines D+, D- are routed as a differential pair, so they need a clean path to ground.
What’s next
Fabrication. Gerbers are generated, BOM is assembled, and the whole project is under Git now. Then assembly, then the part where I find out what I got wrong.
Devlog #0 — Schematic done!
Wrapped up the schematic for the wheel. Key component choices:
- STM32G491VE — picked for the built-in CAN peripheral and the high GPIO count (needed the pins for buttons, encoders, LEDs, and display).
- TCAN332G — CAN transceiver handling the physical layer to the base unit.
- Touch display — shows live driving data right on the wheel (speed, gear, telemetry over CAN).
- Charge pump — lets me hot-plug the wheel into the base without inrush issues.
Next up: PCB routing.
