One Program For Your Whole Rig? Almost.
I once had a rig that needed five programs running before I could turn a lap. Wheelbase software. A pedal app. A dashboard tool. Something separate for the LEDs. And a bass shaker script that crashed half the time. You weren’t going racing, you were doing sysadmin work.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Not entirely, because you’ll never get rid of your wheelbase software. But everything your rig does (dashboards, shakers, LEDs, wind, motion) can live in one program. And that program is SimHub.
First, Let’s Reset Expectations
SimHub drives your peripherals. It doesn’t configure your wheelbase. Force feedback, rotation angle, damping: that stays in Pit House (MOZA), Fanatec Control Panel, SimPro Manager (Simagic) or True Drive (Simucube). Pedal calibration too.
So “one software for everything” is marketing talk. “One software for everything that shakes, blinks, blows or moves” is accurate. And that’s already a massive cleanup.
Why You Can’t Do Without It
Picture this: a wet race at Spa. You want to see when it’s drying out. You want your bass shakers to warn you when your wheels lock. And you want your wind machine to blow harder down the Kemmel Straight.
With separate tools? Good luck. Every program reads its own data, keeps its own profiles, and forgets its settings at the worst possible moment.
With SimHub it all comes from the same telemetry stream. You set it up once, and it works in every sim SimHub supports. Which is a lot of them.
SimHub: The Undisputed King
SimHub is the most popular tool in this space. For good reason. It’s free to use, and it drives pretty much anything you can bolt to a rig:
- Dashboards on a phone, tablet or second screen
- Bass shakers (tactile feedback)
- LED strips and shift lights
- Wind machines
- Motion platforms
- Arduino projects of every conceivable kind
SimHub reads your sim’s telemetry and drives everything off it. RPM to your shift lights. Wheel slip to the shaker under your brake pedal. Speed to your fan. Incredibly powerful.
But there’s a downside. The learning curve is steep. You need to understand how ‘properties’ and ‘effects’ work, and the interface looks like it was designed in 2015. Because it was. Still worth it.
First Steps
Download SimHub from the official site (simhubdash.com, not one of the knock-off sites). Install it, launch your sim, and SimHub picks it up automatically. Then pick a dashboard. There are hundreds, from minimalist to full F1 cockpit.
Start simple. A shift light, a lap time, fuel. Nothing more. You can expand later.
Your Phone As a Cockpit
The dashboard is the most popular use. You put your phone or tablet in a mount on your rig and open the dashboard in the browser. Speed, revs, tire temps, delta. No extra app needed.
SimHub has its own dashboard editor for building your own designs. Or you grab one from the community, where thousands of dashboards are floating around by now.
Bass Shakers: Where SimHub Really Shines
This is what most people install SimHub for, even if they think it’s about the dashboards. A couple of bass shakers under your seat and pedals, driven by SimHub, put wheel slip, ABS, kerbs and gear shifts through your body. A Trak Racer haptic bass shaker kit plus a cheap amplifier, and you’re in. We’ve covered the setup in detail in our guide to tactile feedback in your pedals.
Other Options, And Why I Don’t Recommend Them
Z1 Dashboard is the serious alternative for dashboards and telemetry. It looks slicker than SimHub, but it’s paid and doesn’t do shakers, LEDs or wind. It solves one problem, not five.
Beyond that, every manufacturer has its own app with its own little dashboard or LED profile. Those work fine, until you buy something from another brand. Then the circus starts again.
Want one program for all your peripherals? SimHub is the only real choice.
The Price: Free, With a Voluntary Contribution
Here’s where it gets likeable. SimHub is free. The free version isn’t crippled, with one exception: your hardware gets driven at 10 FPS. For a dashboard you’ll barely notice. For bass shakers you will.
A license is a one-time payment, and you pick the amount yourself. From about eight euros. That lifts the cap to 60 FPS, adds automatic game switching, and removes the nag screen. Pay once, no subscription ever.
Worth it? It’s less than a pizza. For software one developer has maintained for over ten years. So yes.
Common Mistakes
The biggest one: trying to do too much at the start. A full dashboard with forty data fields, six shakers and an LED strip on day one. You get overwhelmed, half of it works, and you give up. Start small. One dashboard. One shaker effect. Expand once it works.
Second mistake: forgetting your sim has to share its telemetry. Some sims (iRacing, ACC) do that by default. Others need a plugin or an edited config file. SimHub shows you what to do per game, but you do have to read it.
Third mistake: Windows audio. Your bass shakers hang off an amplifier that hangs off a USB sound card. Windows loves to change your default audio device on its own. Suddenly you’ve got engine noise in your seat and shaker effects in your headphones. Check that first when something feels off.
So
Want one program for all your peripherals? Download SimHub. Throw a few euros at it. And start with one thing at a time.
You keep your wheelbase software. No way around that. But those five other programs? Gone.
