Hello,
Coming from the simulator racing hobby I have recently put bass-shakers/transducers (Dayton BST-1) onto the chassis of my simulator to reproduce suspension and road-effects that happen in the game by making the seat and foot-rest rumble. I have seen people doing similar things with their pedals to, for instance, reproduce an ABS effect if they are braking too hard in the simulator.
However, since transducers, especially the smaller ones that people mount to their pedals, are meant to reproduce effects in the 50-150hz range, I have thought that instead of using small transducers for the pedals, it might be interesting to use linear voice coil actuators instead. I got the idea from a products called the P-HPR by the brand Simagic. From the looks they seem to be LVCAs attached to a specialized controller. They are able to reproduce effects in the 1-20hz range with a lot of power and can much better simulate the effect of how ABS would feel in a real car.
Now this is where my complete lack of knowledge in the electronics field will become very apparent and why I have come to this forum to get some advice and/or opinions on my idea. I am but a humble backend developer by trade.
Since, from what I can see, voice-coil actuators from a hardware standpoint are the same as what is used in speakers, like the bass-shakers that I am using on my chassis.
I did do some research and could not find anyone attempting this before. I also found that there are specialized drivers (like the Texas Instruments DRV2605) to use in combination with LVCAs. Some even have pre-saved effect libraries or can work with audio signals / waveforms. However, I have no idea how I would put together a project and build my own amplifier with this chip, so my idea was to take a shortcut and just use an audio-amplifier with for instance a Texas Instruments TPA3116D2 instead.
So my question is, is it possible to use a LVCA and pair it up with a audio amplifier? Or is this specialized controller used by the above mentioned product necessary to achieve what I am after?