PuckSeat: DIY ShakeSeat

SRS no longer offers the original ShakeKit, which was essentially:

a 4-channel soundcard and amplifier
four Dayton TT25-8 pucks and wiring
a roughly 45cm (18") square cloth zippered seat cushion with skimpy foam padding

While the following images are from refurbishing my ShakeIt cushion, DIY from scratch would be similar.
Issues with first generation ShakeIt cushion modifications:

Pucks are nearly twice as thick as EVA foam mat
Mat holes did not prevent pucks from wandering

4 years later and wiser:

Suitable zippered cloth seat cushion covers are readily available:
Instead of sound card and amplifier, if your PC motherboard has an unused HDMI connector,
consider scrounging a cheap surround receiver with HDMI input (yard sale, thrift shop, ebay),
any of which should be capable of driving 15 Watts per channel to Dayton pucks.
A more powerful pre-HDMI 7.1 receiver, here driven from motherboard audio,
enables other channels to drive larger transducers.
Original skimpy SRS padding is nearly dead after 4 years,
which will not matter because it no longer needs to provide much padding.
Roll of black drawer cushion (upper right) was not needed.
Second EVA pad was trimmed slightly smaller than first,
with added thickness taking up slack in cloth cover.
Wooden disk will be centered in original EVA pad holes to locate smaller puck faces:
serrated steak knife in action:
Pucks were hot-glued to EVA mat from the other side,
then secured using duct tape on this side.
Note vent holes, which should NOT be blocked by tape.
Larger chunk of original SRS foam was not reused;
4 smaller chunks were hot-glued over larger puck surfaces, which will face up:
ready for reinstallation!
I did not keep track of original puck assignments (fore/aft, left/right);
reassignment by SimHub channel testing, then reconnecting at amplifier binding posts.

SRS ShakeSeat

padding
Sim driving rigs cannot realistically simulate cornering and braking G's;
better to employ more cost-effective haptic feedbacks.
Niels Heusinkveld agrees (1:55/11:44)
When cornering limits are exceeded, G29 wheel seems to go into 'slow motion',
making spins unrecoverable.
Assetto Corsa physics software overwhelming Gateway i5 was originally suspected,
but it still happened with Alienware Aurora i7, so perhaps G29 was overwhelmed by too much I/O.
Perhaps diverting appropriate feedback from G29 to other haptics would help,
leaving only those that actually help steer..

Many sim racers use sim racing chassis, with actuators at 4 corners;
Slip-Angle has IMO a good isolation system for extruded aluminum chassis.
Sim Racing Studio's ShakeKit was comprised of software, USB soundcard, amplifiers,
and 4 Dayton bass shaker pucks in a thinly padded seat cushion.
That ShakeSeat cushion was available separately for about half the cost.
Barry Rowland considers the ShakeKit: "Probably the easiest way for you to get
a proper feeling transducer solution deployed on your Sim Racing setup."

Karl Gosling YouTube review

ShakeSeat GX16-8p wiring
polarity	left	right
pos front	2 black	1 red
neg front	6 blue	4 green
pos rear	5 white	7 orange
neg rear	8 tan	3 yellow

Debugged the above and wired a matching bulkhead connector via 6 ft zip cord
to mismatched amplifiers, one with an FM tuner,
so fed an FM station to the rear ShakeSeat puck pair.
Sound is surprisingly intelligible and the feel is at least not unpleasant.
Left and right are easily distinguished,
but blend nicely when fed equal amounts of monaural signal,
so left rear vs right rear vs both rear should be useful cues.

[dis]comfort

As a frequent bike rider, my butt is not particularly tender,
but sitting on four hard pucks for hours is unpleasant,
and Sim Racing Studio's soft foam does little to spread pressure.
From available 1/2" INTERLOCKING EVA FOAM MATS:

one was trimmed one to about 17x17 inches and marked using a bowl
for disc removal at puck locations:

After a hundred or so hours of moderately intense sitting,
the EVA foam-supplemented ShakeSeat looks like this:

maintained by blekenbleu