Almost every tool in our sim racing dataset reads telemetry. Only a handful write anything back to the rig. Of twenty verified tools, two drive physical hardware such as bass shakers, motion platforms and haptics, one adds a dashboard layer on top of one of those two, and two more turn a phone or tablet into a button box for the game PC. If you are shopping for the software side of a haptics or motion setup, the field is far smaller than the category suggests, and the two real options are priced in opposite ways.
The five tools that touch hardware, as their own sites describe them
| Tool | What it drives or emulates | Price (as stated on site) | Games and platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| SimHub | Displays, overlays, bass shakers, LEDs, motion rigs; 200+ devices; no-code Arduino support | Free base download; paid perpetual license for full features (price not displayed); motion addon needs a separate license | 100+ games / 80+ sims per site; Windows |
| TrackPro (by Sim Coaches) | 12-effect haptics engine, 5DOF motion control, pedal tuning and calibration wizard | Free $0 forever (core app and hardware tools); Starter $20/mo; Pro 5X $97/mo; Pro 20X $297/mo; 30-day trial on paid tiers | iRacing, Assetto Corsa, BeamNG.drive; Windows 10/11 64-bit |
| Lovely Dashboard | 16+ dashboard (DDU) variants and a stream overlay, running inside SimHub via the Lovely Plugin | Free downloads; membership unlocks additional features | Windows inside SimHub; sims not documented on store page |
| DashPanel | Dashboards plus a virtual button box usable in any PC application | Time-unlimited free demo (RPM, speed, gear only); per-game in-app purchases for full data | Windows (Steam), iOS, Android; 40+ games |
| SIM Dashboard | 200+ widgets plus a Button Box sending virtual keyboard inputs to any PC application | Free (max 3 widgets per page); Pro one-time in-app purchase | Android, iOS; games on Windows PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox One/Series |
SimHub and TrackPro are the only two that drive the rig
SimHub is the breadth option. Its site lists connections from 100-plus games to displays, overlays, bass shakers, LEDs and motion rigs across 200-plus devices, no-code Arduino support for home-built hardware, and Dash Studio for building dashboards against a large community library. The recorded weakness is the thing to plan around: it is not a coach, and full features and motion control sit behind separate paid licenses whose prices are not shown on the homepage. The base download is free and the paid license is perpetual rather than a subscription, but you will not learn the number from the page we verified.
TrackPro is the bundle option, and its site positions it as a SimHub replacement: a 12-effect haptics engine, 5DOF motion control, pedal tuning and APEX AI voice coaching in one app. Its pricing page puts the core app and hardware tools, including the pedal tuning and calibration wizard, basic telemetry, overlays and Ghost Lap, in the $0 forever tier. The paid tiers buy coaching, not hardware: Starter at $20 a month adds the AI Race Coach chat, a Live Voice Coach on the radio and Driver Lab courses, and the Pro tiers at $97 and $297 a month multiply coaching usage and add human lap review, with Pro 20X also carrying a Lifetime Warranty+ hardware repair program. The trade is scope. Its site lists only iRacing, Assetto Corsa and BeamNG.drive, with more coming soon, against SimHub's 80-plus simulations, and it runs on Windows 10/11 64-bit only.
Lovely Dashboard is less a third option than a reason to pick the first. It is a free family of 16-plus dashboard variants for curved, round, ultrawide and portrait screens plus a matching stream overlay, but its store page marks the Lovely Plugin as required and everything runs on top of SimHub, and the page does not document which sims it supports.
The phone-as-button-box pair
DashPanel and SIM Dashboard do not drive shakers or motion, but both let a phone or tablet send inputs to the game PC. DashPanel's virtual button box works in any PC application, alongside a dashboard editor with mod.io sharing across 40-plus titles. SIM Dashboard's Button Box sends virtual keyboard inputs to any PC application, next to 200-plus widgets for gauges, tire temps, track map and g-force. Both free tiers are enough to see it work and not enough to race with: DashPanel's demo shows only RPM, speed and gear, with full data sold per game, and SIM Dashboard caps free users at three widgets per page, with Pro a one-time in-app purchase. SIM Dashboard also needs a companion PC server app for Windows games, and both sites note that the channels you get depend on what each game exposes.
What to confirm before you build around any of them
- SimHub: neither the perpetual license price nor the motion addon price is on the page we verified, so budget for two purchases of unknown size before committing to a motion rig.
- TrackPro: only three sims are listed. If you race ACC, Le Mans Ultimate, rFactor 2 or Automobilista 2, the haptics engine has nothing to read yet.
- Lovely Dashboard: a SimHub plugin, not standalone software, with no supported-sim list on the store page.
- DashPanel and SIM Dashboard: the free tiers are demos in practice, and per-title telemetry gaps mean some widgets will not work in some games.