We’re back to our series of meetings with personalities who are making their mark on the world of hardware and technology. It’s good to be back, this time with the enigmatic Tero Kontkanen, whose background is so atypical that it will undoubtedly speak to many members of the Overclocking.com community. Tero is the visionnary, co-founder, CTO and board member of Simucube. He is Finnish and runs his business and projects from Finland. The company he built is named Granite Devices and it’s behind the more famous SimuCube products brand. Founded in 2007, the first SimuCube product was released 10 years later in 2017. But you’ll understand that in the meantime, Tero has multiplied his projects, products, creations and simulation found him, not the other way around. Today, the company has 60 employees and is based in Tampere which used to be a Nokia stronghold.
A quick preface:
There are things that are hard to explain, or see in an interview. This is why we feel that this introduction is needed. We met Tero this summer in Finland, and from the start, I knew he was far from the typical company founder. The first question Tero asked was “what is your story”. It seems like a simple question but it also reveiled a lot about the person that asked it and his interst in people, as well as sharing a lot of our personnal background and how we present or see ourself. It also helped build an interesting conversation from the start.
Secondly, Simucube is one of the few companies that is people oriented and not profit oriented, a huge contrast to our current market. And this is the vision that Tero had. And you can see from his lifestyle that although he owns one of the most successful company in the simulation industry, you could never tell… it feels like he stayed the same, very humble, focusing on developping products, and having the right people manage the company.
Finally, you wont see it from reading the interview, but his inventions with the Direct Drive wheelbase and now the active pedal completely changed the industry. Two game changing products that everyone are now trying to copy.
Now, let’s give him a chance to explain who he is and how he has come through the years in the hardware world.
NotDjey: Tero, can you tell us a few words about your career?
Tero: Sure, although such a wide topic will be challenging to squeeze in a few sentences. I might say that I’m born with curiosity towards science and technology. Understanding how state-of-the art achievements, such as computers, cars, aeroplanes and rockets work, have always fascinated me. I have always wanted to be part of creating such things and make them even better. My will to tinker with them has fueled my study interest towards tech and science. As I learned to build and hack stuff, various DIY projects were realized.
Here are few milestones from by hobby career that lead to professional career:
- As a child around 10 years old, I was practicing crafting skills. I crafted many things from wood and metal. In our parent’s workshop we had a good selection of tools, including metal working tools, welding tools, a lathe and a mill.
- Few years later I was interested in computer tech. I soon figured out how PC’s are made and then I assembled my own computers.
- When I was around 15, I wanted to create software and games. So I learned to program. First MS DOS, then Windows and Linux.
Here are a few examples of my (aborted) game project: Executor is a St*rCraft-style real-time strategy/action game in a 3D environment.
- Then, as a PC enthusiast, I wanted to get the most out of my toaster (PC). Overclocking was the natural answer. First I tinkered with air and water cooling, but as my father was professional on refrigerator repairs, we joined our talents to create refrigerator coolers to CPU overclocking. I built a number of coolers for Finnish hobbyists. Here are some of my creations
So naturally I started taking part in overclocking competitions where I got a 600 MHz processor to run stably at 1300 MHz.
NotDjey: The older generation here will recognise the legendary AMD Duron 600 and Abit KT7A-RAID combo
Tero : Coincidentally, Asetek was also making refrigerator coolers at that time. So basically I was their competitor in the overclocking cooler market 20 years before we met again in the sim racing market!
Then, in my twenties, my curiosity turned to the world of embedded electronics. I learned to program electronic components and microcontrollers. As part of my hobby I wanted a CNC machine. Instead of buying one, I learned how they work. Then built not one, but three CNC machines.
As part of the CNC machine project, I wasn’t satisfied with the servo motor dives that were available due to their quality vs price and availability. So I learned how the state of the art motor drives work, and started to design my own.
As my DIY drive was working, I posted a few videos of it to CNCzone forum. It sparked instant interest among other hobbyists.
At that time I was studying at the Tampere University of Technology. I and one of my university friends decided to start a company to commercialize the new kind of servo drives. That’s when Granite Devices was found.
Fun fact: Tero’s PCB were used by sim enthusiasts, this is what spark the interest in this niche. Tero was not into simulation, he just wanted to build CNC machines.
NotDjey: Granite Devices is the company that created and owns Simucube today. Simucude was originally a Granite Devices product.
Tero: As my own backgrounds were driven by passion, I wanted Granite Devices to be as hobbyist friendly as possible. For instance, Granite served all customers equally no matter whether they were businesses or individuals. I believe that attitude, in addition to performance and price efficiency, has gained the interest of the DIY direct drive sim racing community towards Granite’s drives. A DirectDrive (DD) wheelbase build called OpenSimWheel was based on our servo drives.
- The IONI product was inspired by the needs of DD builders.
Shortly afterwards, Simucube was released on the market.
As the IONI and Simucube were gaining popularity, we decided to go a leap ahead and integrate everything into the motor. Simucube 2 was born.
Shortly afterwards, Simucube was released on the market.
The original passion towards state-of-the art performance, professional quality and customer care were the leading philosophies even though it was a consumer product.
As Simucube products were hugely successful, Granite Devices expanded more in the sim racing market.
By combining our expertise in factory automation, precision instruments and robotics, we invented ActivePedal – the first fully electrically implemented sim racing pedal. Again, the passion towards performance, quality and customer care were our guiding principles though the whole process.
Fun Fact: Although he is the founder, Tero is not the CEO. He gave that role to his friend Hannu that initially told him not to go into the simulation market.
NotDjey: When you find out about all this, it begs the question: how do you go from the world of PC overclocking to SimRacing? Do you think there’s a link?
Tero: I think there are some similarities between the two worlds:
- both are “technology sports”
- both are performance-hungry
- both are prepared to go the extra mile to improve their performance.
NotDjey: While simracing has been a small niche for years, how do you see the arrival of players from the PC world like Thermaltake, Corsair, Cooler Master…? What do you think of all this craze? A lot of them seem to be arriving with products they’ve found on shelves in China and are content to just slap their logo on them…
Tero: I see this as a positive signal. Many companies following Simucube’s lead (first build quality and direct drive wheels, then ActivePedals) confirms that we’re on the right path. This motivates us to go forward and create more unforeseen innovations in the sim racing field.
NotDjey: For some time now, several members of the Overclocking.com community have been getting excited about sim racing. Personally, I have the impression that we’re witnessing the same effervescence: the same “extremists”, the same desire to get the best equipment and above all the same desire to customise everything. What is your opinion of the simracing market?
Tero: I share your point of view on the current trend. As I said, the two scenes have a lot in common and I’m not surprised to see connections and bridges.
NotDjey: Thank you Tero for your time and all your fascinating explanations. There’s no doubt that we’ll be talking about Simucube a lot on Overclocking.com. Finally, we share one last crazy project…
