A Small Table Set

Last Christmas I made use of my Stepcraft CNC and made a table set for my daughter. Actually, I made it for her dolls.

I opened F360 design software and started to pour design out of my mind. I had a clean scandinavian look in my mind and tried to replicate it with computer software. This time I succeeded very well, I think.

Here are some shots for you to enjoy.

Material was a 3mm thick back panel from an old clothes cabinet.

I made some slots to help assembly.

I used superglue in assembly process.

It was a fun little project.

And she also enjoyed the end result!

Full boost!

Recently I was able to visit a Smart car Master. He asked what I had done with the car and I replied. The main culprit seemed to be a cycle valve. I have had some issues with that and replaced it. Since cycle valve was then hard to find, I grabbed what I could and it was not original. It was advertised that it would fit to my car among many others. So in it went. After resetting fault codes car got out from limb mode and I was happy. But in that time I did not realized that turbo boost was only 0.5 bar.

As I said earlier, when I realized that, it did not bothered me so much back then. But last Winter I thought that I should have full boost. So I started to tinker with my car, as my earlier blog post is telling.

So, with a Master we changed the cycle valve and boy, it changed the whole car! Boost went straight to full 1 bar and a little bit over it when I put pedal to the metal. What a joy!

We measured the coil resistance of my not original cycle valve and it was around 15 ohms. Original cycle valve had around 28 ohms. So that difference in cycle valve coils was causing that low boost problem.

In fact, because it feels like a different car, I believe that even before my issues with cycle valve, boost was never over 0,5 bar. May be somebody had changed it before me and it had not original cycle valve at all..

Now with full boost I am enjoying my car even more!

Cheers!

Smart Roadster Turbo pressure issue

Since I have had my beloved Smart Roadster, turbo pressure has been a bit low in it. Actually, it is only a half what it should be. 0,5bar instead of full 1bar. It have not bothered me much, until recently. Though it is great ride even now, I have made my mind and I want a full turbo pressure. Inspection shoved no obvious damage or leakage in the system, so I started with googling, as is tradition. Or, in this case help was found from a Facebook group. From there I learned the correct length of the wastegate actuator. Mine was not in the ball park. Obvious first step was to adjust it to a correct length. A minor problem was that heat from turbo had seized its adjustability. Next first step was to take actuator out of the car and release seized M6 nut and thumb wheel. And of course being such a small vehicle, there is very little room to do any kind of work in the motor compartment. So I had to jack the car up and remove some stuff to make clearance and access to wastegate actuator.

Here one can see the bell housing of the wastegate actuator and piping placement. X-frame has been already taken out.

X-frame had to be removed since it was blocking my access to remove the wastegate actuator.

When I was granted enough clearance, I was able to get wastegate out for a closer inspection. It turned out that adjusting mechanism was really stuck.

The wastegate actuator himself. And seized adjusting mechanism.

Well, look at that! Well cooked.

I started gently with some rust removal and cold spray, with no luck. I knew it before I even started, but this was a good excuse to empty those two not so useful cans.. 🙂

In comes the big gun.

Aand yatsy!

I made some maintenance here..

And even a step further was with stuffing threads with this..

Now it was only a matter of putting all back together.

Oops.. What kind story is this without a hiccup.

When putting the X-frame back I encountered a small obstacle. I was happily using my wrench when this happened. Oh **** I might have said. It was all too smooth before that. A fun few hours project had just turned in to a nightmare. What do I do now? That was my thought exactly. I do not own a welding machine to weld a nut to the bolt to get it out. But I own a tap which can undo broken bolt. So I set my cordless drill and started to drill a hole in that bolt. Hole is needed for using that undoing tap. When drilling I saw broken bolt moving. “Wait a minute, it is so loose that I can remove it with a pair of pliers. Phew, that was a close call..” That reminds me of this. I hope that I have not used my all luck with broken bolts with these two cases.. I put new bolt in and continued assembly which went smoothly from there.

I wonder what caused bolt to snap. It was not the torque. I was just tightening it to squeeze parts together when it snapped. I am just guessing here, may be some previous owner had over tightened it. Or rust was the issue. Or may be both.. Who knows. Anyway, now there is an brand new bolt and everything is in order.

Test drive was useless because of the weather. Wheels were spinning in the snow and I could not get a good grip. Traction control kicked in all the time.

All in all, it was fun, eventually. I am not sure if correcting the actuator length was the cure for this disease. When there is less snow I can get more friction and can see what is going on with the boost pressure.

Cheers!

Tähtiromaani

Sorry, only in Finnish!

Katsoessaan elämäänsä taaksepäin hän oli tyytyväinen, hän oli menestynyt hyvin; hän oli edennyt urallaan niin korkealle, kuin oli halunnut. Olo tutkivan tähtialuksen kapteenina oli hänen unelmiensa täyttymys. Varsinkin pienen sellaisen. Siinä oli juuri sopivasti vapautta ja vastuuta. Lisäksi hän oli saanut erinomaisen miehistön. Jos haittapuolia piti etsiä, ainoa mieleen tuleva oli se, ettei voinut oikein solmia suhteita planeetoille jääviin. Kun he seuraavan kerran pistäytyisivät, kaikki edellisellä kerralla paikalla olleet olisivat edesmenneet. Tähän ehkä tulisi muutos, sitten kun keksittäisiin viimein tapa pidentää elämää muuten kuin syväjäädytettynä, niin kuin tähtialuksissa tehtiin pitkien matkojen aikana.

Mutta nyt kapteenin piti keskittyä käsillä olevaan tehtävään. Aluksen tekoäly oli herättänyt heidät tutkimaan tarkemmin läheistä tähtijärjestelmää. Alus oli havainnut siinä jotakin tavanomaisesta poikkeavaa. Se oli jo laskenut reittisuunnitelman, joka veisi aluksen sopivan matkan päähän erästä planeettaa. Pienemmällä tutkimusaluksella sitten lähestyttäisiin kiinnostavia kohteita, jotka pantaisiin merkille kauempaa. He olivat ennenkin tehneet tämän tyyppisiä tutkimuksia, vaihtelevalla menestyksellä. Joskus oli jopa menetetty tutkimusaluksia, mutta se oli todella harvinaista. Useimmiten arvokkaimmat saaliit olivat suojattu hyvin, joten näissä harvinaisissa tapauksissa enemmänkin innostuttiin kuin surtiin menetettyä tutkimusalusta ja sen robottimiehistöä. Yleensä tämän jälkeen paikalle saavuttiin järeämmän ja älykkäämmän aluksen kanssa, joskus jopa laitettiin miehistön täysivaltaisia jäseniä aluksen kannelle johtamaan tutkimusretkikuntaa. Ja melkein aina saalis saatiin talteen.
Käsillä oleva tehtävä sai aseupseerin hykertelemään tyytyväisenä; hän saisi ottaa ensimmäiset tositilannetestit pikkusukkulan uudistetulla tekoälyllä. Hän oli vaivihkaa yhdessä aluksen pilotin kanssa suunnitellut ja asentanut siihen pari pikku uutuutta, joiden olemassaolosta ei tiennyt edes kapteeni, tai niin he luulivat. Siltä varalta, että joskus mahdollisesti esitettäisiin kiusallisia kysymyksiä, tämän varustelun virallinen selitys olisi, että näinä tiukkoina ja vaarallisina aikoina tuli pitää huolta kaikista resursseista mukaan lukien erityisesti kallisarvoiset sukkulat. Varustelun ansiosta aseupseeri, pilotti, softagurut, asentajat ja koneistajat saattoivat näin kehittää taitojaan ja toivottavasti oppia siinä sivussa jotain uutta. Näin kapteenikin asian näki, ja antoi asian olla. Ehkä ne pikkujutut olisivat vielä joskus hyödyksi. Tässä tapauksessa oli tosin vähättelyä puhua pikkujutuista, sillä tällä kertaa aseupseeri oli ylittänyt itsensä. Kapteenin tiedossa ei ollut, että kukaan olisi koskaan aiemmin onnistunut sovittamaan tämän kokoiseen sukkulaan sellaista määrää aktiivisia puolustuslaitteita. Suurin osa oli pelkkään puolustautumiseen, mutta olihan sukkulassa toki jotain kättä pitempää, jolla aiheuttaa harmaita hiuksia mahdollisille hyökkääjille. Sukkulan puolustuksen selkärankana olivat voimakkaat lähettimet, joilla oli mahdollista tuottaa hyökkääjän järjestelmään käytännössä ääretön määrä harhautusmaaleja. Näin vastustaja ei tietäisi, mitä maalia vastaan hyökätä. Jos tämä ei jostain syystä tehoaisi, pieni sukkula kykeni luomaan hetkellisen, erittäin voimakkaan suojakentän itsensä ympärille. Ja viimeisenä keinona oli nopeus. Alus kykeni uskomattomaan nopeuteen, ja sen kiihtyvyyskin oli omaa luokkaansa. Pilotin ollessa sukkulassa kaikkein tehokkaimpia parametreja ei voisi käyttää, sillä ne olisivat liikaa jopa hänenlaiselleen kokeneelle operoijalle, vaikka tällä olikin suojanaan suojapuku, joka oli varustettu monenlaisilla suojamekanismeillä gravitaatiota vastaan.
Sukkulan tekoäly oli vertaansa vailla. Ollessaan järkevän kommunikointimatkan päässä emoaluksesta se pystyi käyttämään hyödykseen tämän suurta laskentakapasiteettia. Sukkula päivitti säännöllisesti tietokantansa emoaluksen kanssa. Kaikki kommunikointi tapahtui suunnatuilla lasersäteillä. Jos suoraa yhteyttä ei voitu käyttää, käytettiin linkkiasemia, jotka liikkuivat itsenäisesti säilyttäen tiukan muodostelmansa emoaluksen ympärillä huolimatta tämän liikkeistä. Näiden asemien sijainti ja olemassaolo yleensäkään oli mitä suurin salaisuus. Aluksen ulkopuolella niistä ei hiiskuttu sanaakaan. Emoaluksen tekoälyn käyttämisen lisäksi sukkula kykeni suorittamaan monimutkaisia tehtäviä itsenäisesti silloin, kun yhteys emoalukseen oli jostain syystä poikki. 

Kiertoradalle asettumisen jälkeen sukkula lähetettiin matkaan. Sukkulan suunnatessa kohti kohdettaan kapteeni jäi pohdiskelemaan, mihin suuntaan veisi hahmottelemansa dekkarin juonta.

Hän taiteili kapealla nuoralla. Menneisyyden haamut olisivat kohta hänen kintereillään ja nyt uutena ahdistelijana olivat ex-vaimon velkojat. Velka oli yksipuolisesti langetettu hänelle ex-vaimon kuoltua, vaikkei tämä enää kuollessaan edes ollut hänen vaimonsa. Ex-vaimo, Karin, oli ajautunut huonoon seuraan ja velkaantunut pahoin uhkapelissä eron jälkeen. Pian velkaantumisen jälkeen Karin oli kadonnut epäilyttävissä olosuhteissa. Myöhemmin hänen ruumiinsa oli löytynyt reikiä täyteen puhkottuna eräältä sivukujalta. Sitten, kuukausia tapahtuneen jälkeen, hänen toimistolleen tuli pari puolituttua Kahelinin torpedoa käymään. He ilmoittivat yksikantaan, että Karinin pelivelat olivat siirtynyt hänen maksettavakseen ja että maksuaikataulu oli tiukka. Iltaan mennessä hänen oli suoritettava tähtitieteellinen summa kokonaisuudessaan tai hyvä ei heiluisi. Toisaalta, jos hän olisi ex-vaimon vakuutteluista huolimatta rahaton, Kahelinilla olisi käyttöä taitavalle dekkarille, jonka maine ei vielä ollut pahemmin tahriintunut. -Palataan illalla asiaan, hän oli sanonut ja päättänyt palaverin lyhyeen. 

Nyt olisi siis herätettävä nukkuva karhu, sillä mieluummin hän kohtaisi menneisyytensä kuin jäisi Kahelinin juoksupojaksi. Menneisyys oli puhelinsoiton päässä. Edellisessä elämässään hän oli ollut sanavalmis puhelinmyyjä, joka oli ollut väärässä paikassa väärään aikaan. Eräänä kosteana baari-iltana hän oli kuullut viereisestä pöydästä sisäpiirin tietoa merkittävistä pörssikaupoista. Eihän hän voinut vastustaa kiusausta, vaan soitti tutulle pörssimeklarille, jonka avulla voitto kotiutettiin ja sidottiin monimutkaisen järjestelyn avulla vain heidän yhdessä ja samaan aikaan lunastettavaksi. Suut luvattiin pitää kiinni molemmin puolin ja sordiino päällä muutama vuoden. Mutta pörssimeklari, naisiin menevä mies, ei pystynytkään pitämään omaa osaansa sopimuksesta, vaan höläytti eräälle naiselle jotain erityisen hellän hetken lomassa. Nainen sattui olemaan erään sisäpiiriläisen tuttu ja hän puhui eteenpäin, jolloin juttu levisi käsiin kuin ne kuuluisat Jokisen eväät. Meklari sotki hänetkin mukaan juttuun, jonka jälkeen oli nostettava kytkintä ja liukkaasti. Uusi nimi, uusi kaupunki ja uusi työ. Jälkeenpäin hän luki lehdestä, että Meklari menetti työnsä, rahansa ja polvensa, henkensä hän sai pitää. Ja naisen. 

Meklarin ja hänen välinsä olivat vielä selvittämättä. Huonot ajat ja vähäiset työtehtävät olivat syöneet hänen käteissäästönsä. Suurempi osa saaliista oli valitettavasti Meklarin takana. Vaikkei hän Meklariin enää pahemmin luottanutkaan, tämä oli kuitenkin paras vaihtoehto, puolituttukin oli parempi kuin täysin tuntematon. Täytyi vain pitää huolta, että ohareiden teko tulisi Meklarille niin kalliiksi, ettei vaaraa siihen olisi. Meklarin nainen oli hänen tietojensa mukaan pitänyt edelleen yhteyttä sisäpiirin jäseniin ja oli oletettavaa, etteivät he olleet unohtaneet menettämäänsä osuutta. Heidät pitäisi siis puhua mukaan vuosisadan puhallukseen, josta he saisivat rahansa korkojen kera takaisin.
Suunnitelman ja mukaan otettavan henkilömäärän paisuessa kuin pullataikina hänen mielessään käväisi, olisiko sittenkin helpompaa jäädä Kahelinin juoksupojaksi loppuelämäkseen, joka todennäköisesti olisi erittäin lyhyt. Toisaalta Kahelin oli tunnettu viattomien ihmisten murskaamisesta, johon hän ei halunnut osallistua. 

Selvittääkseen ajatuksiaan hän päätti vierailla erään Osastonhoitajan luona. He olivat tutustuneet erään kimurantin jutun yhteydessä ja pitäneet yllä ystävyyttä siitä lähtien. Karin oli ollut mustasukkainen, mutta tällä kertaa aivan syyttä. 

Smart Roadster’s Handbrake Lever

I recently aquired a Smart Roadster and boy I like it! It is very fun to drive.

Being such an old vehicle (2003), it has a tendency to develop faults. This time it was a handbrake lever. The tip of the lever popped out and lever did not want to stay in upright position at all. This is a common fault and it is known very well with owners of these little cars. Recommended way to repair this is buying a whole new handbrake lever. That would set you back about 140€, plus installing cost. That does not suffice with us.

This thing circled in red popped out. Yellow circe will be explained later. Being a bit lazy, I did not want to remove seats and carpet. I decided to try repair it in situ. Before this view I had to remove some plastic. Very well executed tutorials can be found online, where they explain, how to take things apart from Smart roadster. I followed one and tada, cover is removed!

Next step was to drill five rivets away with a cordless drill. After that it was possible to remove the guts of lever.

I found out that a little piece was broken from the main shaft.

That cavity moves another lever whic control how up handbrake lever stays when pulled. See below. It looks very fragile and I wonder how engineers would choose this way to do it. Maybe it has something to do with artificial aging or something.

Instead of buying a new handbrake lever I decided to try repair it with soldering iron.

Heating turned out okay.

When drilling those rivets out, I realized that one rivet was different than others. It was a lot thicker. Turned out that this rivet was also a pivoting point for a smaller lever inside handbrake lever. Smaller lever can be seen in the CAD-picture. This rivet was also circled yellow in the second first picture. I had to make threads to it in order to get it back without welding. Actually, I used M5 screws and nuts to get my handbrake lever back in shape.

There was some minor hickups during the way. One of those four screws had to leave because screw’s head was too big and it was blocking way for one screw of the plastic cover. I also had to melt plastic cover because those nuts was protruding too much.

Finally it was all in one piece! 🙂

I had to add that black zip tie even before this job, because somebody before me had broken those small plastic clips which keeps front piece of hadbrake lever cover together.

Now I just have to wait and see, how much extra time I got with this repair.

Being such an old car, there is definetely more repairs to come..

Cheers!

Acrylic Letter Opener

I stumbled across a piece of acrylic sheet in my  parts box and decided that it can be a good candidate for a Letter Opener. I decided to make a double edged model.

At first it went through a sanding disk process which gave it approximated dimensions.

More sanding with disk and hand; shape is more recognisable.

Even more sanding, with water this time.

The latest treatment was made with toothpaste.

This quick one evening project turned out quite like I visioned it. Material is almost clear and one can see throuhg it quite easily.

There are some minor cracks in the handle because this piece was a part of an old acrylic table desk and this specific part was on the edge. It has had some rough handling and therefore the cracks.

The future plan is to polish it more and add some engraving to the handle. However, small cracks inside the handle stays on despite how much I polish it. I guess they are decorative from now on..

 

Flashlight reveals that there is a lot more polishing ahead..

But I think it looks quite cool!

3D-printer

Some time ago I aquired a 3D-printer which use PLA. It is a Anycubic Kossel Pulley.

After printing a few test prints with it I decided to make a small box for my Jabra bluetooth handsfree. Every morning I take the handsfree with me but there are times when I can not use it. So I put it in the pocket but then the orange earpiece tends to get loose and disappear when I took something else from my pocket.

I had to design the box by myself because I could not find any good alternative from the web. So I took measurements and designed the box with DesignSpark Mechanical.

Then I sliced the box and lid with Cura. Printing results turned out to be fine:

I have happily used it for a couple of months. Now when the handsfree is in the box in my pocket, the orange earpiece stays in place and does not get lost when I take something from my pocket.

Smart Fortwo Engine repair

My poor Smart Fortwo ate oil. A lot. I wont be wrong if I say 2 litres for a 1000km. It is a common mode of failure with these cars. One little plastic valve breaks and eventually your engine is busted. That, of course if you dont know it is broken. Oil rings get stuck and engine starts to consume oil.

When buying my Smart, I knew it consumed oil. I drove happily with it one Summer and when Winter came, I thought that I should do something to it. Of course problem had escalated. The exhaust manifold had  cracked, turbo gone beyond repair, etc..

Cracked turbo manifold. Some of you maybe spotted also that the wastegate actuator retaining circlip is missing.

Cylinder head, still in the engine.

A big lower block from the engine. In order to remove connecting rods from the crankshaft, this had to be removed. If those two grey plates in the center of the block was open, removing of the block was not needed. From the internet one can find that somebody slized those plates away when block was still in the engine. I did not had the courage to do that.. I also hesitated to do that when part was out. Maybe those plates has something to do with engine rigidity. So they left untouched.

Engine from underneath, after removing that block. Crankshaft and connecting rods can be nicely seen.

In the middel of engine stripping process.

Sympton of the disease. Stucked piston oil ring.

Dirt in the piston grooves.

I put new piston and oil rings in. Before that I naturally cleaned pistons and grooves.

Cleaned pistons and new rings inside cylinder block. Arrow is pointing right when watching to front from the back of the car.

Because engine was open, I took the opportunity to change chains, slides, chain tensioners and sprockets for timing and oil pump. I also fitted a new oil pump.

New and old oil pump side By side.

A new oil pump in it’s chamber. (Btw, changing it was a waste of money, it had not wear at all.)

When putting on new oil pump’s sprockets I found out that old and new sprockets were different in size. I figured out that with new sprockets oil pump’s shaft was going to rotate a bit faster than before. New parts are in the lower part of the pic. The rightmost part goes in the crankshaft. Interesting part is that it is friction mounted. So the nut which goes on the end of the crankshaft should be in the right torque! Nut also holds multirib pulley in place.

This is a little over 115 000 km used timing sprocket from other end of camshaft.

I also fitted a new oil pan, with a drain plug in it. No picture of it, sorry!

During reassembly I had at least two oops-moment. The first was when I fitted pistons back to engine. I forgot to remove that little nozzle which sprays oil to piston from underneath. Of course connecting rod got stuck to it and nozzle got severe damage. Luckily one member of the Facebook group I belong helped my to sort it out. On the right is obviously unbroken part.

Another oops-moment was when I was torqueing connector rod bolts. My torque wrench was out of calibration and I used too much force to that bolt and it snapped. When that happened I thought that game was over. How on earth I was gonna get that snapped bolt out from connecting rod? Further investigation revealed that it was not a big deal. The bolt came out with just turning it with fingers! Phew, that was a releaf! Actually, it did not went all the way off, it just stretched. The light is visible through bolt.. 🙂

Luckily I checked oil level regularly so engine did not run dry thus cylinder head was salvageable. It only needed new valve guides. I let a proper shop to do that.

Another angle of the refurbished cylinder head.

 

Refurbished cylinder head in its place. Manouvering in space like this is really painful!

In the middle of the process..

The rest of the job was just a hard work. In the middle of reassembly I thought that maybe I have taken just a little too big bite. Eventually all went well and I have droven my Smart almost a thousand kilometers after that major engine overhaul!

A box full of new spare parts. Worth of it is little over 1200€! In total I spend to this engine rebuilt about 1600€. Smart parts aint cheap.. So better keep my Smart in good condition from now on!

 

Rack for backpacks

A couple weeks ago Lady of the House asked me to do something to all those backpacks hanging on the floor and corners. Naturally I took the challenge and started to make plans and specs with her. The goal was set:

1. Be able to carry 3 medium sized backpacks, fully loaded with books.

2. Looks nice.

3. Stays on the wall.

The starting point was a pine board. I cut it to lenght and drilled some through-holes to it. I also did three round pockets on rear side of the board. It also got some paint to match the wall it was going to.

When woodworking was settled, it was time to fire the lathe up.

Since I do not have pictures from the first rack, here are some from the second one.

 I ordered some hooks from that Swedish four-letter international furniture brand, only to find out that support mechanism inside that hook was plastic. 

That black thing in the middle of those shiny metal parts.

Before they arrived I planned to turn some aluminum plates to support those hooks. When the plastic was found it was only the matter of some more turning. I ended up using only the cap from the original hooks. 

I turned plates under the hooks and to backside of board. 

I drilled a hole on that plate going to backside to keep it from turning if tightning bolt get loose. I made a midsection part which actually holds the load. It was turned to lenght, threaded, and drilled from steel. Because of the set parameters I could not find standard bolt to fit inside midsection. Lathe solved that problem. That bolt holds everything together. It goes through midsection, support plate and pine board straight to the backplate which threads holds it in position. Bolt can be tightened up with an allen key. Midsection has an shoulder which keep the bolt from slipping through. The cap can be rotated in place when other parts of the hook are assembled.

When all parts was done, it was time to assemble the rack and attach it to the wall. 

The end product was actually so good that I received another order, this time a little shorter one and a different colour. 

As of writing this it is not on the wall yet, but it is ready to go.
(This blog text was created with a mobile phone application and boy, I feel that it killed all that small amount of smoothness of writing I may have had..)

Putting Some Smartness Into A Smart Fortwo

I have been a happy owner of a 2006 700cc Smart Fortwo since last Summer. But I have been want to put some automation to it for a while. I started my endeavor to making windows open even when ignition is off. There is easy to  follow instruction on the net.

I plan to have a spesific feature which for example a coupe BMW has. When door is opened, door window automatically lowers a bit and when closing the door, window goes automatically up. I want it because every time I close the door I feel overpressure in the cabin. It seems there is no pressure relieve valve like in more ordinary cars. Windshield is the biggest window in the car and because overpressure the sealing of it get much stress when closing doors. A very common problem with Smart Fortwo is a leaking winshield. My car had it also. I think that leaking is caused by overpressure. Luckily I managed to find leakage before my control unit got wet. By the way, that control unit controls pretty much everything in this car so it really should stay dry. It is located below dashboard so it easily get wet if windshield leaks.

That window feature is not implemented yet but I have made some testing. Maybe I’ll write something about it when it is done.

At the moment I just finished a very early alpha version of the control of seat heating. A small microcontroller(Arduino) controls with relays contact pads of seat heater switches. It puts them on automatically when head lights are switched on. After 30 seconds it puts them off and they stays off until lights are cycled off and on again. Convenient! Heating time is short because heating element is so powerful.

As I want more, I equipped control system with a rotary encoder, a temperature sensor and an LCD. My plan is that user can control various variables in the system, for example heating time. And of course temperature depended heating. When environment is warm enough one do not want his/hers seat to be heatened! LCD can display temperature readings and/or how much heating time is left.

Here are some pics taken during the process:

The initial plan was to install everything here.

Started to work by removing the Safety Triangle and dissassembling it.

The journey continues by re-engineering.

The very first version of connection board.

Here one can see it from another side. I planned to use PC817 optocouplers for isolation but along the way I switched to relays. More on that later. I took the liberty to use USB-connector for connection with car’s electric system. D9 is for rotary encoder.

This is a starting point for house making to rotary encoder. Black case is from an old wall charger for Nokia mobile phone. Knob is from an old car stereo or something like that.

Here is a rotary encoder soldered in place. When I was continuing this build I realized that I should have put rotary the other way around, three legs pointing to left instead what it is now. Well, it happens to all of us..

I also had to install capacitors to reduce interference. It still needs something, readings are not reliable enough.

There is something in the mess, I rarely see a workbench which is tidy and clean. Hmm, except Quin Dunki’s bench. Her work is amazing.

Anyway, some progress has achieved.

This is my power supply. In it’s early life it served as 12V mobile phone charger. Through this I can safely use my small embedded systems in electrycally noisy car environment.

This is my new connection board equipped with relays. As mentioned, previous plan was to use optocouplers. I did not managet to get them work, maybe because of some my stupid coding error. Anyway, I switched to relays.

Those relays “push” the triangle’s buttons when commanded by Arduino. Smart has conveniently system I like very much: Pushbutton is ON-OFF state information for car’s computer instead of some resistance change. This way relays can be used to “push” buttons.

From left to right connectors are: Black: Temperature probe connection, USB: Power to my system and controlling buttons and D9 is for rotary as earlier mentioned. Temperature connector in salvaged from an old PC’s motherboard. It is an audio connector. In the future there might be coming a minor problem with D9. In the end of cable is a quite heavy connector and stiff car’s suspension combined with that weight might do some issues by removing solder joints during time. That is to be seen.

This is a starting point for facade. The white plate is salvaged from an old laptop LCD monitor.

And here we are: Casing for encoder is ready, temperature sensor(red thing) is ready, main unit is ready. Now it only needs to be installed. And it maybe need some clever programming also. Now it is only a timer ) :

This is only temporarily mock-up.

From another angle. When thinking how to install main unit on top of dashboard wisely(read: do not drill holes in that dashboard) I got an idea: Why not make a console in front of gear stick and stuff the whole system inside it? That way there is room for that earlier mentioned window-control also.

Yes, that is a good idea. But then again that means a lot of work and no automated seat heaters yet. And Summer is coming. Also, I finally want to enjoy the work of my hands. It has been a long building process. What to do? Naturally install the system. Temporarily, of course. 😉

Encoder is located beside the gear stick. Temperature sensor is on the floor, for now. Wires needs to be sorted. But it works. Hooray!

Here is a link for video

That’s all for now!