I thought id make a blog-ish thing here about my daily tinkerings, since i often get told that it is rather interesting. However i must warn you that i do not really care for looks - to me it is all about function.
I’m in my thirties now and started as car mechanic (mainly fiat of course), then did some years as webdev and linux admin and finally got the chance to become embedded developer, building and supporting bootloaders. Finally going back to the realms of C, far from the weirdness of web development and consulting.
My car often gets me a lot of hate, so i might remove this again if people get too offended.
Currently i’m in the process of preparing my tiny RV '95 Fiat Cinquecento for 1 week of camping/party out in nature, together with my cat didi. For this i installed a tiny AC unit that is able to run off of the battery array, upgraded the solar panels to 200Wp, which creates more shadow for the actual roof and can provide up to 50% of the running consumption of the AC. Currently it is limited to around 165Wp by the small MPP Charging regulator.
I lovingly call it the
It runs two separate on-board intel atom platforms, one for infotainment and one primarily for (pre OBD) engine diagnostics. Since this car has a great community in europe, there is even an open source implementation of a full engine diagnostics suite for it’s ECU:
http://iaw-scan2.sourceforge.net/?p=download
Interior is subject to change, but here you see the infotainment unit and cb radio. Also included is my trusty companion Didi. He’s a deaf cat i rescued from a shelter about two years ago that loves travelling with me, camping and generally accompanies me almost everywhere i go.
There is a foldover bed instead of a passenger seat, the head-end box also serves as kitchen-storage and compartment for the secondary batteries and general electronics addons.
The ugly white stuff on the outside is epdm foam which is supposed to help with keeping the sun-heat out for AC-efficiencies sake. The interior walls are also insulated and all hollow sections of the body have first been glaced in underbody wax and then filled with packaging foams. There is also an independent heater that rtuns on gasoline and electricity. The interior fan regulation has been converted to use an efficient step down converter for airflow regulation instead of silly heat resistors.
Let’s see if i’m actually able to keep a blog and if anyone is even interested.
Here’s some bonus footage of didi eating his veggies: