March 4th, 2010 by Jonathan
We made some progress with the Sigma last weekend, until we discovered that the bonnet was completely out of alignment and the whole front end was out of whack more than we thought. One step forward, two steps back, oh well. The other day I received the indicator/wiper switch after waiting a week for delivery (how hard can it be, seriously???), so now the car has a steering wheel again and indicators 
.
Hopefully I’ll be getting another engine that I can use outside of the car to allow me to redo the supercharger setup. Despite this though I’ll be going away for the next few weeks so I won’t be able to do much until I get back after Easter. Good news is that I’ll hopefully get a nice cash injection in the meantime which means I’ll be able to start doing a few more things upon my return 
(new tyres, exhaust and supercharger pulley).
I also need to come up with a name for the car. I was thinking of the Bitsamissin Sigmate, or Sigmate for short.
February 26th, 2010 by Jonathan
Work is coming along nicely for the new beastie. A couple of friends and I fixed up a lot of the front end last weekend, with just a little more to go this weekend. I managed to get a replacement filter but I’m still waiting for the combination switch I sorta broke (in my defence, it was already kinda broken, I just made it worse). Once that’s done I’ll give it the once over with a fine tooth comb and off to the rego inspector for a roadworthy certificate (I’ll end up getting it engineered eventually).
Next step is to start tinkering. First cab off the rank is a 2.5″ exhaust to compliment the extractors, refit the supercharger, MSD 6AL-2 ignition (or 6BTM, haven’t decided yet), MSD Blaster SS coil, a couple of 10″ Davies Criag thermo fans, better disc rotors and suspension, and not to forget the conversion to manual.
Eventually I aim to get an Astron II head polished and ported and whatever else pops into my head in the distant future…
Getting there...slowly...
What's left of the steering column after I'd finished with the combination switch
Blow me (said the Astron)
My assistant
The manager, grrr
February 20th, 2010 by Jonathan
Well, it’s certainly been a while. In the midst of the holiday season, moving house and work left me little time for this site. Now that things are starting to settle down a bit I should be able to start updating some more once again .
My first car was an old Chrysler GE Sigma, and those of you who have known me for a long time would remember the fun we used to have in that car (and the crazy stuff we did to it like putting Christmas lights on it and supercharging it). Over the past few years since I got rid of my last Sigma I’ve been thinking about getting another one and doing it up in ways that I was unable to when I was younger. Now that I live in a nice big house and have a wonderful girlfriend who shares my passion for cars I have the opportunity to do such a thing. A few weeks ago I decided to have a look on eBay to see what I could find in the way of old Sigmas and came across this:
It’s a 1984 GK Sigma with only 137,000 km on the clock (that’s less k’s than my 2003 Falcon). What really appealed to me was what had already been done to the engine which I’sd also been planning to do along the line – balance shaft bypass kit, extractors, weber carby and a few other things. What was even more surprising is that it has power windows, central locking and air conditioning and they all work. The catch was that it’d been in a minor accident which meant that the front end would need to be bent back into shape a bit (nothing a little elbow grease and a big hammer can’t fix). I placed a bid managed to win the auction despite almost being outbidded at the last minute and towed it home that weekend.
Since it didn’t have a batttery, I had to go scrounging around for one. I managed to find one that I had stored from the last Sigma I owned, the only problem was that it was at least 6 or 7 years old and hadn’t been used for 5. To my surprise I hooked it up and turned the key and it started to crank over. To my shock it actually started after the 3rd or 4th go, which considering it had been sitting around for 12 months I thought was pretty good.
My first aim is to get the car roadworthy. This will entail straightening the front end, replacing the combination switch (as I broke it whilst trying to fix the hazard light switch), replacing the air filter, new tryres and doing a general check over to see that things are ok. Once it’s up and running my next step will be to put in a 2.5″ exhaust as it currently has the standard pea shooter exhaust and convert it to manual (I also got the parts off eBay for cheap). In the longer term I want to strap my baby – the supercharger(which I was recently reunited with) – to the engine, put some decent suspension, better braking discs and fit an Astron II port and polished head (the spare head came with the car , it just needs the work to be done to it). Of course as a result of the supercharger having to be fitted, the air con will need to be decommissioned (damn EPA) and a couple of minor things done to the engine (externally).
I’ll keep you guys posted of the progress I make/fines I get (j/k, I’ll behave…maybe).
December 4th, 2009 by Jonathan
Well, after a few weeks of searching I finally managed to find a new place so I’ll be moving in on the 18th. Until then I will be in the process of updating some of the furniture I had and doing other wonderful house moving related things (luckily I have 3G broadband for when I move my ADSL connection). Unfortunately I’m not going ot be in an area that supports FTTH, so no 100Mbps for now (although it is a bit pricey, plus I would have had to have a phone line, which I don’t want).
Earlier in the week I ordered a new 46″ Samsung Series 6 LCD TV and picked it up yesterday . I thought about getting one of the Samsung LED TV’s, but couldn’t really justify the extra price. I wanted a TV that supported USB devices as a minimum, then I discovered DLNA. I saw that the Series 6 TV’s supported DLNA and at first thought whoopee – that was until I looked into it a bit further and found out what DLNA is capable of, which is when I decided to go with the TV I got. Another thing about this TV is that it supports wireless through an addon dongle, which is an extra 80 – 90 bucks unfortunately.
I downloaded TVersity which gave me some issues initially, but thanks to this page I was able to get DLNA working to some extent (I still don’t have rewind or fast forward capabilities, and I’m not interested in hacking the firmware). One minor note (which actually can be irritating) with TVersity is that it tries to install the Ask toolbar, so you have to ensure that you deselect this option when you install it.
Now to figure out a way to play DVD’s without a DVD player…
November 30th, 2009 by Jonathan
Wow, that a weekend. I was hoping to get some time to do some work on my RC Car but time got the better of me (I wish we could have more long weekends). I’m currently in the process of looking for a house and buying new furniture at the same time which has taken up the majority of my time over the weekend. Hopefully I’ll get some time during the week to crunch out some more code for the RC Car and maybe get a few other odds and ends done at the same time .
November 26th, 2009 by Jonathan
I got a bit bored today and started thinking about a practical joke that could be played on unsuspecting/unwanted visitors (read: door to door sales people) – a doorbell that sprays a jet of water (or other liquid if you so please) whenever it is pressed.
This version uses the Adafruit Motor Shield (I knew I’d find a use for it after the RC Car Hack), but you could easily adapt it for other types of motor shields, or even a relay circuit. You’ll need your trusty Arduino, motor driving circuitry (the Adafruit Motor Shield in this case), a doorbell button and an old windscreen cleaner motor with the tank attached.
- Plug the motor shield into the Arduino and connect the motor to input 1 (polarity shouldn’t matter for now, if it’s wrong (i.e. nothing will come out of the squirter) we can either change the code to make the motor go in reverse instead of forwards or change the polarity later). Instructions on how to do that can be found here.
- Hook the doorbell button with a pull down resistor up to pin 2 of the Arduino. If you don’t know how to do this click here for instructions on how to do so.
- Load the following code:
#include <AFMotor.h>
AF_DCMotor motor(1, MOTOR12_1KHZ);
void setup()
{
pinMode(2, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
if (digitalRead(2) == HIGH)
{
motor.run(FORWARD);
delay(3000);
motor.run(RELEASE);
}
}
I haven’t actually put this to test as yet (I’m not really that mean, I just thought it would be a fun exercise). This guide is for educational purposes only (i.e. so you can use your wiper cleaner motor for good, not evil) – I don’t endorse any sort of behaviour that may injure/annoy people. The Potter Project accepts no responsibility for any injuries/offense caused directly or indirectly (i.e. angry wet people) as a result of you using this guide.
November 25th, 2009 by Jonathan
I noticed there were a couple of broken links as a result of the move. The links to the Picaso library and my modified version of the NewSoftSerial library should now be working along with a number of images that were missing .
I have also added a contact form, so if you find anything else broken or would like to contact e for any other reason, please visit the contact page on the right.
And finally, you can now share any of the posts using your favourite social web sites (i.e Facebook, etc…) by clicking on one of the buttons at the end of each post.
Jonathan
November 24th, 2009 by Jonathan
I thought I might take a bit of a break from the RC Car project for a bit and work on a few other things (variety is the spice of life). I decided to make a breadboard Arduino clone which I got working in a short amount of time. I initially had trouble uploading sketches due to the fact that the circuit didn’t have an auto reset (and I forgot that I had to press the reset button at a particular time in order to allow a sketch to be uploaded.
After doing a bit of research I found a way to implement the automatic reset on the older style Arduinos. All that’s involved is running a 0.1uF ceramic capacitor from the reset pin of the ATMega to the DTS pin of the FTDI cable/board and voila, automatic reset.
If that wasn’t enough, I thought I have quite a few 170 tie point Mini Breadboards lying around so why don’t I try using one of those instead one of my larger breadboards. I managed to get everything on the mini breadboard except for the reset switch and one lead of the auto reset capacitor. Now instead of using the mini breadboard with an Arduino shield, I can use the breadboard as the Arduino itself.
Here are some pictures/diagrams (excuse the “quality” once again I’m using my mobile):
Schematic of the Mini Breadboard Arduino*
Aerial view
Up close and personal – I even got the LED on there
As this version of the breadboard doesn’t have a 5v regulator on board you’ll need to use either USB power via an FTDI cable/board or an external 5v regulator.
* – While the schematic displays an ATMega8, an ATMega168 or 328 can be used as they have the same pinout (I actually used an ATMega328 for this example).
November 23rd, 2009 by Jonathan
If you can read this then it means The Potter Project has been moved to its new host .
Most of the old site should have been copied over by now but if you have any issues please leave a comment and I will look into it ASAP.
Jonathan
November 22nd, 2009 by Jonathan
Over the past week I’ve been working on bits and pieces of the RC car hack. I’ve created a prototype Arduino shield to carry the various components such as the XBee, Pololu motor driver and compass module. I have also included connections on the shield for a Ping))) module, slotted optical switch and GPS module (which isn’t doing too well :/).
I’ve also made another prototype board that has a joystick control and another XBee module for use as a remote control since I gutted the original RC circuitry. I might put an InputShield on my wishlist and combine it with the prototype I’ve made for the XBee connection for added stability (the XBee shield is not suitable as I want to use software serial).
Codewise I’ve managed to integrate all of the hardware excluding the GPS into the library. I’ve also managed to get the manual controls up and running to an extent. One of the problems I face is wheel spin. As I was unable to put the optical sensor on the front wheels I’ve resorted to putting them on the driving wheels and because the RC Car likes to do burnouts this will give us false distance readings when in automatic drive mode. My solution is to accelerate the car at a slower rate so that it doesn’t spin the wheels. I’ve tested some code that will do this, but it will need to be modified so that it doesn’t “block” the rest of the code (in other words I need to give it the multi threading effect) as this has an undesired efefct on the operation of the car.
Once I’ve done that I’ll work on the code that makes the car automagically run a course without any external input (sans GPS) and the RC Car hack will almost be complete.
