Yikes, more than 6 months since last update, and nearly that much since my last code changes. Very sad... I appreciate the continued interest from those who have messaged privately.

More recently @jonofmac got in some testing on his original Manipulator Mini and found 2 wires crossed in his personal wire harness. Sounds like fixing that has caused it to now work as expected, though more investigation/troubleshooting is expected.

I've been gradually getting back into this project over the last week, here's where I'm at:

• A housing is really needed. It's kinda complicated, but not, and so I've started putting in some time on it.
• A major functionality of V2.0 is the +12v implementation. For that to be successful I need to be able to measure current consumption during operation and sleep... and I got hung up on the need for a micro-amp meter. It seems I may have been overthinking this, naturally. Looks like I can just get an appropriate multimeter; currently eyeing the Fluke 17B+. EDIT: bought a
  AstroAI DM2000 multimeter
  AstroAI DM2000 multimeter
  , looks to have good micro-amp resolution & accuracy especially for $37.
• There's still a lot more code testing and writing to implement all of V2.0's new features, but I was putting this off until more progress was made on the items above.

 

a very nice project, I am not an engineer but if I can help it will be with pleasure

 

glad to see you're still working on it.

 

Absolutely.
Over the last few weeks I've been pouring in a ton of hours (and losing sleep, of course) working on the new case/housing design. It's potentially complete, just 3D printed the latest iteration last night. Picked a new filament to try and so far it seems to be working out: . PETG is my go-to filament, and this glass fiber version is very stiff.

Took a while to figure out how to go about securing the Manipulator V2 to the SWPS... ultimately the solution came to me one night while trying to fall asleep @ 1:00am (had to be up for work @ 6:00am). Will show more details once the new housing is complete, but it's a spring-loaded design that has multiple retention features to make sure it'll stay on the SWPS. Installing/removing it is VERY easy & quick, even easier than removing the SWPS mating connector.

On another front, I had pondered ideas for how to go about soldering the tiny pins & sockets to the PCB (the method I used for the first 2 PCBs is arduous and annoying). These pins & sockets interface to the SWPS and car's SWPS connector so they need to be positioned accurately during soldering... I designed a jig to help, which I intend to machine from 303 stainless steel this week. Picked 303 because it's easier to machine than 304, and stainless steel in general has a low thermal conductivity which means it will suck up less heat during soldering compared to many other metals.

With any luck my next update will have pictures to accompany all this text!

 

very good work

 

I look forward to see photos

 

cool stuff. I'm still thinking about doing the mag ride shock retrofit to my c6 and have the shock tune flashed by that retired gm engineer guy that did the zr1. seems like it would be nice to have a true touring setting and a proper track setting.

for it to work thou, it needs the proper steer angle sensor data and I'm not willing to give up my angle kit for it haha. I'm in no rush as the used parts get cheaper the older they get haha. it's just a long term thing I might do.

 

Things are moving slower than I hoped... issues with installing genuine Helicoils into the 3D printed plastic (cheap China "helicoils" are installing great), tooling machining challenges, etc. Have extra cheap China helicoils hopefully arriving in a few days, and I am optimistic about finishing the tooling tomorrow.

But I do have a "teaser" to share:




This one doesn't have a completed circuit board; still needs the pins & sockets soldered that interface to the SWPS and SWPS harness, as well as the Arduino installed. It's just the shell with base PCBA installed under the dash (proving out the new case/housing design).
Beyond that I still have to complete the OLED screen design/layout and wire harness.
Plus all the other stuff mentioned in prior posts.

Had an idea to incorporate some sort of locking feature over the SWPS harness connector to prevent it coming loose (think I read somewhere this was an issue on the C6 ?).

Oh interesting, I can't recall learning your intended use case for a SWPS Manipulator, but I'm glad to know.

 

Made a crappy animation in CAD to demonstrate the assembly of the new housing.

Also have some pictures showing the completed pin & socket soldering jig that works great! Keep in mind the long gold pins are tiny, 0.040" diameter. This jig is microscopic, haha.

 

I always geek out so hard when I see your posts.

Allow me to throw gasoline on the fire. From a perspective of your potentially profiting more from the work you have been doing on this so diligently over time, I wager the new Turn One tight ratio rack may gain a broader interest that the FDF mini mantis in terms of sales. Any time someone needs to replace or rebuild a rack, there is a higher chance they will buy up to one of those and for many the car remains a street/hpde dual use vehicle. That's a lot of potential customers to supplement your diaper budget at home.

 

That's a really clever approach to packaging this thing. Bravo.

 

There are certainly some perspectives to consider. Some may recall that one of my goals with V2 was to reduce labor on my end, and so far it's still kinda high on labor haha. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of throughput I could have...

The "drift" crowd is potentially a large consumer of this device, and they're all running some sort of angle kit. It's not too much effort to add new angle kits, and same could go for the Turn One rack if/ when it materializes. Admittedly I'm curious what Turn One's approach will be for dealing with the inherent incompatibility between their new rack and the C5 EBCM programming.

Thanks! Just glad I have something to show for all the time/effort I've traded for sleep.

 

Hit a snag tonight... for the next 3 units I finished up all the soldering/assembly of the complete circuit boards with Arduino boards and connectors (completed only one back in August, so now 4 units total). Well, I wanted to make the first completed SWPS Manipulator V2 with housing and everything... and of course the Arduino doesn't fit in the bottom housing piece. I'm using a generic "Arduino Pro Mini" CAD model, and a China clone "Arduino Pro Mini" board, and apparently there's a disconnect. Gotta measure the Arduino board and update my CAD model, and see where/how the housing design needs tweaking.

 

I was thinking the same thing. very clean.

I'm curious about the rack too. if I had to guess they are targeting track cars that don't run factory electronics?

 

Progress continues to be slow, but I now have 2 complete SWPS Manipulator V2 units sans screens and full-functioning code. To that end (so I can test/tweak V2's code) I've been working on integrating the little OLED screen to my ash tray mount design, and it will also include a USB programmer necessary for the smaller Arduino Pro Mini board (since it lacks an integrated USB programmer like on the V1's larger Arduino Nano).






So this panned out! Came up with a (IMO) clever solution that ensures the SWPS Manipulator cannot come off the SWPS AND the SWPS connector cannot disconnect. I would be comfortable without the orange piece installed so it's just icing on the cake.

 

This is exciting. Looks a lot easier to mount.

Did you solve the on center issue when parked?

 

Yeah, it's a much more robust design. And no pesky wire harnesses to contend with (other than a basic 6-pin JST XH cable harness for the display, which I can buy from Amazon)

Frankly I don't think this can be entirely solved within the scope of this phase of the project. To solve it 100% I would need data for front wheel speeds and/or yaw to determine "straight ahead" as the EBCM does. I understand this could be doable with a separate device or something reading the serial bus and feeding data to the Manipulator, or maybe incorporating an accelerometer.

However, I have mitigation plans in place particularly with V2:

• I still have planned to change the behavior when it does a "zone shift" upon detecting that its zero degree position is off by +/- 360 degrees
  • the idea being to perform the zone shift while the SWPS is near actual center so that the output angle is not a large jump (right now it does a zone shift when a non-center position is detected, which makes a big change on the output angle, likely causing the EBCM to throw a fault)
  • this is probably a fairly minimal change which would also apply to Manipulator V1
• By supplying external constant 12V to V2's 5V regulator, the Arduino can be kept awake after the car's key is turned off. So that way if the car is turned off with steering wheel far from center, then this position data can be retained in RAM (or maybe even EEPROM?). And the Arduino would sleep until key-on to keep current consumption low.
  • there's still lots more code updates to incorporate this feature
  • of course if V2 loses 12V (battery dies or is disconnected) or steering wheel moves far while the car is off, then it's back to square one

My biggest issue right now is that I haven't meaningfully worked on the V2 Arduino code since last summer. The time I've been able to spend on this project has mostly gone towards hardware since, well, I can't do much with new code if hardware is unavailable to support/test it.

 

A tangible model. Good timing as my projects slowly coalesce.

 

Curious to see if progress is made Would love this more compact module too haha.

 

Unfortunately, nothing particularly useful.
Managed to get a bit hung up making the programmer accessible through my ash tray mount... it's not complicated but I've been swamped at work over the past month, and most non-work time going to kids + wife. Today is my first real visit here in 3-4 weeks!

Once I get the programmer added to the ash tray mount the next step would be working on the Arduino code, first of which is progressing further on the new OLED screen.