u/svalkas

TLDR: I'm working on a project for my own consumption, but curious if it's the sort of thing anyone else would find interesting and maybe want if I did a group buy of parts down the road

I really, really love the "purity" of driving an analog, no-touchscreen w123. It's one of the reasons I love the car (even though it's not entirely exclusive to these). Driving is sensory, zen-like... something I totally enjoy as its own activity.

Still... especially for longer drives to new places, it's really nice to have driving directions. Yep, Google maps has addled my brain and I'm too impatient to use a print atlas any more. 😆

But smartphone mounts are annoying, and then my phone is there in front of me with all of its distractions.

I'm kinda sick of smartphones in general, too. My phone died, and then after a few days of no phone, and then using a Lightphone III for a minute, it hit me... you know what would be really cool? A non-flashy, primarily text directions system that would look factory-option-ish, sorta like the old Becker radios with driving directions that were an option a few years later (but aren't really still usable today).

I looked and couldn't find anything I loved available, so I started making it. I've written some code, think I've figured out the hardware side, about to start ordering parts at the rate my microbudget allows.

It'll mount into the clock slot (sorry analog clock, I love you but you're an easy sacrifice here), in the instrument panel. No modifications to start beside tapping into an ignition-controlled power wire from elsewhere in the instrument panel (clock already gets constant-on and ground).

Default: clock.

Press the clock adjust button: 80s sounding chime, and voice recognition to input where I want to go

Clock knob single press to confirm location or twist to cycle through options (if I search "Home Depot," for example)

Then- text based directions and a turn direction arrow. Maybe I'll have it read them aloud, or give a "turn soon" chime. 80s LCD looking, easy to read bold font, amber orange on a black background or vice versa if it looks more legible. It'll have its own compact speaker so I don't have to futz with integrating into the audio system.

There's a lot of other simple functionality I intend to bake in eventually: searching along route for fuel stops (filtered for diesel availability), keeping journey active and loaded even when I shut the car off for a meal break, etc. For now, I'll have it quietly tether to get internet for looking up directions via a phone app that'll like via Bluetooth. I'm figuring out the API so hopefully that gets installed once on my phone, and then getting into the car loads that without needing to take my phone out of my bag.

COULD I just turn my phone on night mode and do not disturb and use android auto? Absolutely. Do overwrought obsessive projects like this being me joy? That too, so I think I'll do it.

I want to keep it simple, but a couple other things I'm tempted to implement:

Backup camera, for another member of my household whose spatial sense has gone soft due to modern automobiles

Built in battery/alternator monitor (would run in background, just generate an alert if it sees something notably off)

Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone find this interesting, appealing, something you'd spend money on, absolutely stupid, all of the above?

Last time I tried to print something half this size, Very Bad Things^(TM) happened while I was out of the room, and I found myself buying a whole new extruder and chasing issues for months before I was getting actually good prints again.

Nervous about this one, but here go... probably going to attempt tomorrow

31 hrs predicted, running at 180mm/s. I'm afraid to go any faster on a bedslinger with something this tall and massive, and might even manually slow it down once it gets a couple inches above the bed.

Roof of a dollhouse. Annoying thing is that one critical dimension is 230mm- so it has to go vertical like this to fit, else the whole darn thing would be lower and so much less stressful.

Very open to any suggestions, recycled regret, etc.

https://preview.redd.it/w8dyekup3q4h1.png?width=1120&format=png&auto=webp&s=a56b42a16416325b52b1385b7114cf91a5d00590

Weird. This was happening intermittently for a few days, but trying to print a second tiem always fixed it. Today, I got two good prints, now can't get anything to go.

Select a file, confirm, preheats, then... progress goes from 0. to 100 in half a second.

Tried reslicing. Tried reformatting the SD card. Switched to trying a calibration cube. Switched from Cura to Creality slicer. Nothing.

3v3se. Startup gcode below.

Ideas?