Personal Projects

The Barracks
#864

Like I’ve said before, compared to most R/C guys, I’m what you call a tame driver. Most of the crashes were grip flips since I haven’t gotten used to the new tyres.

With everything that can go wrong on the truck, I’ll end up lugging my entire toolbox. There’s very little that can go wrong on the truck and only be fixed in the field with a couple of tools. I’ve also noticed that apart from the rear left wheel nut, there isn’t one specific part that is consistently going wrong and even that one nut has been perfectly fine the past few runs.

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#865

Ok,maybe just a screwdriver ? :grin:

#866

Like I said, most problems can’t be fixed with just one or two tools.

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#867

Sit-rep:

The NiMH run is a no-go, I was going to go for the run today, but the moment I switched the ESC on, all I heard was a faint dying beep of the ESC trying to arm. The battery is finally completely dead after all these years. I guess I’ll be doing those bench tests after all, I just don’t know when.

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#868

Sharing this here… @framos1792 gave me the key of the Batcave and I couldn’t resist to go for a fly… :crazy_face: :joy: :joy:
:point_down:

70916

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#869

For a moment I thought that was your own design. :stuck_out_tongue: I want to see something original.

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#870

:grimacing: I’ll try… that one took me a while… because I didn’t have time to do it altogether… :sweat_smile:

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#871

Update time I think. I haven’t forgotten about this thread, I’ve just been buried with uni work. Now that I’m finished with exams, I’ll be catching up with personal projects. So, expect activity to pick up in the next week or two. I’ll probably been doing the laptop improvement and resoration mentioned in the geek thread first, and then I’ll come back to the other projects.

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#872

So much for this. Those following the tech thread will know that I’ve been working on the old laptop. RC project work doesn’t look like it will be resuming for a while longer. There are a couple of reasons behind this. The first is that I’m finishing up one last uni project until the 21st. The second is the weather, it’s been chucking it down with rain this past week. Yes, Banshee is waterproof and can handle it just fine, but I want to get some dry baseline runs in for suspension testing. And of course the third reason is the laptop restoration and upgrade I’ve been doing.

On the topic of laptops, I’ve decided to consider both my XPS and the dv6000 as projects, this means that activity relating to them will likely move to this thread (I’m pretty sure everyone is fed up of me spamming the tech thread) and I might even dedicate an entire site branch / section to them (like the current R/C and Lego sections) depending on how much more I get into fiddling with PCs and laptops. This also means that I’ll be posting a project summary of the restoration in this thread soon as well.

Speaking of site sections, I’ve decided to cancel the stomping ground section I planned ages ago on account of having no time to work on it, and I don’t think I can execute it as well as I had initially thought. Maybe I can bring it back at some point in the future, but I’m not promising anything.

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#873

Project Lazarus:

Those of you who follow the tech thread will know all of this already, this is not meant for you, this is for people who don’t follow that thread.

Over the past month I’ve been restoring and upgrading my mum’s old HP Pavilion dv6000. To be honest I don’t actually know what the model is, on the screen bezel it says dv6000, on the bottom it says the product is dv6700 and the model says dv6907ea. I’ll keep it as dv6000 for simplicity.

This laptop has been in my family since around 2008 I think, it was our second ever laptop and we kept it around as an emergency backup in case our other devices had problems. After modifying my Dell XPS (another project that I’ll be posting about), I wanted to see what the old HP was like and if I could coax some life into it (hence the name). It wasn’t dead, just pretty slow.

Below are all the relevant posts from the tech thread.

ExpressCard slot discovery

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #511 by the_termin8r

Project plan

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #535 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 1

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #543 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 2

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #544 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 3

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #548 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 4

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #552 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 5

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #554 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 6

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #556 by the_termin8r

Laptop Restoration Log 7

Geek thread - Discuss IT stuff - #557 by the_termin8r

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#874

@the_termin8r you probably need someone to clear your path.
So done.
I like reading your descriptions.
Even when I don’t understand half of it.
It aways sounds dedicated.
And be sure, if I feel the need to understand something, I will ask.
:hugs:

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#875

Ah thanks.

Thanks. This thread contains all kinds of stuff, a lot of RC and Lego, and a lot of questions answered by me about a bunch of things. If you want to see it in a more organised place, the link to my site is in the OP.

You’re always welcome to.

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#876

I’d have to take a closer look at all of these logs but it indeed seems like a very dedicated project. How many more parts are you going to replace or work on?

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#877

Lazarus is pretty much done. I have big things planned for the XPS though (more on that soon).

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#878

Cool, I’ll try to keep up with your upcoming posts

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#879

Right, I’ve got two projects to announce, the first is Carbon Mamba (I need to get better at naming these) and the second is going under the working title of Copperheart (I’ve got a different final name in mind). Some of you have already been following in the tech thread will be familiar with Carbon Mamba as that is now the name of the XPS project.

CM will essentially be a precursor to Copperheart, Copperheart will be the next XPS project I’m planning and it won’t actually start until about a year or maybe more from now. The start date actually depends on how technological developments go over the next year. This is because Copperheart will be a custom modified XPS 15 7590 which is being released later this month, however, in a year’s time, I don’t know whether the successor to the 7590 will be getting released. If it is, it’s likely to be even more powerful, so I’ll probably go for that as it’ll probably have 10th gen CPUs as opposed to the new 9th gens. But we’ll see what happens, for now the focus is on Carbon Mamba.

My new goal for CM is ambitious, I’m planning on undervolting the CPU and overclocking GPU while also designing a custom heatsink and possibly getting it machined. Again, the custom heatsink will be more for Copperheart (provided the internal design doesn’t change), but CM will be a prototype of sorts.

In terms of non-PC projects, I haven’t got much planned. Even Banshee is pretty much done, now I’m at the stage where I’m fine-tuning everything and just posting PRRs, there aren’t anymore uprades planned, and that’s for two main reasons. The first is that there are almost not modifications left to make to Banshee, I’ve done pretty much everything I could. The second is that whatever mods are left are actually a huge waste of money and don’t improve performance at all.

Stay tuned for updates on both Carbon Mamba and Banshee.

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#880

Did anybody said Banshee? I guess I’ve to read the thread now …

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#881

I like the goofy names! :grin:

So you ordered a custom laptop and you’re going to pick it apart?

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#882

No, I’m going to buy a stock laptop and custom modify and upgrade it when I finish my masters.

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#883

Just spent the past 4 hours opening CM, taking measurements and mapping out the motherboard by hand. Hopefully I got all the measurements and dimensions that I need for a 3D model.

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