Personal Projects

The Barracks
#925

Just finished Crysis 1, I can see why the game has a reputation for melting people’s computers. It’s from 2007, yet I could only run at about 35 FPS on the highest settings. In comparison, Tomb Raider is a 2013 game and it ran at 45 FPS on the highest setting. Granted, my GPU is a mediocre mobile GPU, but still.

For the battery tests, I’m planning on running Crysis 2, Batman Arkham Asylum, Rise Of The Tomb Raider, Hitamn Absolution and I’m yet to decide on the 5th game. I’ll only be doing a single run per game and I’ll be using Potato Mode, Balanced and Absolute Power power plans.

1 Like
#926

I want to get through a few updates with this post, but first, can someone please break me out of the 3 post limit?

The first thing is that I don’t think I ever posted photos of my improved fan gaskets. I can’t even remember if I mentioned it before. But last time I opened my laptop I decided to replace my ad-hoc thermal pad gaskets with something less shoddy. I ended up finding some kind of adhesive material that’s like a hybrid between some kind of rubber and neoprene, so I just cut out a pair of rings and stuck them on.

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The next thing I want to mention is that I decided to clean my keyboard properly today. You’d be surprised how much crap actually gets under there in ~1.5 years. I pulled out enough hair to make a wig I think. It looked perfectly clean on the surface.

Item number three is with regards to cooling upgrades. I decided to buy a syringe of liquid metal and a hardcore thermal pad, because I got a good deal for them on ebay. Technically I bought them way in advance for Copperheart, but I’m partly tempted to try the LM on CM. Not sure if I want to act on it. I still haven’t even conformal coated the motherboard.

On the topic of cooling, it occurred to me that I actually completely wasted my time mapping out my motherboard, because the layout of the XPS 7590 is slightly different to the 9560 that I have. It’s different for the better, because a lot of the components that are the same height and size are now inline on the new board as opposed to being all over the place on my one. This means that designing the mating surface on the heatsink will be a lot easier. I’m still annoyed that I wasted my time though. Who knows, I might get some practice and design a heatsink for CM as well, but probably won’t get it machined as it’ll likely cost me a small fortune.

Note how the similar looking components are in different places on my board:
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And note how the similar-looking components here are in line with each other.

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The next thing I want to get onto is another new section I’m working on for the website. Technically they’re actually pages. I’ll be adding benchmark pages to the PC projects so that there is quantifiable performance data for the laptops. Hopefully those will be out in the next few days if all goes to plan. I’ll also be doing general housekeeping around the entire site.

The final thing I want to mention is that I plan on finally going for a run with Banshee on Mon. I could do it tomorrow, but it’s Sunday and the park will be packed. So stay tuned for the first PRR in about 6 months.

3 Likes
#927

Done

1 Like
#928

Looking forward to this

1 Like
#929

I’ll probably be tuning the suspension at some point today. I remembered that I was on new tyres the last run and it rolled over too easily due to the added grip. I need to drop the front a bit.

#930

6 months, 11 days, and I finally got to run Banshee again. And it went straight to business as usual with gearbox issues. I got maybe 15 mins of run time before the pinion gear grub screw decided that it didn’t like its working conditions and pay, so it went on strike. That meant that the pinion was sliding about the motor shaft as it pleased. It eventually slid to a position where it was no longer meshed with the spur. Some of the spur teeth took a bit of damage, but it should still be fine. I’ll finish off the battery tomorrow.

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The purpose of this run was to try a new front suspension setup due to the truck grip flipping too easily with the new tyres in the last run. Suspension pre-load was decreased from 13mm to 6mm and the struts were moved to the outer mounting holes of the suspension arms. The new setup worked as intended, the front ride height is now at arms’ level and the truck can be thrown into corners more violently without rolling over.

I also re-learned a lesson today. Don’t take your eyes off an RC vehicle when driving it, especially when it’s coming towards you at speed. I drove it into my leg at about 30MPH because I briefly glanced away to see where the kids that were watching me were as I thought they were getting a bit close.

Don't open this if you can't handle something as small as a papercut

[spoiler]image [/spoiler]

There’s not much else to add about this run. Below is the usual collection of telemetry curves. Going by the RPM, it says that a max of about 48 MPH was reached, due to the fact that it’s at the end of the run, it probably registered me messing with the throttle to try and diagnose the gearbox issue. The real speed I got to was probably about 40.

Telemetry curves:

All:
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Power / Voltage/ Current:
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ESC Temperature / Motor Temperature:
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Capacity / Voltage:
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This wasn’t a long run, so there aren’t many gifs and they aren’t very interesting.

And here’s the crash, it looked completely minor. It wasn’t the cuts that hurt, but the initial impact.

4 Likes
#931

There she goes again, free as a bird. Be careful though :smile:

2 Likes
#932

Hey! Nice post!
Thank you!

1 Like
#933

This is what pretty much all my posts were like before I started fiddling with the laptops lol. Except a year ago they had better gifs and more things to talk about.

1 Like
#934

Managed to finish off the battery from yesterday’s run earlier today. This run was miles more successful than yesterday’s run. I didn’t have gearbox issues and I didn’t try to take my own leg off. What I did do in fact is set a new personal speed-record. Data from the telemetry paired with basic calculations from the footage and Google Earth would suggest that I peaked at 56MPH (90KPH) today. The truck managed it in a 50m stretch with only 2 secs of acceleration, about 30%-35% throttle and it was on a fairly rough path.

I’m very impressed at how well it ran in general today, I was very hard on it, I ran it in a fair amount of short to medium grass and the ambient temperature today was around 28C. It was only at the very end of the run that it went into thermal shutdown because the motor reached 70C. I’m not at all surprised or disappointed with it considering that I’m running it out of spec.

As things stand now, I’m going to finally consider Banshee to be a finished project. There are no more real and / or meaningful upgrades I can make, and I have the truck set up as best as I can for my driving style. Now it’s only a matter of replacing consumables as I run it and probably replacing the damaged spur at some point down the line and other parts that get broken with use.

From now on I’ll only be posting PRRs and the occasional maintenance log for Banshee as opposed to regular modification logs as before. On the topic of PRRs, the next run will be on 2S. I managed to borrow a 2S from uni and I want to run it to see just how big the difference between 4S and 2S is. Hopefully that will be out in the next couple of days.

Telemetry curves:

All:
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Power / Voltage / Current:
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ESC Temperature / Motor Temperature:
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Capacity / Voltage:
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Here are a few gifs from today. The first two carry on from each other and the last two carry on from each other. The second gif is where I hit today’s top speed.

In other news, I’ve started the gaming battery tests for CM, I played Tomb Raider on ultimate settings in Absolute Power mode and got 46 mins of run time. I’ll probably get around 20 mins on Crysis 2.

4 Likes
#935

Banshee’s perfect now! :heart_eyes:
Are you going to start another RC project meantime? Since Banshee doesn’t need lots of work now… :slight_smile:

1 Like
#936

Probably not, RC cars are stupidly expensive and I really don’t need another. I think all the corners that I’m interested in have been explored. I might go back to Camazotz in the future, but it’s not certain given how problematic it has been for me and Hellhound is just flat-out dead.

My current project focus will be the laptops. After that I don’t know, but I like to move on once something has been understood and / or fully explored.

2 Likes
#937

2S throwback PRR:

Went for the 2S run earlier today and for the first time ever, I was actually bored. The truck was completely slow and totally boring. It’s kind of funny, because I started on 6S NiMH and then went to 2S LiPo and I thought it was fast. Now 2S is like child’s play to me. I have been corrupted by power. I managed to hit full throttle and stay there for a while multiple times today. The acceleration wasn’t explosive, and the top speed wasn’t impressive (I topped out at 40 MPH), I couldn’t even pop a wheelie even when flooring it from a standstill. The only minor upside is that it was more controllable than usual, however, I was driving it at its limits and had no excess power.

Since the battery isn’t mine, I actually got to test the telemetry capacity readout, and the final verdict is that it’s just flat-out wrong. It claimed 7000mAH, when the battery was a very cheap 5200mAH that performed more like a 4000mAH.

Telemetry curves and gifs below, as normal. I hit full throttle in the first gif.

All:
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Power / Voltage / Current:
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ESC Temperature / Motor Temperature:
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Capacity / Voltage:
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5 Likes
#938

But you tried again to hit yourself :joy:

1 Like
#939

Yeah, I was a bit too hard on the brakes and locked up.

1 Like
#940

Nice dodging skills you showed there :smile:

1 Like
#941

I was actually going over my old posts, you’d be surprised how often I drive into myself. But it’s usually at low speeds :joy:. My leg’s still slightly swollen and sore.

1 Like
#942

The PC benchmark pages are finally ready. Now there’s quantifiable date to go with the performance of each project.

https://robert-m-personal-projects.shivtr.com/pages/carbon_mamba_benchmarks

https://robert-m-personal-projects.shivtr.com/pages/lazarus_benchmarks

#943

When I click on the sides with my phone, I only get a nearly blank page.

#944

That’s because the site is trying to open a regular page in mobile mode. You have to open the site to the home page, and then set it to web mode at the bottom of the page. Then head over to the PC section and look under either of the projects. This is another reason why I despise doing anything on a phone.

1 Like