Distractions

The Stretchla project is enjoying a pause in the action. The mental hurdle of starting auto-body work finds me procrastinating. Historically I’ve found I work on projects that I’m passionate about (like the Stretchla) in short intense bursts while ignoring other projects and obligations. It helps if a good milestone is in sight as it was before I chose to expand the scope of the project with with a nice paint job. The prospect of setting up the shop and learning auto-body work has my procrastination side deciding to catch up on some of those other projects.

One of those projects that is quite fun involves driving unused gauges on a Porsche 911 electric conversion. Deb and I both wanted to become more familiar with using the Teensy 3.1 Arduino compatible board specifically for interfacing with CAN bus using the CAN bus controller that it has built in. Our board reads the Orion BMS CAN packets and uses that information to display battery state of charge on the original fuel gauge and battery temperature on the oil pressure gauge. Additionally we measure the motor field winding temperature using the sensor built into the Warp 9″ motor and we use that to drive the original water temperature gauge.

Here’s the video where I probably say the same things again 🙂