Learned that wire isn’t always copper anymore. for a project I got some 3.5mm audio cables to cut in half to make the wiring have nice quick change sensors..   Since I needed 30+ cables I ordered so that looked like thick cable but they were cotton braid over tiny wire. Turned out the wire was copper coated aluminium and is absolutely s***  to solder. Wire is not even thick enough to have insulation on each wire just enamel coating.     For the car projects all the wire I use has braided shielded which seems to only come in oxygen free copper OFC. The braid helps prevent electrical noise but more importantly prevents damage when pulled through the back of the dash etc.

Brilliant and yeah Im not looking for the number. I just want it to feel and truely BE around the 300whp mark.

It came from when Chris Bishop said we could pay for RUCs monthly via an app.

Managed to flash a microcontroller module in a generic test rig I brought with spring loaded sides. It worked fine except that you need to time the grounding of the boot pin and reset at the same time. The board has a button to do that automatically but the first flash timing doesn’t match. After the first flash though the automatic button works consistently.   Flashed another blank module that was already soldered to my pcb and its far from ideal too. The 4 pin for power, ground, send and receive connector was great initially when pin header was soldered in for prototyping. For assembly into a case it can’t have the header fitted. I ordered a spring loaded 4 pin pad to deal with this and clipped it on with a clothes peg. But the fast timing on first flash it needs the ground wire and power to be connected after the serial starts. I split power and ground out and it works ok now.   So once the pcb is final I’ll likely need to make a test rig pcb that lines up with all the serial and power points. That will have pogo pin so you just place the real pcb on top with a little pressure it’ll connect. Otherwise it wastes 2-5 minutes trying to get it connected and flashed. It will also reduce cost allowing the led that indicate different voltages to be left off each pcb and only fitted to the test rig.     After flashing I left the pcb running in wifi setup mode for hours. The heat from the voltage regulator was the highest as expected. It was still only warm and efficiently spreading heat into the pcb via the large copper pad and holes that were added for exactly that purpose. I retested again the next day and max regulator temp was 42.4c and 24c room temp. Microcontroller was 41c with wifi idle. Wifi takes 300mA max where no wifi drops as low as 40mA so this should be the maximum power use.     Worked more on another pcb design for a different canbus project. Between design and selection or parts it takes a lot of time. Seems making sure there will always be stock when you don’t use basic parts is important. Adding little extras to the pcb to allow flexibility will hopefully be worthwhile.   Been trying to find my spare steer wheel controls as I can’t remember what the button inside where. They feel like silicon pads and not switches. So that could be a nice quick project to have a board made up with nice micro switches.

So many little things still need work.   While not needed for functionality I’m making a testing portal over wifi for testing the connections to canbus and led display etc. This will allow both initial testing and end users to check the device is fully functional and test any repairs or changes they make. There are many variations in how RPM is encoded in canbus messages  and they will need to be added as options in settings and the above test portal. Mounting is another area that has to be tested as so far it’s been black foam tape. There are 2 places for a mount either using alloy riv-nuts or square nuts fixed with resin. The riv-nuts need with only 2 of the 4 petals so they all need cutting before installing which is slow and they take up a lot of space. The other option is square nuts that are glued in place and I have used them in the past with god results. The other advantage is that it leaves enough space for a layer of protection so if a longer bolt is used it will have some cushioning before it hits the electronics.   Most of the testing side came from a way to reduce cost by using a more traditional tube case with a smaller number of LEDs.