How the war destroyed the case of 4 years of my life / #LAST

The catchy title is ready, the last day of the life of the beloved TJ and the relay of Longrids - just what you need to brighten up your night in a bomb shelter.

Hello, I am a programmer, I am 36, I live in Kharkov and I did a car. No, not even like that. I tuned the lanterns and stuffed them with an electronic filling of my own development, and these lanterns were able to send you fuck. Verbatim. "Go Fuck Yourself!". And I will show you a little and tell you how I reached this, what were the prospects and how everything went after the Russian warship.

The post will be abundantly sprinkled with a specific vocabulary, video and clouds and not very cars and other technicalovnids, so it can be slightly difficult. Warned - means armed.

Idea

I will not be cunning that I always wanted to do this, that it was the idea of ​​my whole life and I went to this for a long time, I achieved everything myself and all that. Like everything that you usually read in the stories of successful success from the influensers. No.

This stop-signal is still working in my b6

Everything is much more commonplace and more prosaic - at the right time, three factors coincided:

1. After the 12 years in IT (I started in the late 90s in Mariupol as an admin of the game and further-the nightly administration of the technical support of the local Dialup provider) to represent how virtual bytes plow Ethernet's open spaces thanks to me, to put it mildly, not impressive. I wanted to hold the result of my work in my hands.
2. By that time, I was already seriously fond of electronics, just at the stage "a little further than Arduino" and led a small radio-graph within its IT gallery. Well, the final nail - gathered the first stop -signal with an accelerometer, which was able to determine a sharp braking and began to blink with some frequency depending on the strength of the inhibition.
3. One of the comrades asked me to come up with something interesting on his Peugeot 307CC, which had very interesting lanterns for vivisection.

Of course, I did not know at all how and what to do, so all the basics were known on my own rake. 4 lanterns were purchased, and with the first task of disassembling these lanterns, I coped quickly enough - the glasses were simply glued to them. And they were essentially a slightly tinted acrylic overlay.

I was a little acquainted with how to organize microcontroller control of brightness levels on LEDs, quickly found the right drivers to control individual channels with a consistent data bus and came up with a small system with 5 controllers and bonds on the RS485-shin. One main - four subsidiaries. Of course, I did not find the digital outputs of the on-board computer and I had to make a pavement, which “read” the car signals (dimensions/brakes/turn signals/reverse) and correlated them with each other. Since the LED “matrix” was one at all - I had to divide the space of the diodes and, to the honor, I still use pieces of firmware for the firmware of that very first wad from time to time.

Of course, the first pancake came out lumpy, from which I almost choked and still spit. It is ridiculous and scary to remember what stupid things I made and how I almost burned the car right in my garage, when almost all the wiring began to smoke from because of the controller’s power wires very unsuccessfully pressed to the body. Wow, it was fun. The owner then asked in surprise - what is it from him with palmed wires from rugs?

Every time you call the lanterns "rear headlights" - a kitten dies in the world.

With the first car, I suffered almost six months from the “idea” to the incarnation, which could drive along public roads and not break with a departed diode or channel behind the next turn. In the process, I realized that having a "general control center" is a mistake, and each lantern should only be responsible for its functions. To make boards by loot yourself is another mistake, because It will not come out to make adequate transitions between the layers, adequately cure and also protect the boards at home - it is possible, but it makes no sense if the same fee in factory execution costs $ 5-10. Well, components, wires, soldering, tools, programming ... This all requires an insanely wild amount of time)

Subaru - Work on errors

Having sent my first car to the world, I took a timaut. Of course, all this was in his free time from working on a gallery, and required a breakthrough of free time, effort, money and tools for itself. To do this on some more organized principles, even in the form of a hobby, I did not feel the strength. But this condition is quickly enough, about 2-3 weeks after 2-3 weeks, it gave way to curiosity-can I do something more fun than this wad? Unfortunately, my Passat B6 was already "in lights" with LED light, so I needed an experimental rabbit.

He was found among my close acquaintances and friends. However, I wanted to "work" with his brand of the car for a very long time. Consider wiping your nose to the state "competitors" who did the same, was one of the guiding stars of my whole path. In general, Subaru, the legendary WRX, conjunctivitis, 2003, transition model.

In terms of programming and organization, the system has acquired new features. Now these were two independent controllers, each of which controlled his lantern and read “incoming signals” from the car wiring. A LED matrix for 200+ channels for organizing various kinds of animations and switching was screwed to the controller. Controllers were connected by a network with equal nodes based on RS485. The new feature of the organization was a separate wireless module, which was hung on the same network and, using its protocol, could fed command controllers to change any configuration parameters - brightness, animation periods, etc. etc.

In terms of the visual component, I decided to do everything on firm boards with breaks as the next experiment, as it should be. I will say right away - it turned out completely not very. In the dark, of course, everything was just in the lights, but in fact it looked UBERKUGUT. Only the overlays of black plastic saved, which allowed to pass the "Test 2 meters", but still, before the factory quality, it was like Kyiv in an interesting pose of midnight lovers.

Nevertheless, I was pleased with the preliminary result. It was already spent on the assembly of the board and the time controller for about a month, I quickly entered the organization of the network and was able to get to the working prototype for a period of half as much as it was originally. Moreover, I already ordered the boards at the factory. And on my own, I felt that I was starting to gain experience, I am panting the tools for myself and my little hobby becomes a great hobby.

If you are trying to sell "custom" tinted lanterns - somewhere under tinting fierce crap and hack.

Mistakes? Oh, yes, baby, there was a whole robbery of them again. I could not choose adequate glue, which well shows the seam between the glass and the hull - and a month later the lanterns began to sweat, and after two - they arranged a light -shower right on the road. My friend’s surprise knew no bounds) again - a mistake with green boards and breaks that turned the lanterns into squalor. Separate points of LEDs once again reminded that it was a home -made crap. Well, chips on acrylic remained my scourge for the next 2 years, until I realized, through constant trial and mistakes, what to do with it.

It is good that we bought a separate set of lanterns, and did not use it official. Otherwise, I would be in a deep dupe.

BMW. AH Shit, Here We Go Again

By that time, the study, modeling, and the schematician of specific things I had been engaged in the auto -survey for almost a year from the most azov to the semi -voiced results. I could not earn on this yet, but there was already motivation to boast and advance. I did it, albeit on my own rake.

Unfortunately, not everyone could tell me something in this. The level of our home-made and tuners is mainly limited to some basic things without leaving for the “cruel world of bench tuning”, and to specialists on microcontrollers, FPGA and the organization of matrix light, such crafts are not interesting and it is impossible to find such specialists with fire in the afternoon. My engineering instinct has faded me to a dead end and I chose the most flexible in terms of development, but the most incorrect in terms of developing the final product of stack. And this is still a nightmare for me.

All the same friend prompted me that his master in the garage had another cool car - E36 in the Coupe body, which is waiting in the afternoon under the station project. But in the general plans for the body, paint and an emergency, it was almost in perfect condition. And knowing the love for these machines, I decided to do something like that. I bought lanterns ...

And stuck. If someone can transfer something to BMW engineers-tell me that I hate them. Only the Germans could make such finished lanterns (and let me accuse me of chauvinism - but this is true). The fact is that the glass in them is not just soldered around the perimeter to the body, no. The glass is divided into 3 parts, and through the entire case there is a T-shaped inner seam. The only option to get a “case + glass” set separately from each other is to ruin two sets of lanterns. From one, cut off the case by pieces and get glass, from the other - cut the glass and get the housing. Then assemble them along with the filling.

In addition, BMW uses some kind of terribly hemorrhoid variety ABS plastic in its lanterns, as if evil orcs boil it in the light of the moon from all sinners of the world, sprinkling with powder of virgin succubes. It's just tin. He crumbles, breaks, burns, dug into his fingers and stinks so that his wife asked which homeless person I was in, since I was stinked of beer, fish and a neighbor at the same time.

However, in the BMW I advanced a step further and tried to cover the LED matrix with a sheet of translucent acrylic. And it turned out very good. If the lanterns had a “depth” - from the factory you would definitely not be able to distinguish them, I give you a guarantee.

Of course, there were not without curios. We drove the lanterns by car for a couple of hours - and lingered for 2 days. If you look carefully at the wheels of the car, you will notice that there is only one normal and beautiful disk on it. The rear left) Well, the stop-signal on the wheelbarrow did not work in principle, so it was not possible to show the brakes and the reverse move on the video.

On the other hand, it was these lights that became the starting point of further success.

Toyota, Mitsubishi, Mazda ...

All further projects were already walking along the hungry and work on each of them was variations on the theme of the forming algorithm of actions - lanterns were bought, a paper template is removed from them, it is distilled to the CAD, it is aligned and combed, after printed and applied to the prepared lantern case, and so on until the acceptable form, then the diode placement in the SAPR, further - the placement of diode in the SAPR. transfer of diodes to a fee, circuitry of the LED matrix, ordering the matrix board and a week of waiting. After - assemble a fee, collect controllers, pack everything in lanterns, check. Voila, your custom lights are ready!

However, there were not without experiments and new achievements.

The first thing I did in terms of improving the firmware was added Demo -mode. Since I had more than a couple of hundred LED sections in each matrix - I decided to organize several animations in the firmware, which could replace each other with certain cyclicity and brightness until the light was turned off in the car.

In other words, you stop in the parking lot, turn on the dimensions, take out the phone, connect to the lamp controller, turn on the demo mode - and the running lights of demonstration of the capabilities on the lamps will frolic until you turn off the dimensions from behind the steering wheel. Plus, the lanterns synchronize among themselves by the starting point of the animation on the "network", so they will always repeat the sequences, no matter how time it has passed since the start. In the next power cycle, the lanterns will return with standard modes until you conduct the operation again. It is simple enough for anyone who knows how to manage the microwave)

For me, this was a small breakthrough, because It was thanks to the demo-mode that I received my first order for lanterns for EVO 8.

I also started experiments on the manufacture of my own glasses. There are several dozen ways to do it, but I decided to start with a thermal shape. To do this, I assembled a farm with UV heaters and a vacuum table under them, connected an industrial vacuum cleaner to the table and made a frame for transparent plastic. After several unsuccessful experiments with different plastics, I was able to form a decent glass from a 3 mm PET leaf and after some processing, such a glass looked just perfect.

Subsequently, I made them a lot for Selik, and for Miat, and for evoluish.

Another interesting project, which devoured three months of my life, was a PNP station. I decided that the placement of almost the same LEDs takes more time than I was counting, and the boards for 800-1000 diodes to solder with my hands are no longer our level. The logical way out of this is its own machine.

However, here I went along the rake. I bought a linear movement system in a finished form, a set of electronics was assembled from the remains of my home CNC-Fraser, but the rest was printed on a 3D printer. It turned out such a Frankenstein with the head, into which a mechanical extruder for soldering paste and vacuum tweezers for arranging components were integrated.

May the local programming gods forgive me, but this is controlled by all the self -recorded environment on JS. The browser through the website holds the Connect with Node.js-Conservation and exchanges with it the same messages, but the node is connected to the machine controller along the sequential port and thus fed its command to move, feedback and control of the position of the OpenCV and recognition of the images of the contact areas of diode.

And, yes, all this was spinning on the MacBook Air of a wife without a monitor, which I picked up to the external monitor. So this system still works.

Sirius Buzines

By the end of the third year, my hobby began to acquire the features of classes, which I wanted to do much more than work on a gallery. Moreover, commercial orders began to appear, I made a site for myself, started an Institute, followed followers and subscribers on the YT channel. All this began to interfere with a large extent interfering with work and, ultimately, I was fired for reducing productivity. The trigger was that I did not warn when it fell down with poisoning - and all this got into the end.

I was given a month to complete the affairs and the search for a new job and in January I set sail to free bread.

The first few days, of course, was a complete horror and misunderstanding, what to do next, savings would be enough for 2-3 months - and then the seams. I discussed this with several acquaintances from the state party of retro -finals and made the decision to transform my hobbies into a small business. I had a stock of details, I had equipment and a working workshop, Ukrposhta and DHL delivered orders regularly - so it was necessary to either act or cross the labor market. Of course, I liked the first option much more than the rest.

However, the business model I decided to change and engage in sets for independent assembly. In other words, I developed the whole inside, showed on the instructions and videos how to mount it - and the tuners already made themselves "beautifully" at my steps. And it was worth 2-3 times cheaper than a set of finished lanterns, and I was much less time. I could assemble a set of boards and connectors in a day or two, the set of lanterns was gathered a month or two, and taking into account the expectation of parts-even more. Agree, it is very difficult to feed the family in such conditions.

The first swallow was the R34 Skyline with a set of boards. And strangely enough, the project shot. For 3 weeks after the release, I received almost 30 orders at the average price of a set of $ 300 and was pleased as an elephant.

There was no spoonful of tar - the payment provider, due to the suddenly increased activity, blocked my account and began to demand explanations for each order. In fact, more than 10k $ were blocked for me and I could not fulfill the orders, and my arguments did not find any response from the payment service. I had to urgently look for money, ask all customers to make refunds and re -pay orders through another service, half of the clients fell off in the process ...

Not a very impressive beginning, but in wild emotional swing began to grope my way, and the number of projects gradually began to increase. There were DIY complexes for the R33, then there was a sedan and coupe, after which a large project was the lamps for Toyota Supra, which were able to display a custom text from the phone, I began to learn to make their glasses by casting in silicone forms and one of the major customers paid me these adventures.

As a result of the first year, in total, I made almost a hundred orders, and their flow only increased. There were many problems, there were plugs in the organization, there were moral swings, there were lack of money and a breakdown, but this was not a global problem to move forward, especially since the prospects to increase the turnover 2 times in the 2022nd year were quite real.

To the abyss

The first broken leg of the stool was the death of his father in January. Всю жизнь отношения у меня с ним были, мягко говоря, не очень, последние два года он прожил "отшельником" в съемном доме, т.к. свою квартиру успешно пропил, я оплачивал его счета и пытался надоумить хоть что-то сделать со своей жизнью, он же пил... Плюнув на это дело мы с супругой купили ему дом в Долгеньком, перевезли все его вещи, помогли оформиться и, вроде как, дали путевку в новую жизнь вместе с запасом дров и продуктов на зиму. И вроде все это должно было помочь, но 16 января я не смог до него дозвониться, мы с любимой рванули по снегопаду в полночь из Харькова и... Следующие 2 дня были в тумане похорон.

Ну а после наступило 24 февраля.

DHL и Укрпочта моментально выпали из жизни. Я оповестил всех заказчиков, однако многие обратились за прямыми рефандами к оператору платежей. Мне выставили досудебные претензии в юрисдикции США, которые я сейчас пытаюсь уладить, аппелируя к своему физическому месторасположению. Моя мастерская находится в районе, который с завидной периодичностью обстреливается и здание самой мастерской чудом осталось цело и невредимо. Первые 2 месяца туда вообще невозможно было попасть, т.к. охрана никого не пускала и меня чуть не подстрелили, когда я пытался туда прорваться за какими-то вещами. Весело было в общем )

После этого случился Мариуполь, в котором у меня остались мои родственники по линии матери и теща с ее родственниками. О первых я до сих пор не знаю ничего, т.к. никто не выходит на связь, тещу с семьей депортировали в Новоульяновск и сейчас они пытаются организовать там свой быт и дожить до весны, чтобы вернуться в Мариуполь. И пропаганда войны из каждого утюга ломает их сознание даже не смотря на пережитое.

Небольшие запасы нашей семьи быстро подошли к концу и у меня не осталось никаких средств и возможностей, чтобы закончить и выслать ожидающие заказы. Люди, как это ни печально, не понимают и не поймут внезапных снарядов за окном и многие до сих пор мне пишут с требованиями возврата денег.

Сейчас уже значительно легче, я снова нашел работу в IT и потихоньку закрываю эти долги, однако это происходит не так быстро, как бы мне хотелось. В любом случае я жив, цел, орел и благодарен судьбе за то, что могу восстановиться, в отличие от многих моих знакомых и друзей.

PS

Я искренне благодарен TJ, даже тем, кого я откровенно не люблю - вы не дали мне скатиться в пучину ненависти и полной апатии ко всему вокруг. Лучшие, я буду по вам скучать. Так же отдельное спасибо моему другу Точилке, который все эти 4 года был неотъемлемой частью нашего дела.

Ну и напоследок - никогда не сдавайтесь. Жизнь стоит того, чтобы ссать судьбе в лицо.

PPS

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