Post overview
- What is this project?
- Why Heron?
- Project overview
- First stage
- Project management
What is this project?
When I bought my amateur radio early this year, I asked myself: Why should you have it, where can you use it, how do you use it?
Because it is cool. On my car in the future or at the home. I have no clear idea about it.
In the mid-2015, I had my first car, a 2013 Tiguan, then I asked myself again: What do you want to do on your “girlfriend”?
Make fun on it. Make it more interesting, functional and joyful.
How?
Make it like a Electrical warfare cruiser or a mobile workshop. Bingo!
Why Heron?
Heron is a electronic warfare aircraft in the game EVE-Online. It can take a lot of ECM/ECCM equipments and has excellent buff on related effection. So I use Heron to name my car.
Linked from ravestats
Project Overview
Limited by budget, time and knowledge, this project consists of three stages. Now Im working on the stage 1.
- Stage 1: Short-term goal
- Power distribution
- CAN over power line (Pre-research)
- Central computer
- Vehicle Radio
- Wiring
- Stage 2: Mid-term goal
- Satellite chasing
- Car status monitoring
- Environmental sensors
- Stage 3: Long-term goal
- Augment reality
- Live video
First Stage
First stage is the most important fundamental part for this project. During this stage, I need to develop a powerful and reliable power system and physical structure.
By now I have installed a roof rack system and removed one rear seat. I plan to install all the antennas, cameras, Manipulators and guards on the roof, and install all the devices equipments including batteries on the rear seat space, thus I dont need to occupy the rest of space.
Roof rail
Back Seat
Back seat space Solidworks
Current sketch of back seat space orginazation design on Solidworks. My back seat does not have enough width to install 19” EIA standard rack system, so I can only use customize sized rack system. Two batteries on the seat are vehicle standard 12V batteries. By calculation, two batteries can give ~140AH power at 12V. Also, Automatic Charging Relay, IMD and Fuse are neccessary. On the botton of seat is an extinguisher. On the rack, I plan to install a Beaglebone black computer, a WiFi router, UHF/VHF vehicle radio, and etc.
Project management
I am the only developer in this project, and I need to sponsor myself. So I just use my spare time on this project, and the whole developing story will be very long as expected.