In the dark ages, you had to use a key to lock and unlock your car doors. Just about every car now has a remote control on the key that lets you unlock or lock with the push of a button. But many modern cars don’t even need that. They sense the key on your person and usually use a button to do the lock or unlock function. That button does nothing if the key isn’t nearby.

[Pierre Charlier] wanted that easy locking and unlocking, so he refitted his car with a Keyduino to allow entry with an NFC ring. What results is a very cool fistbump which convinces your car to unlock the door.

Keyduinio is [Pierre’s] NFC-enabled project, but you can also use a more conventional Arduino with an NFC and relay shield. The demo also works with a smartphone if you’re not one for wearing an NFC ring. Going this round, he even shows how to make it work with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE).

In the video below, you can see how he removed the car’s internal lock switch and modified the wire harness to take the connection to the Arduino. He’s also included all the code. About the only tricky part is doing the actual wiring in your car and finding a suitable source of power. That varies from car to car, so it isn’t easy to give specific instructions.

Opening doors of one kind or another is a popular project theme. While [Pierre’s] project might open the door on a coupe, we’ve seen another project that works on a coop.

A lot of technological milestones were reached in 2007. The first iPhone, for example, was released that January, and New Horizons passed Jupiter later on that year. But even with all of these amazing achievements, Volvo still wasn’t putting auxiliary inputs on the stereo systems in their cars. They did have antiquated ports in their head units though, and [Kalle] went about engineering this connector to accommodate an auxiliary input.

The connector in question is an 8-pin DIN in the back, which in the days of yore (almost eight years ago) would have been used for a CD changer. Since CDs are old news now, [Kalle] made use of this feature for the hack. The first hurdle was that the CD changer isn’t selectable from the menu unless the head unit confirms that there’s something there. [Kalle] used an Arduino Nano to fool the head unit by simulating the protocol that the CD changer would have used. From there, the left and right audio pins on the same connector were used to connect the auxiliary cable.

If you have a nearly-antique Volvo like [Kalle] that doesn’t have an aux input and you want to try something like this, the source code for the Arduino is available on the project page. Of course, if you don’t have a Volvo, there are many other ways to go about hacking an auxiliary input into various other devices, like an 80s boombox or the ribbon cable on a regular CD player. Things don’t always go smoothly, though, so there are a few nonstandard options as well.

While driving around one day, [Esko] noticed that the numbers and dials on a speedometer would be a pretty great medium for a clock build. This was his first project using a microcontroller, and with no time to lose he got his hands on the instrument cluster from a Fiat and used it to make a very unique timepiece.

The instrument cluster he chose was from a diesel Fiat Stilo, which [Esko] chose because the tachometer on the diesel version suited his timekeeping needs almost exactly. The speedometer measures almost all the way to 240 kph which works well for a 24-hour clock too. With the major part sourced, he found an Arduino clone and hit the road (figuratively speaking). A major focus of this project was getting the CAN bus signals sorted out. It helped that the Arduino clone he found had this functionality built-in (and ended up being cheaper than a real Arduino and shield) but he still had quite a bit of difficulty figuring out all of the signals.

In the end he got everything working, using a built-in servo motor in the cluster to make a “ticking” sound for seconds, and using the fuel gauge to keep track of the minutes. [Esko] also donated it to a local car museum when he finished so that others can enjoy this unique timepiece. Be sure to check out the video below to see this clock in action, and if you’re looking for other uses for instrument clusters that you might have lying around, be sure to check out this cluster used for video games.

The mechanics in dashboards are awesome, and produced at scale. That’s why our own [Adam Fabio] is able to get a hold of that type of hardware for his Analog Gauge Stepper kit. He simply adds a 3D printed needle, and a PCB to make interfacing easy.

A Nintendo Wii-remote along with bluetooth communication and an arduino gives us this magical cart with a wireless steering wheel.

These cool people are staunch DIY-ers and would love to see the community build more such vehicles.

The cart has two motors which use a chain to drive each of the rear wheels. A pair of H-bridge controllers let the Arduino interface with them. It’s also has a Bluetooth module that makes it a snap to pull accelerometer data from the Wii remote. The front end looks like it uses rack and pinion steering, but you won’t find a pinion or a steering column. Instead, a linear actuator is mounted parallel to the rack, moving it back and forth at the command of the Arduino.

The only downside I spot is the Battery life. I am sure that would be worked out too! Till then – Kudos to the inventors! I smell futuristic looking vehicle controls here.

Via:[Hackaday, NewsFactor]

Did you ever look for a cheap temperature monitor capable of collecting up to six sensor readings?

Johnathan Hottell needed to monitor the engine temperature of his LB7 Duramax diesel truck to avoid over-heating problems in hot days. Looking for commercial products, he found several quite expensive scanners (around hundreds of dollars), so he decided to build its own monitor using an Arduino Pro Mini, six NTC thermistors and a Nokia 3310 LCD screen to display the temperature readings.

The result, which is described here in great details, cost around 40 $.

Via: DangerousPrototypes