uboot [EN]

Hand-wired board computer for the Allgäu Orient Rally. During the rally, there were frequent jokes that it was a submarine (u-boot) remote control.

In the mountains near Bethlehem in Israel, it slowly died due to the heat. First, it became increasingly unstable until it wouldn't start at all. There was no room for a fan in the case, and the DIN slot was located directly above the climate control, which heated up significantly upwards. We kept cutting away parts of the case to release more heat, but it didn't help anymore.

• Development time: 6 months
• Cost: ** estimated €300 **

Components

• Raspberry Pi B2
• 3.2" Widescreen LCD
• Arduino MEGA
• GPS receiver
• WiFi stick (Access Point)
• Gyro/G-sensor
• Temperature

GPS

A flop – no reception at all inside the case. But we had a handheld device and a satellite tracker for live position transmission.

Gyro/G-sensor

Worked great throughout the entire trip. The data has not been processed yet.

Temperatures

We recorded the temperatures inside the car and inside the uboot. The maximum was 55°C in the car, 70°C inside the uboot, and over 85°C CPU core temperature... shortly afterward it shut down and wasn't stable again after Bethlehem.

WiFi Access Point

To upload new music and download onboard camera images and sensor data, there was an access point through which uboot was accessed via Samba and SSH. In addition to the buttons on the uboot itself, music could also be controlled via smartphone.

Music

Music was played by an MPD (Music Player Daemon), which was controlled via buttons/rotary encoder or smartphone. Music was stored on a 64GB USB stick, which could be filled via Samba share over WiFi.

LCD

The LCD was controlled by an Arduino Mega. It quickly turned out to be impractical – poorly updatable, new functions are complex to implement, and it’s an unnecessary abstraction layer. In version 2, an SPI display will be used instead.

For protection and mounting, the LCD received a laser-cut casing.