For the last couple of days/weeks I have had some health setbacks. I'm working on it, but it is slow and tedious. So I am very limited to what I can do on the project. I can not fabricate test parts, so various aspects of the design have been slowed down. I can not carry heavy loads or ride very far, so the materials I need I can not always pick up.

What I can do how ever is assemble some hardware and write some software and that is precisely what I have been doing (and now writing this blog of course).

My Raspberry dev station is now fully committed to this project. I have a dedicated OS image running and can install packages and write stuff to my hearts content. The basic controller system also is pretty far software wise, however it is now based on an UNO and not a MEGA and while I think I do not need to much IO, I do need more hardware serial, because software serial for the GPS is bogging the main loop down noticeably.

To the raspberry I have attached the GPS module, a 4 switch relay, a DHT11 sensor, a light sensor, a matrix screen form monitoring via I2C, an analogue joypad (which is no longer needed... here), a test button for ezButton library( probably also not needed) and a potentiometer which will be part of the steering system for auto direction off functionality because... Why not?

I ordered a cheap second hand iPad mini for the main console and dusted off the iPhone I had laying around. Now my life looks like this :

The main screen and the quick controls.

A mess of wires. Nothing to complecated.

Next log will be about the specifics of the automation and communication.