Frank’s corner

My dear old friend Yianna turned… 24 ( ) lately. Knowing that she enjoys uniqueness…I decided to make something special for her.

Since she has a thing for the symbol  ॐ  (wikipedia’s explanation wasn’t very insightful on this matter I can say), I focused my design around it.

Basic parts/tools of the whole design were:

• small plastic project box
• semi-transparent perspex
• the obvious electronic parts blue LEDs/switch/battery holder
• patience
• black glossy paint
• black paper
• etc

Hope she likes it

HAPPY BDAY YIAN!

I finally got some days off work, so I decided to go through my messy room (aka chaos, lab, storage place, etc) and put some order.

So far it’s been very tiring and very time consuming, but very entertaining… thus I decided to write a quick post to show my findings.

It feels so great when it’s time to upgrade your PC, and you put away that old piece of hardware in order to install your new toy. But it’s even greater, when 3…5…10+ years later, you come across that old hardware. It brings back memories, as well as questions like “WTF???”.

Since I haven’t posted much in my blog lately, I felt like sharing this little experience

My first interesting finding, was a 3  button Genius mouse. As you can see from the pictures, it advertises an astonishing 200dpi resolution, has a DB-25 RS232 interface, and requires no pad! WOW!

It looks like new, and I found it boxed, maybe I can throw it on ebay?

Most probably it was a late upgrade to my 8086 PC, and my new 286 PC didn’t have a DB-25 type of RS232, so it remained boxed and stored

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My ancient trackball. What was I thinking? But really…what happened to trackballs? I haven’t seen any around for a looong time!

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Then I found this “good” old unreliable mean of storage device, the 5.25″ floppy. A.k.a last millennium’s DVDs

I wonder if it’s still working…but I can’t be really bothered!

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The below device, I remember I found it on a thrown away workstation, years ago. It’s an IDE CD-Changer ROM for PC!?!? It’s 25% longer than a normal CD ROM drive, and you can insert up to 6 CDs simultaneously. By pressing the front buttons, you pick the CD of your choice. It was the first time to see such a device, so I took it. Sadly, it only supports Windows 95.

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While at storage devices, here is a more recent miracle of technology…a 16Mb XD flash card, next to a 3Gb hard drive. Sadly, long time ago I gave away a 4Mb SD card I used to have, and a 100Mb 5.25″ hard drive. Those would look way cooler

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Let’s talk about more recent innovations. The Internet and means to connect to it. This huge modem is as long as a normal ATX case (a bit longer too)! It even has jumpers and volume dialer to satisfy every customer.

It’s somewhat ISA interface, has a Xilinx FPGA chip (wow), and using it, you will be able to attain Internet speeds up to 4800bps… 4.8Kbps… 600 BYTES PER SECOND!

Jee! How did they download movies back then?

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Moving further to more core system components, I was unable to find several 286/386/486 I used to have

All I found was a Pentium CPU…but please note that it is WITH MMX technology! Yeyyyyy!

Also a big bag of EDO and SD RAM, proves that quantity matters

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This card is a Creative DX3 PCI adapter, used to hardware encode/decode MPEG2 streams. It’s not a retro component, but it lies in the redundant category. Also it was pretty rare back then. Ahhh useless stuff we all buy.

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My good old HP SCSI scanner. I was working all Summer long to buy this scanner 15 years ago or so. Its ISA SCSI adapter wasn’t supported by any OS further to Win98, the same with the scanner driver. So despite purchasing a better PCI SCSI controller, it remained useless, until I installed Ubuntu (PENGUIN POWER!!!).

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Oh memories memories! I never thought I would see my Sega Game Gear again. Sonic, Shinobi, Mortal Combat, Super Monaco GP… so much joy!

I just realized that Game Gear requires 6 AA batteries to operate, and as far as I remember they wouldn’t last long. I suspect that’s the reason my parents very rarely took me for holidays abroad. I was wasting all their money on batteries

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My super cool white Sega Saturn. Not that much of ancient history as my Atari would be, but still a pretty rare item. Most people back then would prefer the Playstation (pfff, ignorants ).

In the second picture you can see that ultra rare VCD card, which allowed your console to decode MPEG1 streams, and watch VCDs on it. Games and accessories used to cost a fortune. No ebay back then. If I had saved my money back then, I might had my Lexus by now

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During today’s tiding up session, I came across several more outdated tech items, but unfortunately they saw their way to the bin before I take a picture of them for this post.
But anyway, the lesson of the day, is that we have lot’s of expensive crap, wasting our precious space

It’s been a year already since I purchased my beloved Canon EOS 1000D which despite being an entry level model, it never stopped to amaze me.

As I expected when purchasing back then, it’s hard indeed to carry around with you all the time, thus I kept my good old Fuji F30 compact camera. But it’s so awesome how easily you can take great shots with the 1000D (and any other SLR camera I guess), that I’m trying to have it with me whenever possible. At one point I even found my self carrying it around at the beach,  or even on a roof top while raining, risking getting it wet, but the result was totally worth it!

For the past year, I’ve been on an endless shopping spree of accessories

• Canon 50mm f1.8 lens
• Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 lens (coming soon) *
• 0.21x Fisheye lens adapter
• UV filters (Kenko & Massa)
• Kenko Pro1 Circular Polarization filter
• Star effect filter
• +1, +2, +4 & +10 Macro filters
• Remote trigger
• Cokin P gradient color filters
• Neoprene camera bag
• Neoprene lens bag
• Cleaning kit
• 1.5m tripod
• Hand grip
• etc etc

The Canon 50mm F1.8 lens is one of the cheapest lenses available. It’s even solely made out of plastic, but I have to admit that its quality is superior compared to the stock 18-55mm lens kit. It’s a cheap step towards quality. I’d definitely recommend it to anybody seeking for quality photos without losing an arm and a leg in the process

As for the reasons behind choosing the Sigma 18-200mm lens, I just wanted an all around lens, with some additional zoom. Definitely I don’t have great quality expectations from this lens, but I consider this lens as a replacement of my 18-55mm lens.

*UPDATE: My 18-200mm Sigma lens eventually arrived right on time for my Xmas vacation. During that week it was extensively tested with impressive results! I expected nothing more quality-wise than my stock 18-55mm Canonlens, but I was so wrong… The photos’ quality (especially landscape ones) is great. This lens is definitely a keeper!

The most entertaining accessory I got until now, is the fisheye lens adapter. With this adapter on my 18-55mm lens, the view is so wide that I can see my lens’s barrel in the view finder/photos, up to ~30mm. But yet it’s so much fun to take weird cartoonish round photos of people

My choice of 0.21x was a bit extreme though, I could have settled for 0.3x or even 0.4x, but anyway.

Sometimes it’s great to take a single photo containing almost the whole 180 degrees view. Then you can get a useful image out of that, by eliminating the fisheye effect using the appropriate software (eg. GIMP).

Now that the newer Canon entry level SLR, EOS 500D is out, I might consider an upgrade. I never had problems in the past selling my older compact digital cameras in order to upgrade. But I think this task is going to be a lot harder for the bigger SLR cameras.

I was always interested into photography, and since purchasing the 1000D it definitely boosted my interest towards this hobby. I’d highly recommended it to any photography enthusiast who believes that he can take amazing shots with his compact digital camera, and thinks that SLR cameras are bulky overpriced devices

*UPDATE*: Don’t you love it when everything go as planned? As I hoped in the original post, my EOS 1000D was sold in the beginning of January 2010, so I purchased the 500D!

So far it looks great, but further details will follow in future posts.

A couple of years ago, driver’s side rear view mirror, started giving me trouble. When I was trying to close/open the mirrors, it was very loud and wasn’t moving smoothly.

Several days later, the mechanism totally failed, causing the mirror to indefinitely trying to open/close with loud noise. Back then I thought it was just my luck, so took the mirror apart and quickly fixed it.

Unfortunately today, I had exactly the same issue with the passenger’s side mirror, proving that this is a typical problem with Starlet’s electrically folding mirrors’ mechanism.

So this time I took my time through the restoration process, taking photos of each step in order to share the solution of this common problem with the world (and for me to remember in the future not to repeat certain mistakes ).

First of all get your tools ready. Nothing fancy, just a cross screw driver, cable ties and a 10mm metric socket tool.

Now that you got your toys ready, let’s get our hands dirty! First of all, remove the triangle plastic, covering the main screws holding the mirrors. In the photo below you can see how its clips hold it in place, in order to remove it easier. But more or less if you just pull it, it will come off. And then remove the 3 10mm screws  it was covering.

*NOTE* After removing those screws, mirror  will be holding off the power mirrors wiring. So you’d better hold it, or perform the next step first.

In order to remove the power mirrors’ plug, some door trimming has to be removed. First remove the cross screw from the door handle. Then pull it out/forwards the dash (notice the hook clip holding it). Then remove the 2 annoying plastic screws holding the upper part of the door trim. The right one can be removed right away. The left one is hidden under the door’s card board, so you have to pull that our first. Finally lift the plastic trimming, find beneath the power mirrors’ plug and remove it.

No more foreplay, let’s get into serious stuff now!

Here is a very very VERY important step, which would save me lot’s of time and some money too if I knew it in advance, is found in the photo below. Removing the glass mirror off the rest of the assembly. Have a close look how its clips are, and judge on how you are going to pull it out.

“1″ is the bottom part of the mirror. You have to pull it out gently and evenly. After doing that, you lift the mirror upwards, and then pull out the “2″ clips.

Becareful not to confuse where each type of clip is, or applying excessive force. It’s BAD!

So, after this step you can see cleary the power mirrors mechanism, and you might immediately notice what has gone bad in there! If not, you are not paying enough attention, but there is more work to be done before you can actually access the problematic part.

Remove the various surrounding parts from the mirror assembly. A waterproof cover, the 3 screws under the mirror holding it on its base, a plastic clip holding down the wire, and the plastic cover. All of these are easily removed, but try to remember what goes where, and where you removed each screw from.

After remove all the above parts, you will end up with a “bowl of motors”. There are 5 or 6 screws holding the 2 power mirror mechanisms down (mirror adjusting and mirror folding motors). As soon as you remove them, then you can take everything out.

Have a closer look now. Do you see what’s the problem? The whole folding mechanism is held together by its plastic cover. The plastic clips holding the cover down, are too tiny, so they easy break and the gears inside won’t contact each other. Feel free to open the cover and see, but it’s messy in there, full of grease.

By now I believe you have guessed what’s the solution to this problem. CABLE TIES! Put them around the plastic cover, in order to hold it down.

The ones I had, were a bit thick and short. But since I couldn’t be bothered much, I used to of them. When using thick cable ties, make sure that their ends won’t be in the mirror’s way when adjusting it.

Well, that was all! Now just follow the reverse procedure to assemble your mirror.

If you end up with some extra screws, no worries. That’s typical for every DIY job, not to say a tradition!

You all done now! Go wash those dirty hands!

I hope someone will find this little tutorial useful.

Hi, I’m Frank and I’ve been gaming free for 10 years.

It’s been a long time since I was into gaming. Back then I had a Sega Saturn (and still have it) and at some point later I purchased a Sega Dreamcast, just because I found it for $50, and it could play “free” downloaded games.

The latest addition to my consoles “collection”, was the original Xbox, which after it was chipped, it’s been serving me as a network enabled multimedia center.

I can’t be really bothered playing games anymore, but ever since I saw the Nintendo Wii, I fell in love! It has many nice little games which do not require tons of gameplay hours to learn, are truly interactive and original! This is a gadget made for me. So lately I made myself a present

Most people already know what the Nintendo Wii is all about, there is no need to go into further details. If you are not familiar with the Wii, have a look at this random youtube video review I picked. There are lots more if you search youtube.

Now into the interesting part… A mod-chip for my Wii was definitely a requirement since the beginning, to enable me playing “my” backed up games. There are way too many mod-chips for Wii in the market. Also there are several Wii hardware variations, restricting the use of some mod-chip types with some consoles. The most popular ones are the Wasabi, D2Pro, D2Ckey, Infectus etc.

After a lot of research, I finally decided to go with the Wasabi V3 mod-chip. I chose the Wasabi, because it has very good compatibility list, it is said that it’s very stable (”rock solid” is their motto), has a good pricing and most importantly it is future proof (the chip is a FPGA processor by Actel, which can be easily reprogrammed from scratch in the future, in case Nintendo’s new firmwares turn against mod-chips).

Usually mod-chip installations can be very messy. The older mod-chips required 20+ wires soldered from the chip to the Wii’s motherboard!!!!!!!! Have a look at this insane picture!

Despite the Wasabi only requiring 9 wires, I searched around and found a way to minimize the possibility of screwing up my beloved Wii. It’s called Wii-Clip and all you have to do with it is solder the chip on it and then place it on top of a DVD-ROM’s IC. Very smart and very handy thing. So I was only required to solder a single wire to the board, and take some precautions that the chip won’t short-circuit somewhere.

Finally!!! Everything was in place, and for some weird reason, everything worked immediately! Impressive!

I was able to play the Wii-Play game off a backed up DVD with no problem. So, occasional short-time fun gaming… here I come!

Due to the new CarPC installation (CarPC V.2), some changes had to be made regarding the audio system. I didn’t want to totally replace my humble Kenwood MP3 player with the CarPC itself, just in case I face any problems with the CarPC, to have a backup plan.

But I had no extra DIN slots available for this. So instead of removing it, I simply relocated it to… the floor, behind the dashboard, between the passenger’s and driver’s feet

This made all controls unusable though. So I ordered Kenwood’s “wired” remote control. I’m saying “wired”, because this controller is just an infrared LED attached on a wire, terminating on a small remote control.

When it arrived though, I was very disappointed to discover that the wire was approximately 20cm long only! How can that be of any use???

But anyway, the wired remote contained no high tech electronics, so I simply used a CAT5 network cable to extend it by around 1m. I installed the remote control on the dashboard infront of me, under the turbo timer, and the infrared LED right on top of the Kenwood radio. Everything worked like a charm!

Even before purchasing my Glanza, I had already started looking for a turbo timer. This is a MUST item for every turbo-charged vehicle (if you want your turbo to live longer).

Most of the turbo times I came across, had a similar look. Several buttons, a display and a big-ish box. After some research, I found a nice, small (pen style) turbo timer, with great control interface (joystick), made by A’pexi.

It can be easily preset, disabled, or set to detect the driving style/duration and automatically set the cool down period of the car before it switches it off.

[UPDATE 20/09/08]: after several years of flawless operation, lately my turbo timer started acting weirdly. It wouldn’t always turn on, and when it did, sometimes it was just for seconds. Today I checked all the wiring, but that wasn’t the case. Then I started re-flowing the whole board… but still nothing

After a long troubleshooting day, I discovered that the problem was with the turbo timer’s relay %#$%#$%@ :@

The relay is a Fujitsu 512ND12-W, rated to a minimum 200.000 (YEAH RIGHT!!!). Unfortunately the specific relay is nowhere to be found on eBay. I was able to locate many electronic component sites selling these relays, but they all had a $200+ minimum order restriction.

While googling for a replacement relay, I came across a very interesting article regarding counterfeit Apexi turbo timers. Fortunately mine is the original…but yet faulty! :/

[UPDATE 21/09/08]: who said that violence is not a solution to anything? After some brute force against the relay, the problem seems to be fixed so far.

Lesson of the day… if you have a faulty relay, simply beat the crap out of it

I’ve been using my CarPC without any particular problems for a couple of years now, but eventually I decided to go for an upgrade.

The main reason which led me into this decision, are the occasional slow downs, when simultaneously using GPS navigation and playing multimedia files, due to the slow 1GHz VIA C3 processor.

I will take advantage of this upgrade, to make plenty more changes to the whole setup. What will change in the new version of my carPC project are:

• An Intel D201GLY2A motherboard with 1.2GHz Celeron-M processor (300+% the performance of the VIA C3 1GHz), and improved graphics card. I will be most probably using 1GB of DDR2 RAM this time.
• I will replace the single-DIN in-dash 7″ screen with a brighter and maybe bigger one, fixed in place as double-DIN. A custom made console surrounding plastic will be used, to fit in place the bigger screen.
• A new tiny 125W DC-DC power supply (M3-ATX) will replace my previous bulky 90W (M1-ATX) one.
• A new, reduced size case will be made to accommodate the new components.

Process log:

1. 22/05/2008: New motherboard arrived and tested
2. 25/05/2008: Old carPC taken apart. New case is under development
3. 30/05/2008: Removed the in-dash screen from the car, measured the available space and the possibility of using a custom made bezel to fit a screen bigger than a typical 7″ one.
4. 1/06/2008: Installed Windows XP and performed some benchmarks on the new motherboard using the 7Zip application. The results indicate a huge performance increase with the new board
   
   Compressing / Uncompressing
   • Old Via MoBo: 331Kb/s (389MIPS) / 3772Kb/s (444MIPS)
   • New Intel MoBo:770Kb/s (875MIPS) / 10283Kb/s (1101MIPS)
5. 4/06/2008: M3-ATX Power supply tested… and thank god working
6. 7/07/2008: some more work has been made on the casing of the new CarPC. Comparing to the work made on the previous CarPC, my process is very slow! Hopefully I will speed up, when I have with me all the parts.
7. 9/07/2008: Finally, my new screen found and ordered! I’m going for an 8.4″ LCD. It’s not in-dash type one, so it will be fixed in the dash, taking up the 2-DIN space the current LCD and radio are using. It’s even a bit larger than that, so modifications will be made on the current bezel accordingly. Another candidate was a 4:3 ratio 9″ LCD, opposed to the traditional 16:9 widescreen ratio used usually in cars. But it was too much. It would involve extreme modifications of the car’s bezel, and a high risk at the end, not fitting properly.Improvements:
   
   Old vs New screen
   • Size: 7″ vs 8.4″
   • Brightness: 280cd/m� vs 400cd/m�
   • Contrast: 150:1 vs 350:1
   • Top resolution: 1024×768 vs 1600×1200 (physical resolution is 800×480 for both though)
8. 19/07/2008: It has been 10+ days since the LCD was sent from USA, so I decided to check its status via the USPS tracking. I was shocked to discover, that the item was sent to CHILE!!!! There was even an unsuccessful delivery attempt there!!! Thank god “I” wasn’t home!
   USPS’s initial confirmation email had all my correct address, but I guess someone thought that there is no such place as Cyprus, and the correct destination should be Chile!
   What can I say?I’ve seen worst examples of American lack of geographical knowledge
   At least, this issue was sorted out very quickly, after contacting the seller and USPS, and right the next day, the package had already arrived to Germany. Europe at last!
9. 1/08/2008: FINALLY! The LCD found its way here! In one piece too!
   I’ve performed some general tests to confirm its correct operation and I must admit that I was impressed by its image quality! I can’t wait installing it!

10. 11/08/2008: Due to the size of the LCD, direct fitting into the dash is out of the questions. Some mod-ing will be required (lots of it actually).
    This means sacrificing the bezel (plastic surrounding of the A/C controls and radio). So my quest to locate a backup bezel began.
    But this part was nowhere to be found. Apparently no second hand spare parts shop has such an part. Who would ever manage to damage it and require a replacement one anyway?
    My only hope would be locating a totaled Starlet/Glanza. But I never thought this would be so hard!!! I’ve been looking around for some time now, with no result!
11. 12/08/2008: Today I performed some more accurate measurements to fit the LCD into my dash. Using the plastic bracket included with the screen, to allow headrest installation, I was able to find a nice spot to fit the screen with a good viewing angle.
    

    Finally here is a rough estimation, of what needs to be cut off the bezel (marked in yellow color), to allow the LCD fit in:

    

12. 03/09/2008: at last!!! The bezel was cut to fit the screen. It took a lot of courage and thinking before I begin cutting through my beloved OEM bezel… but I made it
    Despite some small inaccuracies, I’m pretty satisfied by the outcome of this “operation”.
    
    

13. 08/09/2008:it has been a long time since I began revising of the CarPC project,� but today it has finally come to an end!!! Not that it required so much work, I just had trouble finding some free time to spend on it. Today I can say that the project has been completed
    

    For this installation, the CarPC case was placed inside the dash, at the bottom, behind the gearstick (over the airbags ECU!!!). A plexiglass base was cut into shape and placed between the airbags’ ECU and the CarPC, just in case!

    In this new setup of my CarPC project, the screen utilizes both DIN slots in the dash, therefore I was making thoughts whether I should keep, or remove the radio/mp3 player. Finally I decided to keep the radio, as I managed to hide it inside the dash, down on the floor, between the driver’s and passenger’s legs.

    Currently conntected to the CarPC, I have a USB bluetooth mini dongle for controlling the mobile phone, USB mini keyboard for shortcuts, USB GPS receiver for satellite navigation and a USB hug for future expansions.

    Unfortunately, the Linksys 802.11g low profile PCI wireless card I used in my previous CarPC, won’t fit in the small case of the new one. So, in the near future, I will be buying a USB WiFi dongle, that also utilizes an external antenna, for improved reception.

    Mainly this project has been completed, but some minor works will take place at some point. I might do some touch up work on the bezel, or even paint the whole thing. Some other small additions to this project, include a USB FM receiver (not that I ever listen to the radio), a good screen protector for the LCD and a wired remote control for controlling the hidden radio unit. But these are future plans, for now I need to detox

I’ve always considered my foglights to be one of the least useful parts of my car… as whenever I was in a situation where I needed that extra light, the 35W H3C halogen bulbs failed me. The underpowered halogen bulbs were unable light my way.

Also, in foggy situations, my Xenon headlights are not of much use, due to their high color temperature (6000K). The higher the color temperature is, light becomes whiter (or more blue etc), but less penetrative.

So I made my self a humble birthday present (as I’m saving for the Lexus ). I ordered a 55W H3 3000K (Golden) Xenon kit.

The H3 bulb is almost direct replacement of the H3C ones. If you try a bit, you can fit them in place, or even better, you can make some more permanent changes on it and make it fit perfectly. This involves a small risk though as the output light pattern might be a bit difference though, due to the H3 bulb being longer… but who cares

It took me a while to properly communicate with the Chinese seller. I almost learnt Chinese on the way, but the correct item eventually arrived!

The installation is pretty straight forward. You have to try really hard to get it wrong! It would normally take me less than an hour to complete the whole thing, but I couldn’t make up my mind on the ballasts’ installation location. I finally decided to install the ballast behind/under the front indicators.

And the results were… enlightful!

Here are several photos comparing the Xenon and the original halogen foglights.

In the past I tried using a 55W halogen H3C bulb in my foglights, the result was uncontrolled light all over the place, blinding the other drivers. The H3 bulb I installed now, are physically much longer as I already mentioned, with result a big part of the bulb is hidden in the foglights’ reflection cap.

The purpose of this cap, is to block the direct light beam and reflect it back to the foglights’ main reflector. So, due to the longer H3 being inside that cap, the light’s output pattern was a bit weird. There is an intense 90 degree angle reflection. Driving by a car, feels like “scanning” it

But the good thing is that I’ve been driving around last night for an hour with the foglights on, and I had no complains at all from the other drivers… with exception a guy in a Suzuki Swift (you cry baby)!

Finally, I might remove the reflective cap at some point, just to see how that improves situation and how blinding 4000+ lumens of light can be I gave this idea a try, but the bulbs’ base is part of the reflective cap. So this plan was abandoned

[UPDATE 30/08/08]: the next day, one of the bulbs simply died. Just my luck i guess! Now back to the tough part… trying to communicate with the Chinese seller for a replacement bulb! I hate this!

Hopefully it will arrive soon

[UPDATE 08/09/08]: at last my replacement bulb arrived. And this time I played it safe. I also bought an extra bulb for backup, just in case! This time extra care was given into properly sealing the foglight’s housing with the new bulb in it, due to an incident I had during car wash, when the foglight suddenly became a fishbowl

Some mods I might consider/attempt in the near future are:

• a Limited Slip Differential (LSD)
• a 6-speed gearbox (from a Corolla G6)…if I ever find one!
• a 55W HID foglights kit (Installed – 29/08/2008)
• a front spoiler lip (already purchased) (Abandoned – Lip won’t fit correctly )
• Aluminium door sills (already purchased) (Installed - 10/05/2008)
• a custom made clear LEDs brake light for the roof spoiler (already in the building process)
• Revise/Improve the CarPC project (CarPC v.2.0 Completed – 08/09/08)

Wish list:

• a Lexus IS250 (or IS350 if I’m dreaming…or IS-F if the dream is too good)
• a super-charger for it, to begin with…

All kind of donations are accepted, including paypal, cash, etc

I’ve been driving around Protaras yesterday and since my CarPC is being in the process of upgrade, I found my phone’s GPS navigation pretty handy a couple of times. It successfully guided through shortcuts, on my way home, beating Protaras’ awful afternoon traffic.

Unfortunately my Glanza, unlike my dad’s 2006 Toyota Yaris RS, has very limited spaces to store/place your phone. So today I decided to install a mobile phone holder in my car. The holder I already had available, was designed to clip on the air vents (ouch), or stick with 3M tape on the dash. Neither of the originally offered choices was wise, and using a glass-suction type phone holder was out of the question. They look really ugly.

By breaking off a small part of the air vents’ clip and loosing up a bit the screws of the dash, I was able to install the holder underneath the mirrors’ controls. After tightening the screws, the holder stayed in place, and it’s definitely not going anywhere.

This is more like a recommendation to anyone having a Starlet/Glanza, rather than a real mod

Parking sensors can sometimes be a useful thing to have (thank god I haven’t verified this theory yet), but I’m not a big fan of the idea of drilling my rear bumper, to fit 2-4 sensors which most of the time their color does not even match the bumper’s color, in order to have something beeping in my ears when reversing

But this wasn’t the case the kit I purchased some time ago. Instead of the traditional ultrasonic sensors, this kit uses an antenna to pick electromagnetic reflections behind the car, and sense any obstacles. The antenna is a simple metallic strip stack at the inside of the bumper, so no drilling takes place, and can be removed at any time easily.

The kit included a film antenna, a small black box (the control unit) and a tweeter-sized speaker for the annoying beeping.

I finally had the chance to install the kit after having it sitting in my room for some time now… and you know what? It works!!! I never expected it to work so accurately!!! I did expect it to perform normally with highly electromagnetic absorbing obstacles (car, human body, metallic objects, etc), but I never thought it would be able to detect a brick wall, a bag of clothes, etc.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of the installed antenna, but there isn’t anything interesting or complicated there. It’s just a strip placed at the bumper’s inside, from one end to the other.

The control unit of the parking sensors, is powered by the the reverse light indicators. Therefore, the kit is activated only when I’m reversing… as it should anyway.

Ebay keeps reminding me that I NEED to buy stuff. Thus I bought these rare aluminium Toyota door sills as soon as it was listed

My sweet new purchase, arrived to my doorstep from Japan in only 2 days!!! As soon as I received them, I started looking a set of high quality Glanza stickers, to replace the original “Starlet” logo, but unfortunately I didn’t have any luck finding such a thing on eBay. Also I couldn’t find online any good quality “Glanza” logo graphic, to have it locally printed and cut

So today, I got fed up having the door sills sitting in my room, so I decided to install them. The installation procedure was straight forward. The door sills are placed under the lower original protective plastic of the doors. I used some extra powerful double face, rated to hold 50Kg in the air. I hope I will never have to remove them

[UPDATE: 11/07/08]

Finally! I found an eBay seller who was able to make a set of custom dimensions Glanza logo, out of high quality vynil. So I ordered a set of 250×25mm Glanza decals, in gray color from him.

I must admit, that gray wasn’t the best color choice after all. Black would look much better. But it is still good enough to not bother changing it for the next 5 years

One thing I always missing from my car, was opening the glove box compartment in a dark night, and be able find what you are actually looking for (rather to the traditional blind trial & error method)

All it took to fulfill my dream (duh), was four 10mm LEDs (supposed to output 12-15 lumens), a microswitch, some wires and a resistor.

After putting those together into a series circuit, and connecting it through the switch to switched 12V (when ignition ON), everything was ready. The switch was placed at the glove box’s sides, where it perfectly fitted in a plastic’s slot. When the glove box is closed, the LEDs switch off… as it should.

Also in the picture above, shows the Holux GPS receiver used for satellite navigation in combination with the CarPC. The receiver has connected on it an external antenna for improved reception and a USB cable for charging. It’s placed in the glove box’s wall with velcro, making it easily removable in case I need to use it on my cell phone or something.

[UPDATE: 10/07/08]

I decided to improve this mod, so I replaced the 4 10mm white LEDs, with an aluminium board with 24 surface mounted white LEDs. It gives a more solid light result, rather than 4 bright spots

At some point I decided to replace the traditional roof light bulb with several LEDs. No apparent reason, I was just feeling creative

I used 5x 5mm white LEDs on a plastic ring with an appropriate resistor. The resulting light intensity was a bit improved but nothing special.

I believe that in the near future I will be revising this mod. Plenty more LEDs can fit in the provided space. Also the new types of LEDs are much brighter

[UPDATE: 10/07/08]

This mod was one of the first mods to ever do on my Glanza, so I decided that it was time for an upgrade

I purchased some time ago a couple of small aluminium boards with 8 surface mounted LEDs each, and eventually yesterday, I found some free time to replace this ancient mod.

When I originally made this mod, I short circuited the 12V with the ground (screw). When the short circuits occurred, the rooflight’s switch was set to turn on when doors are opened. As a result, no fuse was burnt, but my roof light wouldn’t turn on when doors were opened.

I asked several electricians’ opinion, but nobody seemed to know what could be the problem. I kept getting irrelevant answers. After a looooong research, I discovered that this caused 2 copper lines of the circuitry at the back of my dials to melt!!! I corrected this problem by soldering some wires and closing the melted copper gap, and finally! I had light when I opened my doors!

This time, I was more “original”. I short circuited the 12V with the ground (screw again), but this time the rooflight’s switch was set to be always turned on. Therefore this time I burnt something else!

I did the usual checks, but all the fuses (at the drivers’ leg space), were fine and the back of the dials had no melted copper lines. After a long troubleshooting procedure I and my friend Paris went through, the problem was located at a burnt fuse, in the relays’ box at the engine bay!

I had no idea Starlets have fuses in there. I thought it was just relays! I still can’t believe that I have wasted so much precious time on this thing!!!

Anyway, at least it worked, and now I know all the possible scenarios if something similar goes wrong next time

Some time ago, my friend Monica was checking out my blog, and she got excited when she saw the various custom designed presents posted in it.

So, tomorrow it’s her bday, and I decided to make something special for her. After some thinking, I came up with a design idea. Then using some basic materials such us perspex, blue LEDs, switch, battery case and time from my day off… et voila…

I love computers… so why not having one always with me?

No, I don’t mean a laptop. I have access to a computer at home, the same at work and at most locations… but what about on the move, in the car? Having this in mind I decided to do something useful with my free time and build an in-car computer.

The system I started building was based on a mini-ITX form factor motherboard (17×17cm) from VIA. The VIA EPIA M1000 embedded motherboard runs at 1GHz and all you need on-board. VGA, 5.1 audio, Ethernet cards etc and a PCI slot for further expansions.

I loaded the motherboard with a 512MB SD Memory DIMM and a 2.5″ 80Gb hard disk, and it was ready to go. The motherboard is powered in-car by a DC-DC smart power supply unit, the M1-ATX.

The M1-ATX offers smart regulation and filtering functions in order to maintain the correct voltage despite variations and spikes. It’s able to feed correct voltage to the motherboard for an input as low as 6V and up to 30V.

In addition M1-ATX is connected to the ignition system of the car, so it can be setup to power up/down the PC at a variable preset time after the car is switched on/off. When the ignition is turned off, the shutdown/hibernation sequence initiates.

A custom made case was built to accomodate the carPC’s components. It was originally a larger aluminium project box, but after some planning and work the box was sized down to perfectly fit the components. Also a 60mm high airflow fan was fitted to the top of the box and an appropriate hole was drilled.

The whole case was meant to be hidden behind the dash, therefore I needed a way to interface it to the dashes controls. A custom made face was built and replaced the useless ash tray and lighter. The lighter was actually relocated (hidden), as you never know when you might wanna power a device meant for a car.

The front face of the carPC created, is seperated in 2 parts. The upper part is a laptop’s DVD drive, while the bottom part is a multiple flash card reader (SD, CF, MS, SM XD) with a USB port (good for connecting temporarilly USB data sources or charging devices).

Finally a 7″ in-dash motorized VGA touch screen was used as a display of the carPC. The screen itself has a TV tuner among with various other inputs, but so far I am not using any. I might consider in the future, utilizing one of the extra inputs with a reversing camera, but I don’t see any particular use of the TV tuner. I already know how much Cyprus TV sucks, there is no need to remind myself of that while I’m driving around too

Some additional features I added to the carPC are:

• a Linksys 802.11g Wi-Fi slim PCI card with external antenna for wireless internet access
• a D-link USB Bluetooth adapter for connectivity with mobile phone and handsfree
• a miniUSB keyboard for controlling various functions with preset hotkeys
• a bluetooth Holux 236 GPS receiver for satellite navigation.

Everything is controlled by an interface application called Centrafuse (under
an enlighted version of Windows XP). Centrafuse provides a great interface with
large viewable buttons, for easily using a computer as a media center, GPS voice
navigation, mobile phone etc, within a car environment.

** UPDATE: CarPC v.2.0 is in the process of design.

After spending some time of using the original version of my taillights, I found the energy, patience and time to make some improvements. What was the main priority, was to replace the top part of the taillight, the 2-stage driving lights/brake light, which wasn’t as great as I was originally planning.

I started making plans on a new design for the big spacey upper part of my taillights. I decided to use high power 10mm red LEDs instead of the 5mm used so far.

The new LEDs circuit board, added a third function to the 2 original ones (driving lights & brake light). I took this chance to make my Glanza “Euro-specs”, by creating and wiring a set of fog-lights.

So each of the new LEDs circuits, includes a total of 42 big bright red LEDs.

The top 16 closely gathered LEDs are used as the newly implemented fog-lights.

The 16 spreaded around LEDs in the middle, are used as breaking light.

Finally the lower 10 LEDs, are used as driving lights.

Each of the 3 parts is powered by voltage regulating circuits (using LM317 voltage regulator ICs), calculated and designed according to the needs of this mod.

The new circuit board was screwed into place, in the taillight’s casing, with the regulator circuits packed well at the back.

Also, I took this chance of working again on the taillights, and improved the cabling of the whole design. I used 9-pin male/female plugs to connect the whole taillight to the car’s circuitry. This way the taillights are very easily removable for any future works.

This new taillights version, are way brighter than the previous one, and installed more carefully. Unfortunately there is still a small issue to be solved in the close future, when I get the time and patience to revisit this mod.

The whole top part, is installed too deep in the taillight housing and in combination with the covers’ reflectors, the light is not linear at every point.

I’m making thoughts of resolving this issue by placing small 10mm diameter clear plastic tubes over each LED, guiding the light closer to the reflective taillight housing covers.

One of my longest lasting car projects, I believe is this one.

I decided to make my Glanza more… modern looking. So I purchased off eBay plenty of high power 5mm red and orange LEDs, and started experimenting on a new taillights look.

After taking my taillights apart, I discovered that each taillight is separated in 3 chambers, with a single 25W bulb in each:

• lower part – always on when lights are switched on
• middle part – the indicator
• upper part (2-filament bulb)
  • 1st filament is always on when lights are switched on
  • 2nd filament switches on when braking

I measured the available space, decided on the desired look, and started planning and building LEDs circuit for this purpose. In this LEDs project, the lower bulb of each taillight was replaced by 19 red 5mm LEDs.

The mid part with 28 amber 5mm LEDs, to match the front full LEDs indicators. The LEDs are placed on cable tights, due to lack of components the weekend I was building them. I was so anxious to get this project done I couldn’t wait until Monday

And the upper part with a total of 36 red 5mm LEDs. 24 of them are always on when the cars lights are on and the rest 12 of them turn on as stop lights.

Finally the designed circuits were fitted in the taillights.

The upper part, didn’t go as well as I was hopping. The fit wasn’t the expected on…but I ran out of patience long time ago, so this was the final design (for the time being)

Some tips for people who plan to do something similar… always remember… in car electronics mods, your biggest enemy is the car’s ECU

From my experience, the ECU detected the extremely low load of the LEDs (eg: a 25W load bulb, replaced by 4-5W load of LEDs), and in the case of the brake lights, the ECU started warning me of burnt bulbs by flashing the ABS (Antilock Braking System) light on the dash.

After ignoring the warning for some time… the blinking light went solid and I was shocked to find out that I actually had NO ABS!!! The ECU disabled the ABS for safety reasons and also to force me have my bulbs replaced! So annoying!

This problem was solved by placing a load resistor in series with one of the brake lights, to fool the ECU that I still have a single working brake light and stop bothering me.

A similar problem was also faced with the indicators part. Luckily In this operation ECU does not get involved. When a bulb is burnt, indicators blink twice as fast, due to their (ancient) operation method (2 metal plates touching each other, when current passes through them, they heat and retract from each other until they cool down some miliseconds later…causing the blinking of the indicators).

Some minor electronics were replaced with a blinking circuit in order to make the indicators work independently to the provided load.

In a quest of buying a new toy for my car, I came across an Australian company’s (Whiteline) product list for Starlets/Glanzas. In their products I found a very interesting item. A set of bushes the company named them “Anti-lift kit”. According to the provided information, these bushes dramatically improve the handling of Starlets, by applying a different angle to the front wheels’ arms.

This prevents the car’s “face” to lift during acceleration. Thing especially useful when there is an extra overweight audio system in the boot

The kit arrived via DHL in less than a week, and some time later I had it eventually installed. The old screws had to be cut off in order to install this kit, but the kit arrived with its own screws anyway.

The difference of my car’s handling was obvious from the first 10m. I could accelerate hard with minimum wheel spinning and not viewing the sky for a change! At last!

After such a modification, I should have my steering wheel aligned, so I did. The mechanic who worked on aligning my car, also had a Starlet GT, and he was so excited when he saw the caster kit, he ordered me one for himself