From a barn find, to one of the best out there … just kidding ^^


I’ve started to think about restoring my old power wheels for a while and then give it to my godfather kids.

Backstory : The reason behind all of this is that my godfather is someone who have always been nice to me and he has always give me awesome christmas/birthday presents back when I was a kid.

Now that I’ve grown up I wanted to give something back.
You might find this funny or strange but let me explain myself in more details.

Introduction :

Warning : This part is the explanation on why I decided to restore the power wheels and to give it to my godfather’s kids … You may want to skip this part as it don’t contain any info on the PW restoration project itself

The best Christmas present from my godfather :

Let me take you back to Christmas 2003, my godfather gave me a present. At first, it looks like a rectangle box wrapped in Christmas paper, little bit bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. I didn’t think that much off of it until I opened it up.

To my surprise, it was a PC motherboard ! You can’t even imagine how happy I was, and then it gave me three other presents. A CPU and memory followed by a graphics card! I was mesmerized, I love computer since my childhood, and I had my own computer for the past year or so, an old K6-233 Mhz that I’ve fixed, but then the idea of having a really powerful machine, better than the home computer, for ME and only ME, that I can do anything I wanted with (games, games and more games).



At the time I got an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ CPU, a PC-Chips M848A motherboard, and a stick 512 Mb of DDR PC3200 memory as well as a Geforce 256 32Mb video card, back in the day that was quite a good machine, especially when you’re 10yo and it’s yours !

Today I’m working as a sysadmin, I’ve studied computer sciences for over 3 years, and I’m collecting and restoring vintages computers.
If it wasn’t for this computer, I may never have become the person I am today, never worked or study in the field of IT … In my mind, I considered this machine to be life changing for me.

Now let's go back to the project !

The idea of restoring my Peg Perogo Montana power wheels was bogging me for a while now. I know it was going to be a big project for me, the biggest one I’ve ever attempted, and quite a challenge for me and my electronics and organizational skills.

Here’s how everything started …

Back in June of 2014, my father originally wanted to dispose of my childhood pride and joy: My Peg-Perego Montana power wheels. At the time this thing had been sitting in a barn for the past decade or so and had been involved in a flood six months earlier.

My early childhood best toy :


I’ve got it for Christmas back in 1997 when I was only a 4yo boy. Believe me, it was one off the best toys I ever had (after my SNES, of course). I’ve played with it a lot and my father even had to buy new batteries for it back in 2000.
I think I’ve used it until I would guess 2004 or so, when the second set of batteries finally died.
It was then put in a barn and forget about for years !

The barn find :


And there I was, slowly taking it out of the barn it was put in almost a decade ago.

I slowly started to realize that time had taken its toll on this poor thing. From the beginning this project might have been doomed. I’ve realized that maybe, it will be too complicated and too expensive to restore it, after all, the car had been in a flood six months earlier and water was still in it.

I found the trailer nearby, but it sat outdoor, and the plastic was too far gone to even bother restoring it. It’s a bit sad but I’ll have to do without it.

Assessing the damages :

I’ve realized quickly that it will be a great project, but quite a challenging one, the car was in such bad shape that I didn't even known where to start, will this turn into a money pit ? I’ve had no idea but I decided to continue on nevertheless.

First, while pushing it out of the barn, I’ve noticed that both rear wheels were seized, and all the wheels themselves were full of waters, and these wasn’t good news, though it was not surprising since the car was still FULL of flood water.

[Upon inspection, both electrics motors turned out to be seized.]

I leave it to a later time to figure a way to repair them or to find replacements and go on other thing needed to restore the car, moreover both doors and seatbelts were missing. After doing a bit of "search" around my father found both door, and they’re in great shape and were stored inside, I’m happy because I’m sure that finding replacement wouldn’t have been easy.

I then make a list of things to buy:

- Batteries (the old one were still in the car and due to the flood they had leaked all over the place)
- Spray cans (I decided that the best way to restore the body was to paint it)
- One side repeaters
- Two headlights lenses (since the original one where cracked and had yellowed)
- Two Rear light clusters (the original one were missing)
- Two mirrors (I broke them years ago)
- Two roll bar fog lights (same here)
- One hubcap (one was missing)

Then I had to make a choice, will I restored it to its original factory state or will I improve it by adding lights and other add-ons to it ?

From the beginning it was quite clear to me, I wanted to control the car with an Arduino, or in my case a Teensy 2.0++ board that I had laying around. Why ? Simply because it’s something I didn’t find while searching on the net if someone had already done it and that I wanted to play with to improve my programming skills in Arduino language (a C derivative), so I’ve figured out that it will be “cool” to make a program for the car.

Furthermore, using an Arduino to control the car will allow a lot of functions to be implemented easily. So I decided to do a RestoMod.

Starting the project :

My plan was to restore the body to its factory look or as close as I could.

I then had to decide what new features I wanted

In the beginning, I wanted to improve the performance, by upgrading the motors to a 24V system, but then I’ve decided not to do that.

There is more than one reason that push me to toward this decision: firstly, as a kid, I never complained about the performance, in fact I remember that I’ve find it quite fast, secondly, this is a toy and it should help kids to learn how to drive, and not to turned them only into a street racer, our roads are not a race track. I myself drive a 65HP 1.9L Diesel car with no turbo, and the car weight more than 1.1 tons, while it’s not the fastest thing in the world, it gets me from point A to point B, and can go (and exceed) all the roads speed limit without any problem. You get the point

So performance wise, no improvement will be made.

Now, on to the features that I think need to be added, I think about it for a week or so and come up with the following list :

- Arduino powered
- Real key to start the car (because it’s looks cool)
- Motor control by µC with PWM and adjustable throttle
- LED lighting all around the car (headlights, brakes, blinkers)
- In dash radio (and a power antenna)
- LCD to show driving info such as gear, speed and battery state
- Auto gearbox like in real car (with 3 position Parking, Drive and Reverse)
- A better charger for the car (let’s face it, every charger will be better than the stock one)
- A better plug to recharge the car (easier to use for the kids)
Each of the functions above should be controlled by the Teensy board. The program will be written in Arduino language.
As you will see later on, not everything has been implemented, partially due to the budget and partially due to the fact that my skills are still limited, and some of the thing I decided that it wasn’t necesseray. Moreover, time played an important role in this project.

Disassembling the car :

Now that I’ve made a list of spare parts to find and that I’ve decided what to do in term of restoration, I’ve figured out that the best thing to do was to take the whole car apart to restore it properly. I’ve started to remove the screws and that didn’t turn out as easy as it may seem. The screws were all badly rusted and the heads on some started to stripped will attempting to remove them. In the end I’ve managed to get them all out using some persuasion but I will end up replacing most of them. I strip down the car, since it will be way easier to paint it this way. In the process, I discovered some nice things, such as, that it use a rack and pinion steering system and has a real drum brake (the pads are made out of rubber). The chassis itself was made in Italy and the switches in France.

I wanted to take a look at the motors first, I took them out and first looked at the gearbox, both were fine and no teeth were broken, I cleaned them and apply new grease. They’re all goods now.
As for the motors, at first it seems like it was a lost cause, in a desperate attempt, I decided to spray (a lot !) of WD-40 inside. I waited about half an hour or so, put them back on the gearbox and … it worked ! Both motors could then be easily turned by hand. But that doesn’t mean they will work when connected to a battery.

I plugged each motor to a 12V SLA battery and to my surprise both turned out to be working fine! They sound the same as they did a decade ago (if my memory's right)

Since the motors issue seems to be addressed now, I figured out that it would be nice to clean the car, because after sitting for so long, spiders had decided that it was a great home for them. Ah ah

First off all, I power washed the entire car and clean every plastic parts using soap and water. I then polished the metal parts and grease the steering rack. I repair the drum brake spring which was bent and now they’re no more squeaks when breaking.

The original wiring loom was a total loss or at least a good part of it, so I will need to re do an entire wiring harness for it, but that doesn’t worry me too much.

Finally, I wanted to remove all the water that accumulated in the wheels, and judging by the weight of the wheels there was a lot in there ! I took the rear wheels off, it wasn’t simple to remove but I’ve managed to do it with a bit of help from my father. The front wheels are permanently attached. I took the air compressor out and started to blow air in the tires by the hole made by the molding machine during the manufacturing process (they’re not sealed, they’re just made out of hard plastic), and with the pressure the water is forced out. It’s a long process and took me a couple of hours to do it, but the water was finally gone.

Note: Looking back, I should have drill a small hole in the tires and using the other hole to force air in, it would have been easier and faster this way.

In the end, it took me around a week end to do this but it was well worth it. It was starting to look like a car again, I’ve put it back again to take a look at the improvement done over the week-end and what a change! Also I was due to go to university the next day and didn’t want to lose part during the week (my mom as a habit of cleaning my room, and each time it felt like a tornado as gone by and hidden all things I was working on, and lost all the screws and parts into the vacuum cleaner, fortunately for me I’ve move out since and now live on my own)

Arduino & electronics :

In the meantime, I started to work on the Arduino side of the project, like I previously said; I’ve got a spare Teensy 2.0++ board that I want to use in this project. I’ve got this board a while ago but I haven't used it much except for two or three homebrew project, and one project I did during a placement. It’s a shame since a really love programming, while I’m not the best at it, but I believe that I’ve got the basic to figure it all out on my own.

I decided to use a Nokia 5110 LCD and bought 5 off of eBay for 10€. They’re really easy to work with and they’re also backlighted. I use the U8glib library, it simple enough to use and can do everything I wanted. I use the ability of the display to show static picture, and done all the pics myself.

I had a clear idea of the type of graphics I wanted to show on the LCD, like any car fitted with a screen it had to display the brand logo at startup, it also has to show info about the car status like for example: the lights status (OF or ON), gears, speed of the vehicle and the battery charging status.

After some googling, I came across a soft name FastLCD. I use it to make the bitmap pictures shown on the LCD of the car. After a couple of hours of work, I made out these images witch correspond to what I had in mind:





Download .rar containing FastLCD programm (by Bojan Ivancic MICRODESIGN)

I started developing the software that will make the car run; I decided to use the Arduino language, since it was powerful enough for what I wanted to do. Having what I will call the “basis” in programming it wasn’t that hard to do, except for the speed calculation, but I will write about this later on.
I first wanted to find out how to use the interrupts, since I never used them with the Teensy. I quickly find the Arduino Reference on it :

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/AttachInterrupt

After a bit a fiddling around, I managed to use interrupt, and found that it was really easy.

The next step was to find a working speed calculation program, since I know that I will have to use timer and that was a bit out of my skill. I may have been able to do it myself, but again, time was a factor in this project.
After a bit of research, I decided to use this program in my code it’s slightly modified but it uses the same base.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Bike-Speedometer/

So, all credit goes to the original author (amandaghassaei) regarding the speed calculation I use in the power wheels program. My best friend also deserves some credits for tweaking my code a bit.

One important thing to note regarding the output of the transistors H-bridge, at startup and in Park, all transistors that command the H-bridge are LOW, this is done as a bit of safety and peace of mind for me.

I will not enter in more details in programming here since there are literally thousands of tutorials online regarding coding in Arduino language. You just have to know that it’s not as difficult as it may seem, it was in fact, maybe the easiest part of the project. I add fun doing every bit of code, it something I really enjoyed back when I was still at school.

Here is the final code of the program:

Download .rar containing the complete program (.ino) for the Arduino Software

I started assembling everything on to a breadboard, then I designed and make my PCB out of solderable breadboard. I know that the PCB doesn't look that good, I should have at least think about the best layout BEFORE placing and soldering components on it. The top side looks way better ! At least, that's how you learn something.

As far as the Speed sensor, it use an infrared diode, one NPN transistor, few passives, and a simple common quad op-amp : LM324 (1 used as a "voltage follower" followed by one used as "non-inverting"), it was made by a friend a mine for another project and it give it to me.

Finding parts:

Just let me told you, it was a big adventure finding part for the car.
Batteries, paint and all electronics parts were quite easy to find, as for the battery I went shopping on eBay and bough two 12V 7.2 Ah SLA battery for about 40€ the set of two.

The spray cans and primers set me back about 45€ but there were easy to find at my local supermarket.

But the car parts themselves reveal to be way harder to find.

First of all I took a look online on local French Website for power wheels parts; I did find some but ONLY for modern models (like the Gaucho and Polaris) but nothing for my 18 years old Montana. Then I take a look on leboncoin (the French craiglists) and found some headlights for … 20€ a piece, OK granted, they were NOS but again … way too expensive, and the seller didn’t have anything else I needed by the way. At this point, I wasn’t worried that much and I guess that I could at least find parts in Europe but it didn’t turn out this way.

Let me introduce you to:

https://tigerimports.net/parts.php

I usually hate when someone is recommending a company, but trust me they’re really GREAT.
Tiger Imports is an US company specialized in ride on toy parts, and it was the ONLY site where I was able to find at least most of the parts I was looking for. The prices are really cheap too.
So I decided to buy the parts here. I didn’t have a choice really, after spending hours online without finding anything else.

I first contact them to see if everything is OK and if they can ship to France, Justin from Tiger Imports reply to me within a day (taking into account the time zone difference, it’s really fast)
The only downside in importing parts from the US was the shipping cost which ends up costing me more than the parts itself … 47.25$ of shipping and only 31.42$ of parts

But they’re an honest company and they declared everything in the packet, don’t ask them to put gift on it, they won’t do it !
After a hefty bill of 78.67$ (about 70€ at the time) and it took about a month to ship, because some of the parts were out of stock and restock took a while, but again, they reply to me within a day after asking a question about my order.
The shipping itself took about two weeks and everything was well packed, nothing came broken.

Here the list of parts I bought:

Peg Perego - Headlight Lens (SPST0132) x2 $7.60
Peg Perego - Gaucho Superpower Right Mirror (SAGI0127DM) x1 $3.50
Peg Perego - Gaucho Superpower Left Mirror (SAGI0127SM) x1 $3.50
Peg Perego - Polaris Ranger Rzr (silver) Rollbar Foglight (SAGI0132JN) x2 $13.20
Peg Perego - Tail Light Lens (ASGI5009ARF) x2 $6.40
Peg Perego - Small Hubcap (SPST3185R) x1 $3.00



I wasn’t able to find the side repeaters. But I had a Plan B !
The mirrors looks the same as the originals ones, except they are chromed instead of red, but I figured out that it would like nice (turned out it did)

As for the roll bar fog lights, they looked quite like the originals but since I had no way to verify the dimensions, they were not of the exact same dimensions, but after a bit of mod, they fit nicely.

The real question here was about the tail lights, they turned out to be smaller in size and I had to drill another hole for them and fill the original one, it doesn’t look that great but they were the only rear lights I could find for a Peg Perego power wheels.

Oh yes, the side repeaters, so I went to my local junkyards (love spending hours in junkyards) and look at every car to find the best side repeater that will fit. Turned out it wasn’t as easy as I think. I was about to leave when I came across an early 90’s Civic and the side repeater look promising, they were in good shape, match the original shape and were Orange (instead of white on the newer cars).

I had taken the remaining PW side repeater with me in order to compare the size and shape and that convinced me that they’ll fits.
So I CAREFULLY removes both side repeaters without damaging the wings, since they were in really good shape and somebody I’m sure wanted them. They cost me 3€ each, some relays and a couples of fuses, the total was 10€, still guess that it was a bargain.

[Just for you Civic aficionados, it was a grey Civic 4th gen hatchback with stick (not a CRX), with 144 000 Km (90 000 Mi) on the odometer and it was in such great shape, I’m so sad that it end up in a junkyard, oh and it was stock and even had the original steering wheel on it.]

But I digress….

Now that the side repeaters problem is solved and that I know I had all the parts I needed

I ended up killing my Arduino, I don’t really know how I did it but it wasn’t detected by USB and after close inspection with my oscilloscope only the clock was present and all output were LOW so it was bad. I had to buy a new one for about 30€.

H bridge :

In the beginning, I wanted to use the Arduino as a PWM generator and have a variable accelerator. In order to do this I bought some high power mosfet N-channel transistors (STP80NF55-08) and ask my best friend to help me built the H-Bridge since I know it was out of my skills range. We managed to make a prototype but I realized that it was really complicated, well at least making one for a high current.

The issue we ran into was that even with a 100% PWM the speed of the motor was really slow and my friend believes that the issue was in the pump part of the circuitry. As my oscilloscope was bad at the time (I bought a Rigol DS-1054Z since), I couldn’t really troubleshoot what was happening, nor did I really had the skills for such investigation.

After asking a bit of help online (thing that I rarely do), peoples on the forum convinced me that it was easier for me to use relays instead and forget about having a variable throttle. So I’ve choose to use the relays I bought at the junkyard (two 50A one and two 30A one). I use the two 50A one for forward speed and the 30A one for reverse. I wanted to have a bit of margin and forward speed is used more than reverse anyway.

Then I had to make connector for the H-Bridge and the batteries. On the motors side I use the original car wiring as it wasn’t damaged. For the batteries and H Bridge, I had to make brand new wiring and connectors.

I used connectors that I salvaged from some old audio equipment that I’ve managed to get before they were thrown away back when I was a trainee at France Telecom (Orange).
These connectors are really useful; I got a bag of them and use them all the time. I don’t know how much current you can put through, but I’d guess about 10A each, so for the battery connector, I played it safe and put fours in parallel.

After a night of work, all the connectors and the wiring harness was ready.

It works first time; the relays did their jobs and the motors both worked well. Also the Arduino part works fine, the program just needed a bit of adjustments to works flawlessly. On the hardware side, everything I did work out OK. No need to tell you that I was really happy.



LED Lightings:

I came across a post on modifiedpowerwheels.com were the guy used some LED lights he found at Harbor Freight :

http://forum.modifiedpowerwheels.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9836.

I think that the LED lights looks cool and fit the car perfectly. But I wasn’t able to find such lights here in France. So I decided to buy the LEDs and build the PCBs myself. I use high intensity white LEDs lights; some LEDs (blue ones) were salvage from some an old garden lights. I already had the orange LEDs but was disappointed by their low light output, so for the side repeaters, I switched them with blue one.
Since I’ll be making the PCB myself, I have no restriction as were I will put the lights.

For the front lights, I made a templates, that’s allows me to place them symmetrically, in order to have leds that light out the road side on each corner.



Radio


The radio came from ebay, it's really cheap at about 24€ (with shipping) but as quite a nice sound for the size and said to be waterproof. It's designed for motorcycle and scooter and run from the 12V battery.

Better still, it has an Aux input built in, a blue backlight screen and seem to works well. I've integrated it into the center off the dash where the speed switches were located originally.

The dash was quite hard to cut since the plastic is really thick, but i've managed to do it, then a sealed the bezel using a plastic repair kit.
The speakers have been integrated into the doors panel and it looks the same as on a real car.

The antenna came from one of my old hamradio handled Radioshack VHF receiver from the 80's that was given to me years ago.

Safety :


The motor worked well but I had not implemented any protection, so it was REALY dangerous. Remember that this is for kids to use, so more safety the better. I tried to salvage the original fuse holder but the wiring was so corroded that it was hopeless. I decided to put the wires in vinegar in order to remove all the oxidation, then I carefully removed the connectors and solder them into new wires. It work great !

I decided to put 30A fuse (originally 40A fuses were used, but I think it was really too much). After some calculations, I come to conclusion that in theory BOTH motors should not use more than 25A all together. I also added a fuse on the 5V output of the regulator (0.5A) to protect the Arduino.

As for the battery charging wiring, they’re a 3A fuse on it.

The radio came with two fuse already installed, one for the permanently connected 12V and one for the 12V after ignition (both are 3A). Finally the light circuit is protected by a 3A fuse.



Battery charger:


Originally I wanted to make the charger as well because let’s face it, the original charger is just a battery destroyer. So after searching on the web I came across 2 or 3 simple “intelligent” battery charger. Using some schematics found online, I tried to do my own version and then make it. But it didn’t work as attended. At the time my Tek TDS 520 oscilloscope went bad, so apart from my 2 multimeters I was blind on what’s was going on and couldn’t really troubleshoot the circuit.

Then I decided to buy one instead but they’re usually around the 50€ marks, which was too expensive. Luckily a local discount supermarket “Lidl” had one on sale for 18€.

Their products while cheap are usually OK. It turned out that the charger works fine and it’s an intelligent charger with multiples charging functions and with a “float charge” mode. What a bargain !

I just modify the original connector and add one from an old boat fish sonar that my grandfather gave me. It turned out that the connecter barely fit in the car fake gas cap (looks like it's original). The connector itself is also waterproof and is keyed to prevent the kid from putting it in backward.



Body repair/mod :


Before painting I needed to address to broken parts of the body, and prepare the dashboard for putting in the radio and LCD as well as prepare the body for integrating the Civic side repeaters and the rear light.
I use dremel in order to accomplish the tasks above.

One thing to note is that the plastic is really thick and is of really good quality for sure. It was quite hard cutting into but I’ve managed to do it in the end.

I also had to repair the hood hinges.

I think it used to be plastic rods but they broke years ago. So I just used two screws and chopped of the heads and inserted them in place. It works fine now.

The right side support of the roll bar assembly was broken were you put the screw in. I tried to repair it with some epoxy but it didn’t hold up. So I put a bracket and painted it red.

On the dashboard, the left side had a hole were a plastic cover was originally meant to be. I made a square plate from some old “Plexiglas” and painted it black. I then drill a hole in the center to put the key switch in.



Painting :


After discussing it with my godfather, his oldest sons like red (he love the Pixar Car movie and Flash Mc Queen, that’s maybe why …), so, red its goanna be !

To be fair, I was happy to keep the original color of the car because chips on the paint will be less noticeable.

Trying to find a matching red spray can, as it turned out, was really easy. The local supermarket had spray can that looks almost the same red color. In the end it isn't a perfect match, but it’s really close to.

For the dash, seats and wheels, I never really liked the beige color, and I settle on a dark gray witch look far better and more modern in my opinion.

I sand everything down, using different grits of sandpaper (800 => 1000 => 1800) and then I use a plastic primer. I Then put two coats of red paints. It turned out to be a nightmare since the paint reacted badly in some areas and I had to redo it again and again. It was a long process and the result isn’t great (well, I’m not really satisfied I should say) but it’s not that bad either, and let's face it, the paint won’t stay new for long (kids you know … take care of things) and it's still a big improvement over what it was before painting.
So painting turned out to be by far the most difficult thing in this entire project.

As a kid I remember using plastic renovator to revive color and it might have something to do with why the paint didn’t stick and maybe explain why the plastic reacted so badly to it.

I ended up re-spraying everything except for the roll bar assembly which for an unknown reason hadn’t fade over time like the rest of the parts.

The color match is almost perfect as you can’t really notice any difference. I did also respray the bumpers all around the car and trims parts in black.

Maybe I’m a bit harsh with myself; it doesn’t look that bad after all



Stickers :


What a finished PW without stickers ? No wayyyy ... Why ? Because, I just love stickers ! :D

I decided to use some of the original stickers, I had carefully peel them off before I painted the car. I scan some of them and after a bit of photoshop, they look like new again ! I then, print these new stickers on an adhesive piece of paper, yes, it will not be waterproof but oh well. I tried !
As for the "new" stickers, They're of my own design, some are from pictures I found online (like the "obvious" Toyota HSD sticker ^^ I modified).



Total Cost :


As it turned out, it ended up quite costly :-( Way, way more than I had anticipated initially, adn more that I wanted to put into it, but looking at the price of a brand new power wheels, it’s seem like a bargain, and it was really fun and instructive to do. I see no loss here.
Anyways, here is all the parts and cost :

2 12V 7.2Ah SLA Battery from ebay : 40€
In dash radio from ebay: 24€
8x STP80NF55-08 N-Channel Transistors (not used in the end) : 25€
Power wheels parts from Tiger Imports : 70€
Junk yards parts (relays and side repeaters) : 10€
Intelligent battery charger : 18€
New Arduino (I’ve killed the first one) : 30€
Paint spray can : 45€
LEDs and key switch : 20€

The total cost of the project was about 285€ (305 US $)

Finished !




Conclusion:


January 2015 : End of project, Finally, it’s done … It took quite a long time and it almost got abandoned multiples times … But it’s finally done !

I did not implemented everything I wanted and now I have other ideas in order to improve it furthermore : like a reverse beeper, reverse light, batteries status indicater, keyless start (push button start), immobilizer, and these are examples, all of this could have been implemented in software. But in the same time they’re already enough function ^^ and a kid should be able to use it after all, so, it’s good enough like it is.

Over the year and a half it took me to complete this project, thing have change dramatically, I got my diploma, found a job at local company and rented a flat near my hometown. Amazingly when I move out, I managed not too lose any parts of the car, which must be kind of miracle or I’d say that my organizational skills have definitely improved.

In the end this project was AWESOME looking back they’re was good and bad days, and lot of things went wrong in the first place, but this project help me learn a lot. First of all it was the biggest project I’ve ever attempted and already some of my previously smaller project never got finished. It was a departure for me, proving myself that I’m able to finish a project and making it from scratch. My skills in electronics and programming have been improved tremendously, I’ve learned to use interrupt and I now comment all of my code, something a learned during a placement that I did for university, and also, when your faced with 50k+ lines of someone else "uncommented" code … You did it the right way after that !

I love playing around with Arduinos board, and though that it was really fun and I will definitely buy a new board, you never know when one of these could be handy and it's possibility extend very far, at least, as far as you're programming skills will. I also think that my organizational skills were improved by a huge amount (it may also be due to the fact that I’ve found a job and working for a company taught me a lot regarding organization, much more than schools did). I realized that that, if I take my time and do everything step by step, I could achieve a big project like this almost on my own. Moreover, I now enjoy designing/engineering, while at school never wanted to be an engineer, instead I’ve opted for sysadmin but now I’m may take this into consideration, but I think it would have to stay as an hobby as I’ve no diploma in engineering.

Lastly, I enjoyed every bit of this project and its make me happy that my pride and joy toy I got as a kid has been recycled and turned into something better. I hope my godfather kids will play with it as long as I did back in the day, and that another thing that will not end up filling up an landfill.

Strangely enough, this project had made me wanted to drive an automatic car, I’m getting tired of driving a stick, and in France (or Europe in general) it’s not that easy to find an automatic car and not a Diesel. After looking around for a bit a now, I want to buy a Prius (edit DONE, got a first gen Prius and LOVE it), no more Diesel for me, it’s so awful for the environment.

Don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the Guestbook section, just tell me what you think !

Thanks you for having read all of this :)

UPDATE : My project was published on Hackaday