My EV parts arrived, so I could finally pull the trigger and get moving on my EV conversion. Since COVID-19 had made supply chains unpredictable, I didn’t want to remove the original internal combustion engine (ICE) until I knew all the relevant EV parts were available. It was both exciting and daunting to pull Dante off the road and actually […]
Calculating battery range
My plan is to kick off my car’s electric conversion this winter. My chosen car is my Autobianchi Giardiniera, Dante. I’m targeting 3-4 months to complete the conversion. Beyond finding time for the project, it will take weeks to design and fabricate components like the transmission adapter plate and battery boxes. To start things though, I needed to figure out my […]
My EV conversion plans
I’m getting closer to officially kicking off my EV (Electric Vehicle) conversion project. Like any big project, this means doing something drastic like pulling out the engine so you’re kinda forced down the path. But before I do that, I thought this would be a good time to record my scope of work – partly for others if they want […]
DanteDials Prototype
Here’s an early demo version of DanteDials for our EV conversion project. It’s a program that shows a custom configurable vehicle instrumentation cluster using a touchscreen. It’s being developed to display electric vehicle CAN bus data. Here we’re using a Raspberry Pi 4 and 4.3″ touchscreen running Raspberry Pi OS. We used Python 3 and Pygame 2, so it should […]
Custom car audio speaker enclosures
I love music, so its important to have a car audio system for my Autobianchi Giardiniera, Dante. The audio system will also be an integral part of my infotainment system, which I’m currently figuring out. My priorities for my car audio system were good sound quality and minimal impact to the interior of my classic car. I set out to […]
Italian to North American rear license plate adapter
I live in British Columbia (BC), so I needed a license plate adapter for an Italian to standard North American plate for my 1973 Autobianchi Giardiniera. I was using zip ties, but that looked unacceptable. I scoured the Internet, but I couldn’t find an adapter. It was bugging me, so I created one using FreeCAD and our 3D printer. It […]
Say hi to Dante
I’ve been remiss in formally introducing my 1973 Autobianchi Giardiniera project car. The underlying goal is to update the car to an electric vehicle so it can continue its days as a more eco friendly version of its cool self. The master plan includes updates to modernize my Giardiniera without losing its classic charm. I thought I’d summarize my experience […]
Monitoring Raspberry PI GPIOs when running Android
As part of my journey to create an Apple CarPlay compatible infotainment system for my car project, I also wanted to use the Pi’s GPIOs to enable apps such as a backup camera. From my research, I discovered that OpenAuto doesn’t support CarPlay dongles. I chose to use Lineage OS Android, as I was able to get my CarPlay dongle […]
CarPlay on Raspberry Pi demo
Getting CarPlay running on a car system like OpenAuto has been a target for my electrical vehicle conversion project. I couldn’t find an OpenAuto solution that uses a CarPlay dongle, so I had to look elsewhere. The good news is I’ve put together a solution using Lineage OS (see my previous post) that I’ll be using moving forward if all […]
CarPlay on Raspberry Pi 4 & 7″ Touchscreen
I’m an iPhone user, so it was really important to for me to get CarPlay running for my EV project’s infotainment system. (I’m not looking to start a iPhone vs. Android spat – both have a their benefits, but its just that iPhones work for me!) I put together a platform running Apple’s CarPlay on a Raspberry Pi 4 and […]