Our unmovable hardware deadline has passed!
“The Internets” team car Mignon is now winging its way to Perth for the start of the Shitbox Rally. Well, when I say winging it’s more like trundling its way locked inside a steel container which is operating as a very effective Faraday Cage. We can’t contact the beast!
After weeks of frantic development and hardware installation, fraught with battery problems, Canbus “1.5” incompatibilities, odometer failures, intermittent connectivity, door-lock relay problems and general shitboxiness, we just had to stop tinkering with the car and pack it up for its long trip across our expansive continent.
But at least we could continue developing the backend APIs right? Well no, not if the car is refusing to respond to us and provide the all essential data streams to test with…
The last we saw of it via the remote telematics (provided by the Fleetcutter system via the GoGet sponsorship) it was being shunted around in a car transport yard in Blacktown:
But since then it’s been suspiciously silent:
We phoned the transport company and they confirmed they transport the cars across the country in shipping containers! So until it arrives in Perth we won’t know if the battery has survived the week-long convoy across the Nullarbor. Especially if we forgot to turn off the heated foot-massager and the disco lights – again.
With only 6 days to go to polish and integrate the systems we’re still not looking at sleeping any time soon.
But we’ve raised almost $20,000 and are currently sitting just shy of the #1 fundraiser slot so we feel like we’ve already achieved the most important goal. The rest is just technology right?
http://rallythefuture.com.au/
