It's been over 4 years since my last entry. I've moved several times across the country and worked at a few different places and that has consumed a lot of my time, though I have worked on a number of projects. Here's a highlight of some of the interesting things I've worked on since then.

I have put the robotic car project on hold since then to work on some other things. First of all, I built a 3D Printer several months after my last blog entry and updated it with some new components about 2 years later. It was a RepRap Mendel Prusa Iteration 2 with a few upgrades. After the printer had some current back-feed through my USB port and caused me to have to send in my computer for repairs, I've been a little cautious about working on the it. However, I will continue my work on it again soon.

Around the end of 2014, I got into flying RC helicopters and had a lot of fun doing that. I ended up at one point having 2 quad-copters and 3 collective pitch helicopters. I have sold my biggest helicopter since then, but still have the quad-copters and 2 smaller helicopters.

In 2016, I was working on the design for a new invention. I had the idea for it in 2014 and was one of my motivations for building a 3D printer. I built a prototype of the electronics part of it and was in the process of working on the programming for it. However, due to a death in the Family we made some sudden life shifts. We bought a school bus to try and convert into a skoolie, which basically means that it's an RV that we could totally customize. Around the end of the year, I ended up getting happily married. Shortly after, we moved to Florida shortly after for about 6 months. After we got back, we ended up just doing the base work on the bus and selling it for a little less than we bought it for, though we did make use of it for moving stuff and storage, so in the end we pretty much broke even.

While in Florida, I did a complete website redesign with a new Laravel backend. I also decided to get into doing video game design and created another blog for that. I kept up work on the game throughout most of 2017 and decided to place that on indefinite hold. As I was working on it, even though it's a pretty cool project, I decided that I knew there wasn't much of a market for that type of game. I think the main reason I was wanting to complete the game was just to start a portfolio so that I could get into game development. However, after some reconsideration, I have decided to stay with web development because there is a lot more demand/opportunity to make money with it. I am in the process of exploring ideas to pursue that will be more profitable and I can pivot from there. I'm also thinking about renaming this section from Robotics to either Electronics or Electronics and Robotics to accommodate the wider scope that this is ending up encompassing.

In late 2017 I started getting into retro computing and purchased a commodore 64 that I started making add-ons for. I made a video that I was intending to post onto YouTube of taking apart the keyboard and cleaning the entire computer. The computer turned out great, but the video ended up only being half-edited. I still intend to at least finish it.

During this time, we went through several vehicles. We bought a Honda Civic in 2016. At the same time we bought the bus, we also bought a Ford Taurus wagon for a great price through the same auction. We ended up selling the Honda Civic shortly before moving to Florida because it gave us some money to travel with and we didn't need to maintain a second car. We used the Ford Taurus to drive across the country to Florida. In Florida, we ended up inheriting a 2013 Dodge Grand Caravan and sold the Ford Taurus to some friends we made there. We drove the Caravan back across the country and still have it.

Earlier this year, I stumbled across a YouTube video that had a huge impact on my life. It was about some of the things that rich people do vs poor people and I decided to watch it just to see how some of the strategies I had developed in life compared to the list. One of the things that really stood out to me is the number and type of books that rich people read. The number I got was that rich people tend to read 50-60 books per year, which are usually non-fiction. On the site Goodreads, I decided to take up their reading challenge for this year and set a goal of 50 books, which I figured I could do about 1 per week. I decided to read mostly non-fiction book and started looking up some recommended reading lists for financial and business books. I started reading about a week into January and ended up successfully hitting the goal around the end of April.

During the course of those books, I really expanded my financial education and it was one of the best things I ever did. Things just started falling into place between paying off some finances, paying back friends that we borrowed money from, being able to save up money, and business just being good overall. I was able to purchase a second car for myself because it was getting to be a real hassle to share a car when we had different agendas. I ended up buying a 2016 Kia Forte, which brings me to my latest project.

While car shopping, one of the cars that I test drove was a little out of my budget, but had a back-up camera as part of it that I really liked. I really liked the car I ended up with, but it didn't come with a back-up camera, so I did some research on it. I ended up getting an upgraded Kia stereo system off of eBay for about $64 and an aftermarket back-up camera off Amazon for about $15. I went ahead and mounted the camera where it is supposed to go, wired it into one of the reverse lights for power and installed the new stereo. With an inverter and a small LCD TV, I was able to test that it was getting a working video signal through the camera and the reverse position signal is delivering 12v, which I tested with a multimeter. I was finally able to get it to display a signal on the stereo once I cut the wire for the reverse signal (pin 19), which appears to be grounded and attached the wire directly to it. I was able to get the video signal through Pins 6 and 18 and it displayed properly. I still need to run the wiring through the car, I dropped a couple screws for the radio down into the console that I need to retrieve or replace and I need to figure out how to get the USB port to work with the stereo and then all should be good.

Update: I found one of the screws after removing one of the side panels to the console. I have also shortened some wires and fed the camera cable up through the rear driver's side door. I updated this blog somewhat, though there is more to do.