What’s the coolest ‘just for the joy of engineering’ project you’ve ever made, and how did you pull it off? We are asking e14 in our Join, Share & Win Competition

dougw said:

I expect to play with it for many hours

The rest of the Rube Goldberg Machine perhaps ? 

 dougw this is one of your classics for sure.

wolfgangfriedrich said:

All of the tasks were on my top list of things to do. Soldering a prototype on breadboard, FPGA programming, unusual clock design and cool graphics as the result.

Very nice.  You certainly checked off a lot of boxes in a single project.

Very impressive.  When you lifted the hood I almost fainted when I saw all the wires.   

I'm not sure if this is just for my joy, but it's when my young grandson and granddaughter "helped" me build a simple AM radio.  Their eyes lit up, but my heart was bursting.  Thanks for the memory.

I converted a 2 child size power wheels Hummer to radio control. 

The video shows the 1st edition. I reused LED driveway flood lights mounted on tbe windshield, they were switched on by the radio controller channel 3. It was very cool for night driving thru the yard. 

Kids like to try running their parents over and smash it into walls, so 6 ping sensors were added to the front for auto brake and forward direction lockout.

Later I added gold mylar skin, and OLED panels in the headlights as eyes so the car seemed animated to look around.

It sports 2 batteries with an on dash selector switch and a voltmeter so you dont get stuck with a dead battery.

https://youtu.be/L5bMCFETkXY?si=fA106JqAVn_phKeO

I took the car as a fun demo to the science museum and the kids hated it because they couldn't drive. There was no gas pedal or steering wheel. They could only ride.

Lesson learned. The steering wheel got put back in, and a gas pedal re installed. I left all the electronics in tho. The car has a nice linear ramp on the h bridge gating to ease gear backlash. A fast/slow switch helps the youngsters who dont steer well. The ping sensors lockout fast speed and auto stop forward so kiddies dont run into things. Reverse is always 50% speed. The headlight eyes are crazy too. 

It takes up most of my car to haul it around, so it stays in my garage waiting for grandkids to drive. 

I have so many favorites, each with its own special reasons for joy, that it is hard to choose just one, but at this moment the electric hula hoop is edging out some other contenders...

I am working on a new project that may also be a contender because I expect to play with it for many hours, but it isn't complete yet....

I had the most enjoyable time building the Multicolour Scope Clock as part of an Off-the-Shelf project14. All of the tasks were on my top list of things to do. Soldering a prototype on breadboard, FPGA programming, unusual clock design and cool graphics as the result. And it is one of the best arguments to have a 4-channel scope. 

For me it is  Mini Solar Powered Wireless Temperature Sensor . My main goal was to just try the chip and see if small solar panel can provide enough power to run it long term. Lot of uncertainty was there, required lot of troubleshooting, but at the end, it worked really well. I originally posted blog about it as part of project14 and won Farnell basket for it. Since then, I posted it just for fun to 4 other electronics project competitions around the internet, and except one, I won all of them with this project.