Category Archives: Projects

RV Project Part 2

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So now it was time to remove the whole roof. I had NFI how to repair a regular roof let alone an RV roof. Luckily my Uncle was a little more handy than me. We started by pulling off the side rails then just straight ripping off the Luan/insulation completely from the bathroom wall to the front overcab bed. This paint scraper was a life safer in removing the old aluminum roof, wood, glue, and nails. Roughly about a 8’x13′ area was ripped out, we had to also remove the angle brackets holding the cabinets to the ceiling, the old TV antenna, and also remove the fridge vent and bathroom fan.

We had to go with thinner insulation to accommodate the thicker wood but had to make sure we didn’t go over the height of the original sidewalls so we could get the siderails back on afterword, which we actually trashed the broken side because it was damaged from the tree. Not realizing that the rails were not really a standard sizing. Also would have cost a lot in shipping if Winnebago actually had replacements. I ended up finding a smaller curved piece at a local RV dealership and used a hot air gun to kind of bend it back straight. I also fiberglassed the side damage and a hole in the front area near the running lights that the tree limbs caused. After getting all the new plywood down and cutting holes for the fans, vents, and pipes we spread all the glue down then used a roller to roll out the PVC replacement roof from classacustoms.com.

Then we reinstalled the original bathroom fan , added a new fan above the over-cab bed, and a new fridge vent cover, plumbing vents, and radio antenna. Everything got sealed with Eternabond tape and Dicor self-leveling lap sealant.

Then it was time to work on the ceiling. I ended up choosing some cedar wood from Home Depot because it smells good, naturally resists mildew, odors and repels some bugs. I also put in some aluminum channels and multi-color LED lighting to keep the power usage down since I was planning to install solar at some point. Originally I was going to put in recessed lights but it would have bee a pain in the ass to do all the wiring and holes, and for some reason when I was testing the recessed lights with the generator they were blinking off and on. So stuck with the LED lights and multicolor so I can change colors to whatever mood. (Update: I recently replaced the LEDS strips with different ones because they ended up having color match issues on each side, so now its one complete strip going around.)

RV Project Part 1

Gallery

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I got this 1994 Winnebago ‘Minnie Winnie’ 421RB (Ford E350 cutaway van bodystyle) from a car auction for $1200 in August 2021. I was looking around for RVs/Vans that I could convert into a remote work-from-home office. My dad decided to jump the gun and bid on it without telling me, it was a WTF moment when I first saw the pics on the auction site, but eventually decided I was up for the challenge. It had some good things like a built in generator, 90k miles. I ended up finding the original owner and found that he had bought it for 13k in 2008 and in Summer 2021 a thunderstorm knocked a tree down in his yard and it fell onto the RV (insurance company gave him 20k). As you can see from the pics it fell through the roof , crushing the AC unit. It also poked a hole near the front antenna mount, and part of the tree limb knocked out the plumbing, you can see the small hole by the left rear wheel well ( oddly perfect hit to knock out the plumbing/drainage pipe).

The biggest problem is that it sat for about a month in the previous owners driveway until the insurance company could come out and look at it due to COVID etc, then it say another month in the auction lot until it was auctioned. There was significant water damage in the ceiling and floor due to other rainstorms also dumping water in there for those 2 months.

So the game plan was somehow fix the holes in the roof originally. But come to find out first that the roof consisted of a layer of thin aluminum, which i could not figure out where to source anywhere. Coupled with the fact the more i looked into it that the water damage was too much because Winnebago uses very thin Luan plywood panels glued to foam insulation and all that wood was pretty much rotted because Luan is relatively inexpensive and easy to work with, but it is not very durable or resistant to moisture.

I started doing a lot of research on RV restoration/remodeling and came across an awesome resource on YouTube from AZExpert. His video were tremendously helpful in seeing what the insides of RV roofs looked like and how to fix/replace them. So after calling numerous places for 8×13 aluminum rolls with no luck, I decided I would go with an alternative. After searching around I found a really good price on a PVC kit from classacustoms.com for $189. Stay tuned for ripping apart the roof in Part 2…

Telephreak Tactical Lunchbox

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One of the cooler swag I received @ Defcon this year was a lunchbox for the Telephreak party, filled with candy, gadgets, and toys from telephreakbadge. I do some ‘red teaming’ occasionally and always had my stuff all janky in my backpack with no way to really keep it all pretty and was a pain in the ass to go through everything to find what tools I needed. Plus stuffing them all in a box tends to get shit broken eventually. I was thinking I needed something like a pelican box but I didnt feel like spending a huge amount on something simple. So I was thinking one day that this lunchbox sitting on my desk would do the trick. I ended up getting a few pieces of Polyethylene off ebay for $9, They arrived pretty quick and i spent about an hour or so arranging some of my most used tools onto each layer and cutting out the foam to fit them all in. I used a small knife (the ones that have a knife/scissor/toothpick) and a razor blade to cut out the foam. Here’s all 3 layers that fit inside with descriptions of each tool’s usage.

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Raspberry Pi 3 Arrives

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Got my new RPi3 today , I was able to get it ordered early Monday morning by poking around Element14’s website. Even though they didn’t have it posted they did an available part number, 77Y6520, so I used that to place an order and I got notified on Tuesday that it was sent 🙂 The CPU is a little beefier and its 64bit and the board now has wifi and bluetooth onboard. So I’ll probably implement some bluetooth geo-fencing with IFTTT in my home automation project.

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Automated Signal Capture

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Using Flask and JQuery, a friend helped me out with automating capturing the 433mhz signal from remotes so you don’t have to manually add them in the code.

Basically the Flask starts a webserver when you click n the add button, the code executes the RFSniffer binary and receives the data when a signal is received, then displays it to the webpage. Still have to finish the code for adding the data to the MySQL db , but thats the easy part.

Raspberry Pi touch display

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So I received an official 7″ touch display for xmas. Even though it’s $60, it brings my total cost over 200$ for the project. But I thought it would be an awesome addition to the project because you don’t have to whip out your phone just to control everything. I’s a pretty sweet 800 x 480 10 point capacitive touchscreen display all you need to do is connect the DSI ribbon cable and feed ground/5v from the Pi’s GPIO pins. Im thinking starting the browser in kiosk mode should suffice once I finish the node.js interface. The only issue I havent resolved was to power down the screen fully when the Pi shutdowns. If anyone knows how to let me know.
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Pilybius

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pilybiusMarquee_sharp
Working on mini MAME arcade machine. It was designed in Solid Works 2015 then cut out of 1/4″ MDF on our Epilog laser cutter. Will be powered by a Raspberry Pi and a 9″ TFT screen. The software is MAME4ALL-Pi running the MAME 0.375b5 romsets. The joystick and buttons are connected directly to the GPIO pins and the 9” monitor is connected to the Video out port.

Pilybius is based off an arcade cabinet described in an urban legend about a game called Polybius, which is said to have induced various psychological effects on players. The story describes players suffering from amnesia, night terrors, and a tendency to stop playing all video games. Continue reading →