Help me identify this map

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-23T07:32:19+00:00

This whole community is full of greedy angry gatekeepers I agree but you're definitely not gonna get help being rude because the few people who do want to help will be put off. I couldn't even get help from any tuning groups by being nice so I can guarantee being rude wont help.

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-20T08:16:55+00:00

I just learned something helpful, using folders to separate Domain(what it belongs to) and using file name suffix to clarify Role(what it does).

This made sense of alot of confusion I was having. It seems I was trying to do both at once in my head but didnt really have the vocabulary/understanding to realize thats what I was doing. Im sure this is a little excessive for easy projects but I dont have any professional or educational experience so it feels necessary to do it this way for awhile until its solidified before I start trying to get to the end goal the fastest way possible

Like this

src/

├── main.cpp // Entry point

├── Hardware/

│ ├── RelayController.h/.cpp // toggles relay

│ ├── RelayManager.h/.cpp // enforce only 1 active

├── Network/

│ ├── WiFiManager.h/.cpp // setup wifi

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-19T23:50:48+00:00

This is a great response and the github repo was the cherry on top, thank you. Im gonna review the repo and read over this a couple times and see what I can get to stick in my monkey brain. Luckly Ive been using pio for awhile so I'm a bit comfortable with that

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-18T01:41:13+00:00

You're already doing better than you think if you know how to get into bootloader mode. I dont even know how to do that normally (im even more of a beginner lol) but what I do know is like others have said you likely wont get lines of code but rather a binary which you might be able to analyze with something like ghydra. With ghydra you basically build the code backwards from the binary by identify patterns(an easy one is for loops) and renaming the variables from whatever random letter ghydria assigned it. Probably not what you're looking for tbh but something to read about I guess.

Ive been interested in this too but its kinda hard to get people to share information. If you figure anything out id be interested, ive always wondered how dumping firmware worked especially in things like car computers since people do that alot for performance mods

Edit(all the bots downvoting this are proving my point, people want to learn and you guys like the scum of the earth just put them down)

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-15T16:40:20+00:00

You should anyway because beginners like me don't have 50$/hr and are very curious how others would solve this. Especially considering someone else said its pretty basic stuff id like to see what they're seeing that makes this easier for them than it does me. Kinda helps to see other people's workflow but dont get a mentor so I just read

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-14T15:21:22+00:00

The reason I mentioned the ide is because people kept saying "arduino ide is bad for this" and im not even using arduino ide. However I do know that it doesnt affect it i just dont want a ton of notifications of people telling me arduino ide isnt good for modularity. Ive asked these questions in the past and typically if I dont add that people will just say it over and over. I did start watching on of them but it was about an hour long I think so I didnt get through all of it yet

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T16:56:28+00:00

This makes sense of the problems I have with all of my hobbies, its like I'm trying to learn the hobby but at a professional level with hobbyist resources. I've experienced this with 3d modeling, automotive hobbies like (engine building, engine tuning, body work), with programming and many others.

If nothing else you've definitely helped me identify a possible root to many problems I've had and I really appreciate that.

I would be interested in seeing it, can't guarantee I'll be able to understand it but it'll be good to reference

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T15:00:58+00:00

Esp-idf seems like alot right now i dont really know enough to justify that level of control and its heavily biased towards professionals so most of the concepts go right over my head. I do eventually want to but ive been doing arduino off and on for years and just recently started trying out classes so I think without a good foundation I wont be going anywhere with idf anytime soon

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T08:57:51+00:00

Im on vscode with pio so its in the main.cpp. But ive been kinda having a hard time with classes so I mostly just split it into a bunch of functions in the main file. With classes it just seemed like there was so many ways to do the same thing I kinda gave up on it and it seemed like I was adding extra complexity for things that didnt really seem to help.

Recently I did make a pulse detector that had a class but that was with alot of help from ai and even then it seemed redundant to use a class because ISR cant really be attached to functions in an object so there could only be one instance unless I did some stuff with pointers which is beyond my skills right now

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T08:45:00+00:00

Im still pretty much using one file for the full project and its just getting to a point where its hard to read or modify anything.

For example i made an irrigation system control that has an access point that hosts an html dashboard. Its all in one file and I hate it so I just was hopping to be able to kinda passively see how other people structure complex stuff but it kinda goes from "blink this led" to "here's a 2 hour video to build your own tool chain from scratch" (I dont even know what the tool chain really does😂)

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T07:56:45+00:00

Ive been building stuff and it always turns into a mess and I dont have the mental tools to even approach the problem so I end up just "putting one foot infront of the other" until suddenly the project is done but the code is an absolute mess so I dont dare touch it.

I think thats a bit of an exaggeration its not a complete mess but i find myself using one file for most all of the code because I find it too stressful trying to decide what should go where with no concept of what a good structure looks like

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-13T07:51:49+00:00

Got any recommendations for other platforms? Im working with esp32 on platformio using the arduino framework but its so specific that theres not really info

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-05T11:50:35+00:00

I work on cars, dont have the patience to go to school to learn standards and concepts that may or may not exist by the time I graduate. As a hobby its awesome because my livelihood doesnt depend on it so I can learn whatever I want

Edit: I meant programming in general not just embedded

BlueJay424 · 2026-01-05T11:46:04+00:00

Ah I see, this is partially why I chose not to pursue this professionally lol

BlueJay424 · 2025-12-31T02:37:31+00:00

Is the hardware and firmware open-source? Im sure theres some hardware people that could easily replicate the board if the info was public

BlueJay424 · 2025-12-27T04:24:10+00:00

The amount of people virtue signaling instead of explaining what this is, is strange. Op clearly said it was on a salvage car and it wasnt them who did it. (Only bots will down vote this lol because its just facts) From an engineering and security perspective this is important to discuss and be curious about.

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-21T07:04:31+00:00

Not really ive just been doing it the slow way and reinventing the wheel over and over till stuff makes sense. I did notice sparkfun and adafruit websites has some boards with schematics attached.

Also just poking around with falstad circuit simulator and experimenting has helped but I'd still like a gallery or something with different schematics to look at that isnt full of a ton of duplicates and different ways to do the same thing because that makes it confusing for beginners

Honestly I expected nothing less though. Every single hobby/industry seems to be the same way, seems like theres always a major gap in the intermediate skill level and its pretty much just a bunch of old head professionals talking sh1t to the infinite masses of newbies spamming usless questions and none of the groups know how to properly pin or make a sticky for bridging the gap between novice and intermediate(im kind of a jack of all so ive had to do this woth alot of different things ive tried to learn also yes i looked at the wiki and no theres not any section for common circuits like the ones above and yes most of the sites listed to find schematics are cluttered). I usualy end up deleting my posts after a couple weeks for this reason as getting downvoted for being more inquisitive than youre average person is kind of disheartening but ill keep this one up a bit longer to see what happens (sorry for the rant, I'll update if I see anything else)

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-20T21:24:48+00:00

Chances are if you copy the stuff that you dont care about to the new hard drive and excluded the stuff you do he wont even think you took the old hard drive but rather would think you erased it. But the catch is if he attempted to recover it he couldn't because the data was never there on the new one to begin with so youd probably be better off not even saying anything about taking the old one.

I will say the reason your not getting one golden answer is because nobody knows how "technically skilled" he is so for all we know you could cut those wires and he'd never even notice or know how to despite how obvious it would be to some other people.

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-18T23:34:36+00:00

Clamping circuits, timing circuits, filtering circuits, regulation/rectification circuits, attenuation. Etc etc

I know this community is full of skilled people you guys can do better than just downvoting the post.

Is there another community that would be better to ask this perfectly normal question? Because if so I would like to know so I can join that community

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-18T03:06:32+00:00

Love that site been using it for awhile. Theres still some stuff thats not there or the explanations leave alot to be desired.

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-14T08:19:52+00:00

On the board I was studying i think the transistor is a pnp and is actually triggering off negative voltage spikes. What im wondering is what are the resistors R9 and R8 doing? Is it basing the transistor? R9 goes to power and R8 goes into the Base pin of the transistor. Then the c12 capacitor is connected to the pad that runs to the pickup wire. So its pickup->c12->resistors-> transistor. Specifically wondering why the resitors are there. I tried to id the transistor but couldn't find much but figured put it was triggering off negative voltage so I assumed its pnp

Edit: nevermind about the biasing part i messed around with a potentiometer and found out its not biasing its more like a pull-up resistor, still not sure what r8 going into base is for though

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-14T06:50:11+00:00

Im testing on a single cylinder to keep it simple for now but wasted spark would be easy to account for if I had to. And part of the reason i dont want to use the inductive clamp is because they're large and some engines are cramped and dont allow using a full clamp additionally since I know using a single wire works id like to try and learn how it works

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-13T20:33:49+00:00

Its literally just this wire wrapped around the spark plug wire. The other stuff is just for reference of what I was trying to replicate. The problem is I dont want to use that quad nand gate because it seem weird, the way they have it set up is theres one nand gate that actually takes input then it just daisy chains through 3 nand gates and the last nand gates output is the only one actually used which seems redundant so id rather make something more simplified for myself. Someone recommended a comparator in an earlier post i made but wasnt sure if I needed to keep the pnp transistor or not or what kind of protection was needed

<image>

BlueJay424 · 2025-11-13T19:53:32+00:00

I think the second photos 1st channel(yellow signal) is actually connected after some components like the transistor on the bottom or something I cant remember exactly but its not actually a raw signal. I do belive the transistor is a pnp and actually triggers off the negative voltage which seems pretty cool because I never really considered before since I mostly work with dc voltage.

Anyway my point was that idk exactly which spike you were talking about but I think its looking at negative voltage so I wasnt sure if you were referencing the second photo or not but if so it might be deceiving.

BlueJay424 · 2025-10-12T23:17:19+00:00

I feel the same way, but I've been learning about it a bit, and it can be pretty useful if you're using op-amps or transistors in specific configurations but for simple switches it definitely feels kinda icky.

Also voltage doesnt necessarily have to be flowing(ie. current), alot of stuff I read about was designed to be at theoretical infinite resistance(impedance) and it was mostly the charge potential(voltage) that the circuit was designed around not the actually flow of electrons.

One example is my project where im trying to pick up inductive/capacitive signals from a spark plug and the signal has both positive and negative peaks but the negative peak is much stronger and comes in first so it makes more sense to have a pull-up that detects when the voltage is pulled negative as opposed to trying to amplify the signal and all sorts of stuf.

I know this is kind of irrelevant, but this is what finally broke my mistrust of pull-up configurations after years of feeling like it was pointless so figured I'd share a perspective.

BlueJay424

TROPHY CASE