September 9, 2008 - The Fusion Brain – How do you use it in your car?

**Heather** · 09-09-2008, 05:48 PM

The Mp3Car Store is excited to be selling the Fusion Brain and looks forward to the soon-to-be released 2.0 version.

The Fusion Brain is the product of a little Mp3Car Forum demand, and a whole lot of work on the part of Mp3Car forum members Nick and Tim. This little device has been used by Mp3Car Forum members all over the world to control anything with an on/off switch, button, or relay in the car. You can even use the sensor to measure environmental conditions such as temperature, light, distance, acceleration, current draw, voltage levels, and more.

How are some Mp3Car Forum members using the Fusion Brain?
Nick uses it for home automation, and Tim has it in his car doing pressure and temperature readings and more. Nick was particularly impressed with Aaron's Christmas Light show including the reindeer on top his car all controlled by the Fusion Brain to the Trans Siberian Orchestra's music and suggested also checking out h3rk's completely automatic HVAC control which is still being developed.

How do you use your Fusion Brain? Share your innovations and ideas in the Mp3Car Forums Blog Talk section in the thread of this Mp3Car Blog post. And for all of you who are new to the Fusion Brain, take a look at what others are doing and spend some time reading up in the Fusion Brain Forum on the Mp3Car Forums.

How this product came to be developed is as interesting as the Fusion Brain itself. Nick and Tim, on opposite sides of the US, teamed up to develop prototypes for Forum users. They were both pleased and somewhat surprised when they found that demand exceeded the number of prototypes they had manufactured and got to work mass producing the Fusion Brain and other accessories. Living on opposite sides of the US, and still having yet to have met face to face, Nick and Tim are hard at work on Fusion Brain 2.0 – and we are waiting in great anticipation to see their results.

You can find the Fusion Brain and all related products in the Fusion Brain section of the Mp3Car Store!

**2k1Toaster** · 09-11-2008, 02:28 AM

I (Nick) have a couple on my couch for developement, but also am implementing one for remote control of various items in the house.

With the new Remote Control section of the software (available now), I can log into my Fusion Brain instances from anywhere in the world on any web device, and control anything. One problem around here with the proximity to NORAD (US Air Force base built inside a mountain and I can throw a rock at the security gate), is that they like to swamp the area with random EM noise. So garage doors dont work far, phone and wifi get low signals everything. Dont even bother with the door opener if a government official like the President is visiting, because then it goes into overdrive! So my plan is to hook it up to my garage door and by using my cell phone through the GPRS connection, open and close the door.

Other things I will be controlling include my air conditioning unit which has a rudimentary on/off timer but gains a complete freedom with the Fusion Brain, as well as for energy efficiency I will be placing lights on controlled circuits to turn the lights off (as well as electronics such as TV's and radios) when I leave the room, and reinitialize them when I enter.

So many possibilities, so little time...

**Heather** · 09-23-2008, 06:03 PM

Here is a note to the Fusion Brain guys from a farmer, telling of how the Fusion Brain allow the tractor to run on autopilot.

The farmer set up a computer in his tractor, and uses GPS waypoints and a fusion brain to steer the tractor. The computer calculates whether the current position is left or right of the desired track, and triggers the fusion brain to turn on a solenoid that actuates the steering in either the left or right direction... so it's autopilot, for a tractor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mTLDPFTzas

This video was taken in April before we started planting. You can see the right tire on the edge of the road, and the relays clicking to turn the wheels to keep it on the line.

I didn't take much video during the season mainly because I wasn't happy with the level of control. The system was "hunting" from one side of the line to the other. This was largely due to the method I was using for control, which I've completely changed over the summer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPzNW4xGKMU

This video is late in the planting season, and I had moved the GPS receiver to the front of the hood to reduce the hunting. It looks a little strange. Our planter has markers that we use to get the distance right, but we broke one this day, so we were planting exclusively by GPS. The rest of the season we had been using both GPS and markers, as a way to tell how well the GPS was doing. The last clip in the video shows this, and you can see the markers aren't being used.

As I said, I have made some significant changes over the summer to make steering control much smoother. The system is installed in a combine, which we'll begin using in about 2 weeks. I hope to get some good video of that.

-Lance