Comment by HeyLaughingBoy
2 days ago
Thank you for posting this, it reaffirms what I've been thinking for so long. There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.
Around 2019 or so I was approached by an engineer who had a small business retrofitting very old machine tools with modern motion controls. Think very large lathes and planers. The problem they had was that in order to get these systems working with newer controls, they had to make time-consuming modifications to the old machines, in some cases modifying the axis motors and that cost added up quickly. The engineer realized that it was theoretically possible to take the old analog position signals and convert them into something a modern motion controller could read. That converter box would make the retrofit pretty much plug & play, but he didn't have the programming expertise to make it happen.
We probably built the first iteration of the converter for under $50 in parts and less than 50 hours of development time. That had me searching for other similar opportunities. I have found a few, but they tend to be one-offs that aren't worth the time unless you're already building something similar. Either that or my ability to see opportunity sucks!
I think I see some parallels with the aftermarket for old cars. Holley's entire catalog is "here's a thing that'll modernize your 1960s engine without replacing the whole damn engine"
This kind of thing is a low-volume, low-margin business by nature. It's those kinds of businesses that the megalomaniacs of our field tend to ignore. There are people with needs, and money they are willing to exchange for a solution to those needs. But there's no path to world domination by selling carburetors (or bowling alley control systems) so those problems never get solved by anyone with the means to do so. It's a shame, really.
I once expected an aftermarket industry to pop-up to hybridize old cars. Old rear-wheel drive manual cars sound easiest.
Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible). I thought something might pop up once companies like Bosch started making generic e-axles for manufacturers to use.
With a small Li-ion battery (and all the usual inverters, etc.), it could work like a manually operated version of the dual-motor Honda hybrid system. Put it into neutral, and whatever energy is in the battery could drive the motor on the rear axle. The engine could automatically kick-in and drive the generator if there's not enough in the battery.
It would never be as economical as a purpose-built hybrid, but old manual cars are often reasonably economical on the open road, and terrible in city traffic. Targeting only the urban fuel consumption would go a long way towards keeping them useable, with the added bonus of making manual shifting optional in stop-go traffic. Small motors would be enough for city speeds, and with a small battery, it sounds cheap to me at least.
I doubt it could ever be a simple kit, but I thought people would have a go.
The problem is that environmental regulations kind of act like a double edge sword with regards to hybrid conversions. They prevent Jim Bob from selling his environmental disaster kit, but they also prevent Bob Jim from selling his Hybrid drivetrain conversion without expensive approvals. This is why most people do BEV conversions. The kits are available because they are zero emissions and don't fall afoul of the environmental regulations.
People probably are having a go. Here's one for pickups: https://edisonmotors.ca/trucks/pickup-conversion/
> Generator attached to the flywheel instead of the starter motor, and then find some way to squeeze a drive motor by the rear diff (probably more complicated, but surely not impossible).
Some vehicles have this as a “battery starter generator” where the “hybrid” functionality is entirely on the accessory belt.
https://www.bosch.com/stories/48v-hybrid-battery/
https://hackaday.com/2025/01/24/bosch-starter-motor-freed-fr...
We had a guy give a talk at our local nerd meet-up about doing this to an old landrover with the hopes of commercialising it. Did a good job, but it was only for someone with money to burn.
Looks like he did commercialise it: https://www.jauntmotors.com/series
I recognise some of the photos from back then.
Automotive engineer here. One consideration for the diff motor is that it would REALLY sag the diff. I think the only way to go would be a front and rear generator/motor combo in one housing to replace the transmission, powering the rear end with a driveshaft. A direct drive clutch between the front and rear motor/generator would economize driving and assure high power at high speeds.
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Wouldnt the weight of the old chassis be a impedement to mods , older models tended to be more robustly buildt. Or what cut-off date for mods would be appropriate (last 10 years?) as beyond a certain cutoff would not be cost effective and most likely would be a hobby project done for the love of it.
I was thinking of a “feature” on manuals that ran electrical and accessory-belt stuff full blast during engine braking.
The best time to run your a/c or turn the seat warmers: when you’re trying to expel energy.
Would give you some extra braking without heating up the engine and take a small load off your brakes.
That or turn any vehicle into a mild plug-in hybrid for all electrical loads and flywheel the alternator until that time. Gasoline-powered generators are not very efficient.
Might get a few percent extra efficiency without having to touch anything mechanical.
My guess:
1) New cars are too cheap to make at scale.
2) Old cars are quite unsafe to drive, comparatively (airbags, backup cameras, lane departure alerts, blind angle alerts, etc)
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Stuff like this exists for bicycles. For mopeds and motorcycles there are electrification kits.
It should be possible to just replace the flywheel altogether with a generator/motor that both brakes and powers during each cycle, cancelling vibrations. Then more generation during deceleration, and more power during acceleration.
In the US RWD manual cars have been exclusively sport/GT for decades. They aren't cheap and a hybrid swap and/or daily driving miles would destroy their value.
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There is no shame and no business there.
We just read a story of someone who didn’t want to pay market price and went DIY.
There are companies doing bowling alley equipment and you can pay them for maintenance.
Is there a single one of those on F500 list? No and people are running those companies and what OP did … he didn’t want to pay market price.
Well yeah those companies are overpriced if you are software engineer who can wire up and program couple of ESPs have own bowling alley and have free time.
Don't dismiss the OP so abruptly. IMHO he is convincingly making the case that there is likely a business opportunity for something between a $120k off-the-shelf system and $1.6k in DIY hardware.
It's just lack of competitive pressure. I bet if you investigate you will find there are only a couple of suppliers that have the bowling alley market sewn up between them.
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yeah feels like you can only target end consumers or hobby business people as any real business would just reinvest capital in equipment that is modern and can compete or get rid of the business if it's not worth the $$$
I think you might be surprised to find out how many "real businesses" can't "just reinvest capital" and have to keep struggling on with what they have.
> retrofitting very old machine tools with modern motion controls.
I have a friend who has automated an old food production line. Eg peanut butter making, Muslie roasting etc.
With no background in programming he got machines hooked up measuring various things - eg peanut butter levels with ultrasound, roast temps, rotation rates.
Zero version control and eyebrow raising methods but massive improvement in safety and throughput. Really impressive.
I suspect this is where our AI agents will really come to shine: helping people who might have a technical bend but are not programmers do cool things.
Yeah. Anyone who hated writing code but had to, like biologists and chemists, now don't have to.
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I think you’re absolutely correct.
I suspect it is practical to do a small one-time run of maybe a 1000 copies of a purely hardware device and sell them. Of course, that is just kicking the can down the road a bit farther… At least dealing with obsolescence with purely analog parts is simpler…
As soon as software appears, things become less ideal. Now the HW and SW become highly specialized to a single vendor’s single family of devices. Plus, bugs and internet connectivity almost ensure a potentially unbounded number of updates or forever broken functionality. Even toolchains fade into obsolescence…
Sure, one can redesign for a new microcontroller from a new vendor. Maybe with new RTOS too. Of course, that is almost as much work as the initial design and probably done by someone else at a later date. Yuck!
(And I saw this as a software engineer!)
Definitely something to be said of the old habit of a simple analog design with schematics fully provided to the end user. This is something probably still needed today, but perhaps commercially challenging, especially with countries like China in play…
> but they tend to be one-offs that aren't worth the time
Friend of mine used to retrofit CNC machines. He's left the business, because the machines that can be serviced moved to poor countries - where customers tend not to pay him at all. The modern influx of CNC have some "intellectual property" protection and cannot be serviced.
> There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.
I'd leave out the "old" there.
An example: Friends work(ed) as engineers in theaters and music-venues. The costs for (DMX) equipment is insane. Some lamps, rigs or controllers are so expensive that shows only rent them. While there's lots of cases where you don't want to cut costs¹, quite often a cheap variant cuts it just fine. So apparently there's a lot of Pie's, Arduinos, ESP32s and old androids used to handle stuff. Custom, hacked, duckt-taped solutions. All of them are certain a startup offering generic but cheap modules that engineers can customize, would be an instant hit. Especially if "service" can be bought with it.
Or a friend who installs (climate) control systems in (food)factories, who cludges together arduino's and some hacky web-interfaces, who is certain that the industry would love some "off the shelve" solutions that installers can build their own hardware- and user-interfaces on is a very much wanted product. The industry (in EU) is according to him, one built on "lock ins", where a factory starts off with AcmeInc controllers and then slowly Acme will start charging almost "extortion-fee" alike figures just to fix stuff on a sunday night.
Or, a friend who has a fruit farm with lot's of freezer-storage (running hundreds of KWs), whith whom I cludged together some Arduino's and home-automation to control the freezers to run when electricity is cheap or free. Stuff like this is available for consumers at reasonable prices, but the moment the Amperages go to industry-level, the costs explode. Where a simple remote controllable power-switch can cost €1000s. I'm certain that there's hundreds of thousands of small warehouses, supermarkets, traders, logistics that could save a few hundreds to thousands of €'s a year, by controlling their freezers, heaters, pumps, pressurizers, dryers and whatnots smarter with "turn key" modules built from generic low cost hardware.
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¹ relevant: There's a lot of "Nobody Ever Got Fired for Buying IBM" behind it: if you go for the cheap €800 chinese knock-off and mid-show something starts failing, its your fault. But if that €10.000 controller starts failing, it's no-ones fault.
With respect to bowling alleys, for things like professional shows or food safety it's a bit more than "nobody got fired for buying IBM". The stuff's gotta be able to survive field conditions and not cost millions of dollars in refunded show tickets or spoiled foods. Manufacturers test and make themselves accountable for this. Cheap, customized modules work until they don't, and by then the engineer who put the custom system together in the first place isn't there to fix them. Who would you call when some quick-and-dirty integration code that was burned into these embedded modules without ever being put in a source versioning system fails in some weird edge condition? OP is an SRE, it's ok for him, but the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill.
Just because a guy wears a fitted suit doesn't mean he'll be good at handling your money. Likewise if you buy tens of thousands of euros worth of incredibly overbuilt teutonic industrial equipment in matching colors and snap-in cabinets doesn't mean the guy who builds the PLC program in ladder logic will be any good at it - or that the next guy will have an easier time troubleshooting it than if the whole thing ran on an Arduino scavenged out of an intro to robotics kit.
Experts know there is stuff worth spending on, and there's stuff like the ESP32 where no amount of money will buy you something better, and no amount of money will save you, if the guy building the whole thing is an idiot.
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> be able to survive field conditions
you are right. But my point was that not all of needs to survive the same conditions.
E.g. in a theater, you want the high class industry grade rigs for the main lightning when you are running the shows. But during rehearsals, or during the development of the stage (which is somewhat iterative by nature), custom made stuff suffices.
And this is where currently, custom made stuff is deployed. Stage technicians use a remarkable lot of intermediate, custom made hard and software. Some 3d printed valve to find out if the idea of the valve works at all, before ordering a CNC aluminium version. Some arduino before ordering that €2k/month controller to find out if the separate controller is needed at all.
This allows a show to prototype and experiment before they order the €20k water-spraying system. Or allows them to rehearse for months without paying €5k a month for the high class lightning rigs and only rent those for the actual setup.
Its the same with my other examples. They fill a niche. They don't replace the entire existing market.
> the average farmer or show operator doesn't have the skill
Exactly! That's why there's an opportunity here. "We" software engineers tend to build a rediculous amount of SAAS that are aimed at other software-engineers, because that's were we notice the problems and opportunities. My advice always, is to look beyond your bubble. The examples above are real-life examples where currently "farmers", "show operators" and "fitter" already are cludging together solutions to solve their problems. IMO there's no better proof that this is a problem to research as potential tech startup, than non-techies cludging together tech to solve their problems.
Yup. I live on a river. We flooded catastrophically in 2019, which made me suddenly care about the government’s network of river level meters.
Turns out, they abandoned most of them in 2008, as it was the local council who were meant to maintain them, but they couldn’t afford it - a chat with the president revealed they’d been paying €15k a year for each station to maintain it and they’d cost about €100k each.
I went and looked at the battered remains. Sounding tube. Ultrasound transducer. Box of 90’s electronics.
Anyway, long story short I banged out six of them for them for about €80 a piece - the expensive bits were the batteries and the dinky solar panel. ESP32, ultrasonic transducer, GSM and LoRa (as two are outside of the cell network), haven’t had to touch them in five years and we now know when it’s time to evacuate, rather than wading out in the night while trees sail past us at 60kph.
So much stuff like this.
Where are you located? Around 2020 I put together a landslide risk monitoring site that's entirely based on stream gauges:
https://khmpsitka.org
It's an interesting approach that's way simpler than relying on soil moisture sensors placed high up on mountainsides. It's not as widely applicable as measuring soil moisture directly, but it's been running steadily for over 5 years now.
They didn't offer any of the €15k a year to you, did they?
They hadn’t been paying since 2008, hence it was all derelict trash - they don’t even have the budget to maintain the roads or keep the school open, never mind monitor river levels.
My interest was not drowning, rather than pecuniary.
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Next you can hook up an abandoned nuke silo, right?
Pretty sure you could manage launch control with nothing but a bunch of ESP32s and home assistant. Sadly there are no rad hardened ESP32s I know of, but that’s what the silo’s for.
I do retrofits and I'll just assume the equipment he was using didn't have an analog encoder option or was ignorant of such equipment (likely using some cheap hobby level CNC thing.) I've worked with a few motion control systems such as ACS and Aerotech and they provide inputs for just about every encoder type imaginable. I retrofitted a CNC with 1500W 90V servo motors with analog resolvers using an Aerotech system, zero mechanical upgrades.
I'm going to forget some details, but he was not using hobby level CNC products. I still have a Kollmorgen AKD motion controller that he sent me as a test bench. Most of the old tools were using 0-10V sawtooth analog outputs for motor position and, IIRC, their preferred controllers didn't support that. The initial version of the box I made took that 0-10V and pretended to be a resolver so the AKD could control the motor.
Like I said, I don't remember all his design decisions, but they wanted to retain the original position sensors.
Ah, that sounds like something really weird then. Haven't seen 0-10V sawtooth signals for encoder output though Ive seen 0-10V for laser infarometers and other distance sensors.
> Thank you for posting this, it reaffirms what I've been thinking for so long. There are many opportunities to retrofit old systems of all types with modern low-cost embedded technologies.
At my shooting range, where security is very important, we're replacing the old antiquated "fire stop" (when everybody on "shared" lanes has to stop shooting for there's at least one person going to change the targets) system with a modern system of electro-magnets and embedded devices. Mechanical safeguards where, by default, the 10 lanes (there two times 10 lanes, the 50 meters ones and the 100 meters ones) have to stop shooting and then an embedded system with a little controller for each lane that needs to be working to give the greenlight / "fire frei" ("free to shoot").
We mostly decided on the switch after a failure of the old system: the "free to shoot" system has recently been given even though there was still one person outside, changing the targets (nothing bad happened but this is a serious incident).
We asked for quotes for a system that is always "door locked" / red light / "fire stop", unless everything works fine and every lane gives the greenlight (each shooter has now one badge).
Same thing as in TFA: cost in hardware is minimal compared to the quoted prices. Like basically 1/50th of the quoted price.
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