As you drive around, you may occasionally notice that your indicator light or windshield wiper is accidentally synchronized with the music. [Quke town] wanted to make sure his wiper always matched the beat and set about doing so.
After removing the wiper motor, the original controller PCB is torn apart and only used for its home contact to help determine the position of the wiper. Then drill out the broken plate and install a rotary encoder to track the wiper during the whole movement of the wiper.
Arduino is used to read the signal from the wiper lever to know what mode the wiper should be in, and use the motor controller to drive the wiper. It also reads the encoder and home contacts to track the movement of the wiper and uses the proportional controller to control the position of the wiper. Msgeq7 spectrum analyzer is used to track the bass of music to determine the beat to be synchronized.
The final build does work, but it’s different from other designs we’ve seen. It does not need to measure BPM, nor does it need to synchronize on four point to floor pulses, but simply tracks the output of lower bands, so it is more responsive to fashionable drum beats.
This is an interesting way to modify your car, even if it does need to cut a large piece of the hood. If you are making up your own shameless car hacker, be sure to write to us. Video after break.