“Useless Pickles” is the internet user name of a passionate software engineer with over 20 years of professional experience, primarily specializing in front-end web development. Driven by curiosity and a fascination with developing innovative solutions to complex problems, he has also amassed a wide variety of personal projects ranging from electronics and microcontroller programming, to automotive modification, diagnosis, and restoration. This page is collection of some of these personal passion projects.
Car Phone Bluetooth Conversion
I converted a vintage car phone to be fully functional on modern cellular networks via a Bluetooth connection to a modern cell phone. This involved reverse-engineering the handset so I could develop custom hardware and software to completely take control of the handset, and re-implement much of the original behavior from scratch.
Proportional Throttle on a Power Wheels
Power Wheels have on/off switches for throttle control. My kids deserve better. I modified the Power Wheels to have smooth fully proportional throttle control, using custom electronics, microcontroller programming, and a speed controller for R/C cars.
Motorcycle Fuel Map Switching
I programmed a microcontroller to detect when I am cruising fairly steadily on my motorcycle and automatically trigger an after-market fuel tuning system to switch between two fuel maps: one for smooth power, the other for better fuel economy.
ts-enum-util
Strictly typed utilities for working with TypeScript enums (and string/number literal union types).
strictly-typed-events
An Event emitting/subscription library designed for simplicity, convenience, and type-safety in TypeScript projects.
ts-stopwatch
A stopwatch-inspired timer utility for measuring durations of time between different points of execution in code.
Mountain Biking Trail Guide
In 2012, I was struggling to find mountain biking trails in my area. So I developed an interactive map-based trail guide for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association as a volunteer project. Built with the Google Maps API.
Efficient Triangles from DIV+CSS
A demonstration of rendering arbitrary triangles using borders of DIVs. Presented as a simple real-time 3D rendering engine. This was in 2006 before WebGL and widespread availability of Canvas. Warning: this is an old ugly web page.
JavaScript Ball Physics Simulation
Throw balls around and experiment with the effects of gravitational force between objects, elasticity, rolling friction and viscosity. Implemented with HTML/JS/CSS only, of course. This was my “experimenting with web development” project in 2005. Warning: not touch-screen friendly.
Turbocharged 2013 Jeep Wrangler
A modified daily driver and off-road toy.
Turbocharged 1995 Mazda Miata
A modified summer-time cruiser and occasional racecar.
1993 Mitsubishi 3000GT VR4
A time capsule of early 90’s advanced technology.