Trick Your (1970) Pickup Truck

[Dave] wanted an old pickup, and he found a GMC Sierra Grande truck vintage 1970. While it had an unusual amount of options, there weren’t that many high-tech options over 50 years ago. The five-year-long restoration work was impressive, as you can see in the video below, but we were really interested in the electronics part. As [Dave] mentions, the truck was made when the Saturn V was taking people to the moon, but after his modifications, the truck has a lot more computing power than the famous rocket.

He was concerned that the taillights were not up to modern standards and that it would be too easy for someone using their cell phone to plow into the rear of the truck. So he broke out an ESP32 and some LEDs and made an attractive brake light that would have been a high-tech marvel in 1970.

The biggest problem was not significantly modifying the truck. The tailgate conceals an LED strip and the rest of the gear attaches to the trailer connector. By the end of the project, the truck will have a full-width brake light, special turn signals, and a bright white backup light.

If you read Hackaday, you can probably figure out how the project works. But it is a great implementation and a very good adaptation to a vintage vehicle. If you aren’t a car person, there is an obligatory appearance of a TRS-80 computer towards the end.

We’ve seen many projects like this for bicycles. Before you tell us that you can blink taillights with a 555, we’ll mention that we know that.

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• Source: https://hackaday.com/2024/03/26/trick-your-1970-pickup-truck/