Do You Think This Project Is Overkill?

The Little Mini Who Wouldn't Quit

One tiny screw. One forgotten computer. An entirely unreasonable solution.

Chapter 1 — It All Started With a Screw

I own a 2016 Harley-Davidson Ultra Limited equipped with a Vantrue F1 motorcycle camera.

The camera records video onto a microSD card. A perfectly ordinary arrangement, except for one minor design consideration: accessing the card requires removing a tiny screw.

Not a regular screw. A screw so small that it should probably have its own tracking device.

And on my motorcycle, reaching that screw means first removing the rider's backrest, then removing the seat.

All this to retrieve a memory card.

One day, during this otherwise delightful procedure, I dropped the screw.

Forty-five minutes later, I was still searching the garage floor for a piece of metal approximately the size of a moderately ambitious bread crumb.

Somewhere during those forty-five minutes, I made a decision.

I was never removing that screw again.

Fortunately, the Vantrue F1 has Wi-Fi.

Surely there was a simple way to download the videos wirelessly.

That was the beginning of the trouble.

As it turned out, that screw would remain untouched for approximately two years.

Not because I'd solved the problem.

Because I'd learned to live with it.

And because, at the time, I had absolutely no idea that the solution would eventually involve resurrecting a fourteen-year-old computer.