Soldato
Wow, an electronics thread appears while I'm away. Looks like I've been missing out.
I've posted some of my exploits before in the DIY Audio thread where I've done headphone amps, DACs, Class D Tripath amps and a LCD displays.
I guess what I'm about to post is less "electronics" and more "electrical", but it's pretty cool anyway, and hopefully a bit different.
I've been involved in Cambridge University Eco Racing for the last couple of years. We build and race solar electric cars, and I've just got back from Australia where we raced 3000km across the outback against 35 other teams from around the world. We didn't do as well as we'd hoped but we were using an old car from 2009 and the weather screwed us over a bit. But we're still the UK's best car.
Here's our car in our pit garage at Hidden Valley Race Track, Darwin:
Two days into the race, and we're tilting the array to catch some late evening sun:
We had a convoy of 5 vehicles, and I was driving chase. So this was my view for the whole week. We're driving through a zone that was ON FIRE only a few hours before
:
And here's some of the "electronics" from inside the car. The main components are a 4kWh LiFePO4 battery pack, 6m^2 of silicon solar cells, a brushless DC hub motor with a really good controller, and a CAN bus that everything communicates over.
Driver controls/steering wheel. This was designed and built by a team member. The aluminium wheel was machined from a single solid piece and took about a week. Once the lid's on, the driver has 2 paddles, 12 buttons, 12 LEDs and the LCD. Far too much information to be useful, but seriously cool.
Battery management system. Me and another guy designed and programmed this one. It takes data from an off-the-shelf lithium cell management system and opens and closes the safety contactors. It also passes all the data from one CAN bus to another, and enables it to be sent out over telemetry.
A slightly messy view of our electronics shelf. The main boards on show are the Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPTs) which are essentially big, expensive DCDC converters that the solar array plugs into. These make sure you're always getting the most power possible from the sun.
I have loads more pictures, and there are loads more electronics to be shown, but I'm still sifting through
I've posted some of my exploits before in the DIY Audio thread where I've done headphone amps, DACs, Class D Tripath amps and a LCD displays.
I guess what I'm about to post is less "electronics" and more "electrical", but it's pretty cool anyway, and hopefully a bit different.
I've been involved in Cambridge University Eco Racing for the last couple of years. We build and race solar electric cars, and I've just got back from Australia where we raced 3000km across the outback against 35 other teams from around the world. We didn't do as well as we'd hoped but we were using an old car from 2009 and the weather screwed us over a bit. But we're still the UK's best car.
Here's our car in our pit garage at Hidden Valley Race Track, Darwin:
Two days into the race, and we're tilting the array to catch some late evening sun:
We had a convoy of 5 vehicles, and I was driving chase. So this was my view for the whole week. We're driving through a zone that was ON FIRE only a few hours before
:
And here's some of the "electronics" from inside the car. The main components are a 4kWh LiFePO4 battery pack, 6m^2 of silicon solar cells, a brushless DC hub motor with a really good controller, and a CAN bus that everything communicates over.
Driver controls/steering wheel. This was designed and built by a team member. The aluminium wheel was machined from a single solid piece and took about a week. Once the lid's on, the driver has 2 paddles, 12 buttons, 12 LEDs and the LCD. Far too much information to be useful, but seriously cool.
Battery management system. Me and another guy designed and programmed this one. It takes data from an off-the-shelf lithium cell management system and opens and closes the safety contactors. It also passes all the data from one CAN bus to another, and enables it to be sent out over telemetry.
A slightly messy view of our electronics shelf. The main boards on show are the Maximum Power Point Trackers (MPPTs) which are essentially big, expensive DCDC converters that the solar array plugs into. These make sure you're always getting the most power possible from the sun.
I have loads more pictures, and there are loads more electronics to be shown, but I'm still sifting through
.