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MPPTs are required because without them, the voltage of the solar panels may be insufficient to charge batteries or a large portion of the power from the solar panels could be dissipated as heat.
Our MPPTs are stacked in series.
For more information, check out
https://www.solar-electric.com/learning-center/mppt-solar-charge-controllers.html/
Solar Sense Board
The Solar Sense board monitors the current, voltage and temperature of each MPPT. It takes in SPI communications from each MPPT, regulates it, uses I2C ADCs to sense the voltage from each MPPT, regulates the I2C signal and then passes all of these communications to the controller board. It also runs accepts connections from thermistors running from each of the solar arrays.
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Solar panels are essential for a solar car to function. Without them, there is no solar car. To monitor these solar panels, we attach PT100 thermistors directly to the solar cells, as solar panels don’t work well if they get hot. There are four in total. The solar power input connectors will be 5.84mm pitch molex connectors, using 14AWG orange cable. The temperature measurement will use the same connectors.
Battery Connection
The battery connection is made to output power to the battery. To charge our batteries, this is necessary. The enclosure will use MX150L 7.62mm connectors to bridge the gap between the outside and inside of the box.
LV (Low Voltage) System Connection
The LV system is 12V.