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Scrutineering just needs to see contactors open for 3 conditions
Steering
Critical buttons should not be on screens, they should all be physical buttons
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The steering wheel gets abused the most. Make the steering board robust. Discrete buttons with the fly-wire to the board. Prevent the button from being over-pressed.
Power Distribution
LTC4417 Power Path Priority
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RGBW serial lights that can go different colors. MSX used the flash LEDs from blackberry. Kapton tape for the Amber lights.
Motor Controller
MSXII Precharge was hardware based.
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Available in 5 degree increments
Lights Boards
Thermal Vias - Usually spaced as close as possible, and as small as possible.
Heatsinking to something must be able to radiate the heat as well.
Aux Charger
Rules used to be primary cell Aux.
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Keep one-upping the scrutineers for regulations
Solar Sense
What is the issue?
Yellow construction work lights for testing the panels
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Robustness - They'll fail and the no one will no how to fix them.
DC-DC Modules
Vicor modules have the switching logic inside, but the components outside.
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Thermistor switch for controlling the fan.
Management Input Perspective
Break in to teams to work on projects - mentor relationship
If not working on the board, probably not ideal to bring up the board - usually ends up in more broken boards.
Battery
MSX did battery testing - capacity - great job for co-ops
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Lithium at low voltage is not dangerous??
Firmware
See Arshan's firmware overview presentation
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-Interior mirrors that go out through the windows
Driver Selection
A driver that drives the car like a car is best.
They picked drivers from the PAC area, and tested how well they respond to commands, stay cool, etc. - Drive around ring road, tell the driver to speed up and slow down continuously until the driver tells them to stop. You can get some driver ergonomics testing this way as well.
The best driver will be one that drives it like a car but also knows everything about what is going on inside it. If you don't drive it like a car, then you will be much less efficient, slower, etc.
Anything that people will be interacting with should be designed for robustness.
MSX had issues with brake testing, had to reduce tire pressure as well.
Other comments in the bay:
-at FSGP 2009, Midnight Sun did a barrel roll, landing on its tires. MSX got the "I want to be an airplane" award.
-Rotor locked up and driver said there was smoke but couldn't identify where it was coming from. Keep
-Battery Undervoltage protection - the undervoltage condition on lithium batteries is not too big of an issue. You have less energy stored and thus a less violent explosion, usually just a small swelling and a puff. It is really the overvoltage that is an issue because then you are generating heat and have a ton more energy stored that will cause violent explosions.
Inside the cells, the crystal will get larger, dendrites will form, the pressure will build, and the cathode and anode will be squished together, creating an internal short circuit.
Motor tuning - the motors should be electrically silent when running. If there is noise, they are not tuned correctly. The Tritium software gets its tuning values from the motor itself, so it has to be connected, you can't just type in configuration values. To get better efficiency (at the cost of some torque) you can hold the motor absolutely still so that when measuring the inductance in the
All grids are just one big control loop - this is where Nuvation can compete on some super cool projects.
There was some multiplier on our score for MSXII 0.83% (or something like that) that was dragging our score down - what was this? This is the car to break the "E5 curse".
At competition, everyone is on the same team. We are here to prove that solar powered transportation is possible. The best race is one where everyone finishes
As an alum, he is not really seen as a threat, so teams will be more open about strategy, etc. Michigan's strategy is not to have the best and most reliable car. It is to be able to swap parts in and out super quickly. They spend the last year before comp getting their team running like a well oiled machine.
MSX was ready in February, and was testing as soon as the snow melted.