Midnight Sun’s firmware team is responsible for writing all the code in the car, as well as some software projects like our telemetry system, our driver display, and some software tools for hardware to use.
Despite the car’s firmware being mostly complete, we still have plenty of work to do to create tooling for helping write firmware and other software projects to improve the car.
We’re a student oriented design team, meaning our primary goal is to make members better engineers. Our informal goal is to give everyone a chance to put a meaningful point on their resume from their time on the team.
Member Responsibilities
Depending on whether you’re onsite or offsite, you’ll report to different leads and have different tasks.
For onsite members
Gain exposure to core firmware / embedded skills such as:
programming microcontrollers
flashing MCUs
telling if problems are hardware’s or firmware’s fault
frying µCs like nobody’s business
how to say microcontroller in as many different ways as possible
Attend weekly onsite standups (mandatory) as well as twice weekly offsite standups (semi-optional)
Debug firmware in the bay using critical thinking skills, GDB, and hardware team members
build the car lol
For offsite members
Gain exposure to firmware and various software skills such as:
writing firmware in C to run on microcontrollers or emulated microcontrollers
writing software in python and C to create tools for validating firmware
writing software in various languages for projects like our telemetry system or driver display
write tests for firmware and other software to validate your work
Attend twice weekly offsite standups (mandatory)
Required Skills
Know the basics of programming
That’s literally it, you can learn as you go
Communication
 | Firmware Lead: Ryan Dancy About: 2B SE. Been on the team since January 2020. Co-op’d in Python, JS, and Go, worked in plenty of other languages. Ask me about: C, Python, setting up your dev environment, our drivers and libraries, tasks you’re working on, anything you’re stuck on |
 | Assistant Firmware Lead: Avery Chiu About: 2B Tron. Joined in September 2019. Worked at Ford and Geotab previously using languages like C/C++, Python, SQL. Will be working at Tesla in Fall 2021. Ask me about: General programming/embedded system questions, drivers, libraries, setting up dev environment. |
Where to go from this page
Let Ryan or Avery (whether you’re onsite or offsite) know on Slack that you’d like to join the team, then check out our extensive onboarding: https://uwmidsun.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ELEC/pages/1263960065/Firmware+Onboarding+Spring+2020 .
Offsite standups are Wednesdays 8:00-8:30 PM and Saturdays 1:00-1:30 PM.
Onsite standup times are TBD. They’ll still take place remotely, but are just for talking about onsite work.