2018-09-19 Planning Meeting Notes

The primary focus of this meeting is to come up with a plan for what the firmware team needs to get done in the next 4-8 months.

What we need to work on for MSXII:

• Driver controls 
  • we need to replace some hardware which means tweaking firmware.
  • regen braking
  • Mech brake sensor is unstable
  • the brake has to be pressed all the way down to stop the car(urgent) - might not be a firmware issue
  • car switches to neutral unexpectedly(urgent)
  • Brake lights going off too much(might be an easy fix)

• Driver display 
  • The code needs to be finished
  • Light sensor(good project for new comer)
• Battery Management System
  • we weren’t able to complete the state of charge (Karl knows a lot about it)
    • Things to consider
      • Battery SOC algorithm might not be able to be computed on the board
      • we can make a library that will be imported
  • no cell balancing 
  • AFE’s not behaving correctly
  • We blew the thermistor array
• AUX battery not monitored under power distribution
• Motor interface board
  • needs to be checked thoroughly 
  • we weren't getting motor velocity and critical messages
• Telemetry 
  • currently transmitting through XBee
  • needs new architecture (Calder will spearhead)
  • Upload through 3g or 4g modem (more for MSIV but would be good to implement for MSXII)      
• Validate new copies of boards
  • update pinouts in config files
• Solar sense board needs to be programmed
  • Make sure relays for solar array are installed and working
• Sensor board (IMU)

HIGH PRIORITY PROJECTS (need to be done by the end of the term) :

1. Charging(Misha) 
2. Driver Controls(Andy)
3. BMS(Ash)

What MSIV needs to do in terms of Firmware:

If we complete the projects outlined above, we theoretically have a working electrical system for MSIV.

It’s mainly up to the new generation to figure out some new exciting features to add in terms of firmware, such as :

• add more ports to existing lights board(not too complicated)
• Sensor board to detect when doors are open for lights to turn on
• Have a raspberry pi that has apple/android audio for some music/radio
• Change to a new MCU?
• Transition to FreeRTOS
• Interior lighting for the Car
• Interior fan system for the driver
• Possibly redo of BMS and Driver Controls
• New and improved motors and motor controllers
  • They’re like 10 years old
  • Although it is expensive (around $60 000) we should still consider it
• Restructure CAN to handle heartbeats by request, rather than waiting for CAN acks to do that

Tasks for First Years( Leads on those projects)  :

• Driver display board (Andy)
• Solar sense firmware (Misha)
• IMU board (Ash)
• Get them the data sheet
• Get them to figure out how to read data from the board
• GPS board(Misha)
• Figuring out why motor interface messages aren’t sending (Calder)
• X86 abstraction layer stuff is just an array of data that doesn’t really do much(Calder)
• -create a UI to validate that things work
• some of our tests need to be better (Calder)
• Reduce # of locations where a fault can occur(Calder)
• Differentiate between soft and hard faults
• Have a fault LED rather than making noise
• Power distribution should not cause the car to stop instantly
• Make a bot that allows codegen to detect commits and updates
• Calder is going to be doing the re- architecting for telemetry, with the assistance of a new-generation member :
• Will pull some new comers to do some research (3-4ppl)

MSXIV and FreeRTOS

• Everyone should start researching early on
• Lots of refactoring of code

Things we don’t need to bother with for now

• Lights
• Power distribution
• BMS architecture

Does the 2 seater vs 4 seater discussion affect firmware at all ?

• 4 seater = more space ; Signals might get flaky (unlikely)
• Noise might increase due to longer distances of travel
• overall the discussion has no huge impact on firmware