2nd March 2021
Virtual Car Team Week 39: An evening full of electronics!!
Whilst waiting for everyone to join the call, we had our usual weekly team catch-up; which consisted of helping Katy with her engineering homework and discussing the return to school next week.
With everyone happily logged on, we got started with the planned activities. This week, we decided to take a short break from the design challenges and return to looking at the dashboard / electronics for the new car.
Cue Richard, our host for the evening, who delivered an interesting presentation on 'CAUC Car Electrical Systems'.
The presentation began with Richard taking us through the workings of a motor and how current is generated.
To illustrate this further, Richard found a video on YouTube which showed the relationship between copper, magnets and current. It is certainly well worth a watch if you have a spare 5 minutes or so!
Having learnt a little of the theory behind motors, Richard encouraged us to apply this knowledge in context with our cars. As part of the discussion, we looked into motor losses - specifically optimum conditions for the motor to run efficiently and factors that result in said motor losses.
Running with this idea, we had a look at the Greenpower simulator created by Banchory Greenpower to see what the motor is doing at various points during a race and at certain positions of the track. Once we had the baseline figures, we then began to play with our settings, such as instructing the car to change gear at different motor currents.
We then compared the simulation results with actual results from previous races. The simulation results did differ slightly from our actual data which gave us a little food for thought on what to do with the new car and indeed whether we should change up our settings slightly.
For the final section of Richard's presentation, we re-visited our dashboard designs. This prompted discussions on what data we already record before moving on to review the proposed ideas suggested a few weeks ago.
Bringing the dashboard chats to a close, we watched another video about 'The World's Simplest Electric Train', which I must say, was rather satisfying.
For the remaining 15 minutes of the call, we had a go at a YouTube General Knowledge Quiz, which was probably the hardest quiz we have done by far!!!! Tonight, whilst we maybe more familiar with electronics, our 'pub quiz' general knowledge leaves a lot to be desired!!!!
Huge thank you to Richard for preparing tonight's presentation. We may have only tipped the ice berg, but we've certainly come away this evening with lots to think about in regards to the new car!
We would also like to say a big thank you to everyone at Banchory Greenpower involved in creating the simulation and making it available to the public. We've had a lot of fun playing around with it that's for sure!!