Over the past week or two Jeff has been slowly building his IV tracer (Solar Cell tester) into something that will be easily usable for the team. Well he's been having plenty of issues with high resistance due to the current bread-boarded layout. It finally looks like I convinced him to put his design onto a real PCB (Printed Circuit Board). Here's Jeff working on the new sleek design of the IV tracer.
Me on the other hand finished up the first revision of the UC Solar MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracker)! Basically it tracks the maximum power point of the array and acts as an interface between the solar cells/modules and the battery pack. Below is a snapshot of what the PCB layout looks like at the moment.
I have also updated the BPS (Battery protection System) to improve reliability further (even though we had very few problems with it thus far) and to make it more modular with hot swappable components.
Anyway I'm hoping we will get our PCB designs sent off for production sometime this week and then be able to test out our designs the following week.
Also to all students that are interested in building and working on really neat stuff like this should come to the UC Solar Car recruitment session this week. Its being held this Thursday Sept 23 at 6:30PM in ENC 328 (Engineering C Block, 3rd floor). Alternatively, you can meet with us on Tuesday October 5 at 6:30pm in Science A 147.
See Ya There!
Tim Gamber
Electrical Engineering Manager
