Unfortunately some sort of solar car gremlin decided to take the charger for the shop camera so all the pictures you see below were taken by John with his camera. I'm pretty sure Johns camera has been through a few epoxy wars and possibly a few acetone baths so please appreciate the quality of pictures his camera still takes...
Me and Kevin have been working on the software for the UC Solar MPPT which is coming along really nice. It tracks pretty good now but needs a lot of refinement in order to be acceptable to our standards. Kung fu George (sorry I don't have the epic picture) has also gotten on board and now we are all working on our own tracking algorithms and I guess we will see who ends up with the best algorithm in the end.
Jeff has been continuing to work on the new "SuperBoard" that will control almost everything on the car in a form factor of roughly the size of a ipod. It will take care of the driver controls, blinker lights, telemetry, and the driver display. How we (and when I say we, I mean Jeff) managed to fit this much functionality into such a small form factor is beyond me... Pictures to come soon...
I've also been working on a new slick steering wheel for Axiom due to the old steering wheels weight. In between Jeff's SuperBoard and the new steering wheel we will be saving 2-3 lbs of weight which is pretty ridiculous when you think about how small of a part the steering wheel is...
On top of the stuff above the electrical team spent most of the day working on the test battery pack which is rapidly approaching completion.
The mech team also was hard at work (or hardly working?) on various carbon fiber pieces for Axiom. One such example is the new very very lightweight seat...
I also stumbled across this LED street sign that we had laying around so I decided to rejuvenate it as a joke. Come to think of it, it will actually come in handy as a "you are not allowed in" or a "you are allowed in" sign when we are in array construction mode. LOL...
We also rounded out the day with the usual Hockey game! It was definitely one of the most epic Hockey games we've played so far. It was me and John vs Mark and Mico and it basically went down to the wire... I think the final score was 20-18 for M&M; if I remember correctly...
We (Calgary) managed to avoid the brunt of old man winter until earlier this week. On Tuesday she dropped down to -25C and has pretty much remained the same since.
Also later on, to put one of our many "fail" seats behind us we decided to take it for a toboggan ride. Unfortunately it didn't really work out to plan... I think the picture describes the rest of the story perfectly lol...
Believe me, by the time we were finished "tobogganing" we all looked like abominable snowmen...
See Ya!
Tim Gamber
Electrical Engineering Manager
