Week 3 – Spring 25
This past week saw the set up for the project going forth. The semester goals were laid out and how we were going to approach them was discussed. This semester will function a lot more week by week rather than having assigned tasks to do across the whole semester. By going this way we are aiming to reduce down time and have a more efficient semester. This week I need to research alternative under voltage protection to see if there should be any changes and work with Alex and Tyler to begin some kind of larger scale circuit design. This will be used to set up ESP32 connections and to use them as a BMS system. ESP32’s will be used to monitor the battery output, health, and functionality. Following it might be challenging to have a good design circuit design made but it is something that will be worked on among multiple people across the following weeks. I’m imagining the final project to look like this. It will have a bottom carriage with a top mounted motor. This is mainly due to our motor being large so having it mounted under would be very challenging.
Week 5
This week a lot of progress was made in preparation for part ordering. We discussed what method we would use to step down the battery for the control slice and the motor slice. This led to the idea of ordering a dedicated buck converter chip for each necessary voltage level. We met with the ATX power supply group to get a better understanding on how to design these systems with different voltage rails. They helped us decide what methods we should use to achieve our design and gave some inspiration in the block design. Following this week, there will be a meeting on Monday to order parts to begin assembly. Once the final parts are decided on, a circuit design can be finalized in preparation for CDR on Thursday. I was able to come up with this block diagram for the project.
Week 4
This week the battery slice subgroup of the Open Mobility project had a meeting to further discuss the battery design. The choice was in between buying individual battery cells or a pre made pack. We came to the conclusion that a premade pack would be worth the slight increase in price so we could focus our attention to another aspect of the board design. Following this, we will need to email both MBoards and DIYboards to see what comes with the BMS products. In addition, the battery slice will be focusing on designing rails necessary for communications function and motor function to better prepare for ordering parts.
WEEK 3
This week I researched 2 boards, looking specifically for the batteries used. I’m trying to look at what other successful boards use for batteries and motors so we can find effective components in our design. Following our meeting Monday we will have a completed performance envelope and done more research to prepare for the presentation Thursday.
