Building a Solar Car Remotely — A Spring 2020 Update
We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe during these times! The last few months have seen some unexpected challenges due to the impact of COVID-19, and we hope you all have been able to overcome them.
We would like to thank everyone for your continued support of Midnight Sun and our latest project, MSXIV! It has been a little while since we last released a newsletter and we hope to continue to release more in the coming terms, to keep everyone up to date with our team’s activities!
MSXIV Update!
To once again introduce our next car, Midnight Sun 14 (MSXIV) is a four-seated cruiser class vehicle that focuses on both energy efficiency and practicality as it is intended to mirror consumer passenger vehicles.
With the postponement of the American Solar Challenge, a ~3000km race originally scheduled for July 2020, we have shifted our new target to the 2021 American Solar Challenge.
While the UW Midnight Sun Solar Car team transitioned into remote work for the Spring term, we are extremely proud to share that our work did not slow down. The majority of our subteams saw changes in their goals and timelines but were able to achieve numerous milestones, specifically in terms of design. In addition to the subteam term updates noted below, Midnight Sun has appointed project managers for each subteam to help the technical leads with budgeting, check-ins, and timeline management.
This new dynamic has helped each subteam keep track and make smooth progress over the course of this remote term. We hope to kick off the majority of manufacturing during the Fall 2020 term, with the proper social distancing measures in place. We hope you enjoy this term update!
Subteam Updates
HARDWARE
The Hardware team has not slowed down the design manufacturing and assembly of all of their electrical systems since the start of the spring term. Their goal was to complete a full car electrical mock-up by the end of 2020 and to meet it, they changed their board design and management cycles to reflect the current state of virtual work.
The team’s hardware designs have continued to improve over the last few months where they have completed further revisions of their PCBs for Battery Management System (BMS), High Voltage to Low voltage Power Supply, Power distribution, Power Source selection, Charger Interface, Solar Management, and Lights. With limited in-person campus access in the Fall term, the team hopes to complete their electrical mockup.
One effort the team is most proud of was the introduction of ‘knowledge shares’ as a part of their virtual onboarding process for the term. Over the course of 14 weeks, they broke down the electrical design systems of MSXIV and presented 1–2 hour knowledge shares for new members. These have been recorded and uploaded to the Midnight Sun YouTube channel to help bridge the gap in online learning for newcomers in future terms.
DYNAMICS
The Dynamics team is in charge of all things that move: suspension, steering and brakes. This term, they focused on guiding and onboarding new members in addition to wrapping up the designs of several components, which will be manufactured in time for assembly this Fall. They faced a few interesting and sometimes unexpected design and analysis problems, from tight packaging constraints to setting up computational structural analysis simulations. But with the help of their new members who were able to quickly learn the ropes through design fundamentals and tools such as CAD and drawings, the team was able to overcome those challenges
Overall, the dynamics team was very pleased with the progress that was made during the first remote term as they have wrapped up the majority of the design, with only a few more complex components left to complete. They are on track to tackle the next phase of the Dynamics life-cycle in the Fall, when they will have all their components in house and be able to focus on assembly.
STRUCTURES
The Structures team is responsible for the design and manufacturing of MSXIV’s aerobody and chassis. Their focuses for the Spring term included finishing the CAD for all molds for the aerobody panels as well as the manufacturing and assembly plan for the chassis jig. Over the course of the term, the team was able to finalize the design of the jig and the clamps to be used. Additionally, all CAD for the molds and panels apart from the bottom panel, which was done in the previous term, was finalized. Furthermore, the team conducted analyses to evaluate the strength of the panels themselves and the adhesives that would later be used during the manufacturing of the composites. While it was not in the scope, the structures team was also able to tackle the concept design of MSXIV’s trunk hinge, and the CAD is currently in progress.
Structures was one of Midnight Sun’s subteams that was most affected by the transition to virtual work. They faced difficulties with working on CAD and manufacturing plans without access to the Bay. Additionally, as one of the largest subteams, communicating with new members can be difficult enough in-person and remote work made it even harder to check in with all new members. However, the new system of biweekly check-ins helped the team leads to keep track of all their tasks and offer support where needed. Next term, the structures team plans to manufacture the bottom panel, bulkheads, chassis, and build the rolling chassis in collaboration with the dynamics team.
INTERIORS
Interiors welcomed many new faces this past term, bringing in students from a variety of faculties and departments. The team decided to kick everything off with a week-long design sprint, where they split off into two teams with the goal of designing a product to encourage children to wash their hands (a fairly fitting topic for COVID-19). This activity proved to be monumental in helping the team understand how best to organize themselves to tackle the remainder of the term.
The primary goal for this term was to complete the design and manufacturing plans for MSXIV’s catamaran cover, seats, and interior door panels. The Interiors team was divided into three project-specific teams with each member owning a specialist role in product management, form factor design, design for manufacture and assembly, or product validation/testing. With a high degree of autonomy, each of the three project teams excelled in solving the problems they encountered leading to a complete detailed design package and manufacturing/assembly plans.
For the next term, Interiors plans to do a final review of these projects before commencing their manufacturing. Additionally, new projects will be started, which include the UI/UX design of MSXIV’s infotainment display, the design of the dashboard, and the remaining interior trim components. Overall, Interiors has seen great success in the development of both their new and returning members and are excited to continue their momentum into the future.
BATTERY BOX
As with everything in the last few months, their original goals of finishing assembly of the battery pack during the spring term were delayed. However, the team shifted its focus to ensuring that all parts are in-house and ready to assemble at the start of Fall 2020. One surprise this term was that what started as some documentation to keep track of the work in previous terms, was developed into a detailed report on the progress of MSXIV’s battery pack (you can view the full report here). The Battery Box team has started processing the data of the single-cell testing and has begun compiling the results to select which cells are the best to keep all modules balanced.
Due to the incredibly interdisciplinary nature of the battery system, the onboarding of new members becomes incredibly important as the majority are not initially equipped with the knowledge to start working on projects. But this term, a few new members learned quickly and greatly contributed to designing mounts, covers, and processing data. At the beginning of the term, the Battery Box team ran and recorded virtual Battery 101 Sessions and shared technical information in an effort to connect the dots between chemistry, electrical, and mechanical disciplines. These resources as well as the Battery Report will be of great help to future members and will quickly get them up to speed.
During the fall term, the Battery Box team will start manufacturing and assembling all the battery modules for MSXIV.
FIRMWARE
The spring term brought new challenges to the Firmware team around working remotely and asynchronously from the hardware team. Rather than the usual workflow of iteratively developing firmware while constantly checking for proper communication with the PCB components, the team had to take a much more deliberate approach to debugging. Running code meant sending it to the hardware team for testing and waiting on the results, much like punch card batch processing in the 1950s. Despite the drastically lengthened development cycle, the team successfully accomplished its goal of writing all firmware components before the end of the term.
Looking ahead to the next step, the Firmware team will be moving into quality assurance mode, working closely with the hardware team to test and validate that all components behave as expected on the metal. To facilitate the higher level coordination and sequencing testing, the team is also investing heavily in its remote-work infrastructure by developing a firmware emulator that abstracts away the low level hardware interactions. This will enable automatic integration tests, something that previously required flashing the firmware onto boards and connecting them with physical wires. All in all, the team is well on track for success in the coming terms.
STRATEGY
The Strategy team develops software that models and analyzes the car’s systems and behaviour. Using this information, Midnight Sun can better understand the car’s state during the race and optimize with the goal of racing as efficiently as possible.
Throughout the spring term, the Strategy team continued to develop and improve software that will help the team model and analyze vehicle components. Among this semester’s accomplishments include a navigation model to collect route and elevation data, analysis of auxiliary power consumption, and visualizations for the state of charge model. They also worked on evaluating data visualization and front-end plans for understanding the car in real-time. These discussions will extend into the upcoming semester, where Strategy will also be looking at testing and updating the models for recently completed components and making strategy data accessible and useful during race time.
Thank You To Our Sponsors
Once more, we would like to extend a huge thank you to each and every one of our sponsors for their support of our team. None of this would be possible without you!
We are excited to announce and welcome the following new sponsors to the Midnight Sun family:
- Tesla
- Candor
- Vicor
- KREW Industrial
- KW Anodizing Ltd.
- Sense Tecnic
We would also like to note that there have been some new sponsors that have joined within the last few weeks prior to the release of this update and we will be recognizing them in our next edition.
To learn more about UW Midnight Sun and our cars, please visit uwmidsun.com, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn or send us an email at solar@uwmidsun.com.
