Formula Racecar Modules


These modules were designed for Carnegie Mellon’s Formula SAE racecar, which is currently undefeated in the North America Electric Vehicle division!

2019 Safety Module:

Safety module for the racecar. Based on the GLV template, with emergency stop circuit and brake-pressure sensor interface.

2019 GLV Template:

This is the template for 2019 car boards, and is based on the ST STM32F413RGT6 microcontroller:

The board is just under 2 inches on it’s longest side, and features a microsd card reader, CAN transceiver, current/voltage sense, and JTAG programming. Ideally, this board will also feature a CAN-enabled bootloader for system-wide firmware updates.

Telemetry Module

I designed the Telemetry Module for the Carnegie Mellon Racing (CMR) Formula SAE racecar this year with my roommate Advaith Sethuraman. This module connects with the other modules over a CAN bus, and sends telemetry over an XBEE radio. More information on our car can be found on the Carnegie Mellon Racing website.

It’s based on an Atmel AVR32UC3 MCU, and I designed it in Altium Designer. It’s a 4 layer board, with JTAG, dual power supplies, filtering, and an XBEE in addition to the AVR.

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Dynamic Lighting Controller (DLC)

The Dynamic Lighting Controller (DLC) is an add-on for next year’s Formula SAE racecar built by Carnegie Mellon Racing (CMR). You can find out more about their car here.

The DLC is currently in early design, and will likely change before fab. It currently features an Atmel AVR32UC3 microcontroller, but that line is discontinued, so the next revision will use either a TI Hercules processor or an ST automotive processor. The goal is to provide hookups and dynamic lighting configuration to the various lighting fixtures of the racecar, including brake lights, hazard lights, under glow, tractive trunk lighting, and anything else that needs dynamic LED strips. Currently it is designed to use dotstar LEDs, which are controlled via SPI, so they are easy to control from a 32 bit MCU, as opposed to the more popular neopixels. It also features a larger 10A power supply and a fuse to control these LEDs.

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