This week, I worked on finishing more machining for our dyno, which was able to spin another motor rather successfully with a chain and another sprocket. With a ACDC rectifier and some beefy fets, we were able to get some interesting result from the output of the generator motor. We have been doing some calculations on the efficiency and power results with an oscilloscope as well. Some prelim power output puts us at 700W without the motor losing control, so…
This week I worked on the motor dyno setup. In addition to milling out the sprocket, the motor dyno plate, I also spent some time wiring up the fets with the ACDC converter we got this week. Ideally, all the mechanical work for the dyno should be done by this weekend, fingers crossed that techspark is not full of meches trying to finish their capstone on time. I also have scoped out a fuse for the battery pack, which I…
My work this week consisted of manufacturing and doing mechanical planning. I sourced some heatsink material to cut and mill in the machine shop in C level Techspark an it will be ready to cool be power board. I also ordered the throttle for the bike. In addition to machining more things for the dyno, I’m also waiting for all the parts to get in so we can flow the boards.
This week I finished checking the schematics and did some layout for the SpookPower and Spooklogic board. We went through and double checked all the math. I went through and found sprockets and chain for the big beefy motors we had, which Deepak later purchased. The sprocket will go on top of the motor mounting holes and the chain will be used for our tabletop dyno. I also found an ebike throttle that is rated for our operating voltage range….
This week, I worked on the battery management board schematics by reviewing the ASIC and picking out some components to regulate a 48v 15-cell series 18650 lithium ion battery pack that we are planning on using to power the UPMC. In addition to being able to sense the temperature, voltage, and current from every one of the cells, this board also needs to communicate with the Logic Board of the Electric Boogaloo. This means I have to look into connecting…
This week I worked on the demo aspect of the project. In addition to researching further into the motor and tabletop dyno, I started some initial drawings in CAD for our motor mount and output shafts. We’re going to make some parts out of aluminum to firmly hold the motor assembly in place as we start testing it with higher power. I also found a bike to purchase from Facebook for $40 that we are going to investigate and see…
This week I worked with Deepak on the STM32 timers to trigger the ADC. We verified that indeed PWM was working and decided that we have to use one timer to triggeer another. Timer synchronization is more difficult than we thought, as we are using one timer to trigger another, and the second one has to start at the exact same time to be able to trigger the ADC. We had to fiddle around with the prescaler of the timer…
This week I worked on the Design Review Report and prepare for the Design Review Presentation. The report involves doing a lot more background research into the further mathematical details of Field Oriented Control theory. I also contributed to writing the abstract, introduction, architecture/principle of operation, and the project management sections of the report. I spent some time looking into tabletop motor dynos, which looks like it might be possible if we find two motors and bind their output shafts…
This week I worked with Deepak on figuring out the UART and DMA firmware that we are putting to test on Janktroller++. We found out that the gate driver on Janktroller has some built in deadtime, which we are using in addition to the deadtime we are setting in software, which initially was confusing but now makes more sense. Getting live UART data from the board meant that we were able to get live diagnostic data to better understand what…
This week I spent time working on reading the pwm.c firmware we wrote for CMR’s firmware library, which uses a microcontroller in the same family as the Janktroller. The ST microcontroller datasheet was very helpful in identifying the different modes we need to set in the center-aligned PWM control firmware. I have also started researching battery solutions to power our motor and motor controller, such as looking into battery assembly clips (https://vruzend.com/ for example) and a potential BMS ASIC (http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/bq76940.pdf)….