Updates since 2010

For a little while we had a google doc linked to our website with our more recent updates (within the current year 2013.)

Below are those updates, as I will be removing that doc.

September 1, 2013

• Summer’s over and we’re kicking the productivity levels back up! To start off, we will be repping at the ESC New Student Welcome/Club Showcase Tuesday (9/3) 3-5pm.
• We will have an Open House at AML this Saturday (9/7) 10am, please come out to support us, hang out with us, and/or see if Solar Car can benefit you!

February 23, 2013

• If you have been waiting for the moment to join Solar Car, today is the day! That’s right, today is crunch day. There will be pizza and drinks at lunchtime for our hardworking members today.

February 11, 2013

• Today, the Mechanical team is hard at work on parts for the body of Icarus.
• The Electrical Team became Software Engineers for the day! We’re concentrating on the software side of monitoring the battery box by looking at a previous design which receives serial data via radio transmission with the battery box’s voltages, temperatures and current.

February 2, 2013

• Today we are getting prepared to implement preliminary designs for the new and improved battery box.

January 26, 2013

• Today we are meeting with our sponsor Dr. Potter at the ECE Building on campus.
• Updates on the Mechanical side:
• In process of completing frame
• Beginning suspension
• Shopping for rare hardware to use in the construction of Icarus
• Updates on the Electrical side:
• Two BPS designs have been considered: Analog and Digital
• Jack has designed an analog BPS

January 5, 2013

• Happy New Year to everyone! We’re back from Winter vacation and back at working on Icarus. We’re in the process of completing Phase II of registration for the Shell Eco-Marathon.
• The Electrical Team (WeiRen, Therence, Tony, Jack, and Wellington) are working on a Battery Protection System to monitor voltage, current, and temperature on individual battery cells while being charged.
• The dates of the 2013 Shell Eco-marathon Americas Competition has been set for April 4th through April 7th in Houston, Texas.
• Check out the photos page for updated photos on the current project!

UANEWS coverage

Check out the UANEWS coverage.
http://uanews.org/node/31180

We'll be at the Biosphere 2 next Satday April 17.

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Giffords, Shelton and Hay

We had a awesome PR event last Thursday at the Steward Mirror lab as part of the Solar Bus tour that AZ rep. Giffords was part of.
It was an honor to have her, UA President Shelton and Provost Meredith Hay drive the car. The event was covered by the daily Wildcat and we were on the front page on Monday. Check it out:
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/3-149-mpg-car-zips-in-eco-marathon-1.1305134

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Shell Eco race updates

Sorry for the lack of updates. I (Wei-Ren) have been busy with Jarod to fix more last minute problems but in the end we did manage to get all the electrical issues fixed and Mallory running smoothly. We finished in the end with 3149 miles per gallon (unofficial)!!!

Unfortunately, we cannot qualify as our car was also about 200 lbs more that the require weight limit because we overbuilt our car. If we were able to qualify we would be thousands of miles more mi/gal than the other urban challenge cars and 2nd overall to Purdue's vehicle. :( to that but we have certainly learned a lot for next year's car. Also unfortunate we didn't have members from last year to help us improve our car this year but fortunately we used double side duct tape to mount our Ga-As cells so we can reuse them for next year's urban challenge. We'll be getting some competition from Purdue in the urban concept next year and I am super excited if we were to come back next year with the same team to kick some butt.

Here is a recap of what happened at Shell Ecomarthon Houston 2010.
Thursday:
1. We found that our blocking diodes were wired backwards which was huge error on my (WR) part. Jarod and I fixed it and finish wiring up the array to the maximum power point trackers (MPPT). We also tried programing the remaining MPPTs we needed for the array. The Biel's MPPTs were a pain and we should get them fixed or replaced if we were to focus on the Shell Eco.

2. Friday
The course was opened for practice runs and I (WR) got out on the track with the batteries to get a few of the road and get a feel for the timing for the speed needed to get 10 laps and 3 10 seconds stops in 26 minutes.
At night, we finally manage to successfully reprogram 4 MPPTs out of the 8 we had. These MPPTs seriously need to be replaced or refurbished. It took way way too long to get that done and anyways they aren't all that efficient at the low voltage we were running Mallory at.

3. Saturday
We had a few good runs on the course, and had a better feel with the driving strategy. After the first heat, we tried tweaking the motor a little more and ran down the battery a little more from the full pack that we started. The next heat, we unfortunately drained our battery pack down to NIL as the weather was horrible so at night before we left charging up the batteries overnight.
Also, I popped the steering out from the steering rack and was fixed later by Sean.

4. Sunday
In the morning, the packs were only charged up 30% and was not sufficient during heat #4. The BPS shut us of as I tried limping back into the pits. We switched out our battery pack with our spare battery cells and were able to get up into heat #5 and heat #6. The weather was perfect for solar racing and we manage to pull of 3149 miles/ gallon (unofficial). Unfortunately, we can't qualify due to our weight.

Well that's a recap of what has happened. I'll update later with pictures and more notes.

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3,149 MPG!

The team managed to get 3149 miles per gallon with the (not so) svelte Mallory.

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Untitled

Day 2 was some what successful. We managed to pass all our tech inspections which were a breeze compared to the North American Solar Challenge. The only thing that we failed to do was to be under the required weight limit of 350lb. Our chassis was definitely overbuilt for this competition. The Elecs had their own fair share of issues. We had problems programming 5 of the 9 maximum power point trackers. Jared and I spent the whole evening till midnight getting 4 MPPTs reprogram. The elecs are done done done at this point. It's unfortunate that we are so over weight.

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After a late night fixing problems we are all set to go on the track.

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