HyTech Racing is an award-winning student-run organization at the Georgia Institute of Technology dedicated to furthering students' engineering experience through the rigorous design and development of Formula Student electric vehicles. Every year, we design, build, and race a brand new student-designed single seater electric formula style racecar. Thanks to JLCPCB for providing us with this sponsored PCB.

I. Introduction

Data acquisition is an important portion of the HyTech team that focuses mainly on optimization. They do this by continually taking in inputs from the car. Some of these inputs are external, such as speed or temperature, while others are internal, such as battery levels. Without taking these parameters into account, it would be significantly harder to perform optimizations. To help out, the low voltage team was tasked with creating a board that can collect the data for the sensors, which resulted in the Sensor Acquisition Board.

II. Data Input

Each sensor is connected to the board via a Molex connector that carries power, ground, and the signal. The signal is then fed directly into an operational amplifier (OpAmp) to strengthen the signal so it can be read and interpreted better. Directly from the OpAmp, the signal goes into a MAX7400 IC, whose job is to filter. Filtering removes a lot of external noise that might show up as false data and mess with any analysis and provides for a better overall signal.

III. ADC

Once cleaned up, the signal is sent to the MCP3204 IC, which is an analog to digital converter (ADC). This is necessary because while most things in the real world have analog values (ie. values in a continuous range), computers speak in the language of 1s and 0s. The ADC is responsible for taking these digital values and converting them into a string of 1s and 0s that can be interpreted by a microcontroller.

IV. CAN Communication and Microcontroller

Finally, the data can now be sent to a microcontroller. Using the serial port interface (SPI), the microcontroller can be told which input it needs to look at. CAN allows for these microcontroller signals to be sent along to the MCP3204, telling it what to transmit. CAN allows for easy signaling and has the advantages of built-in error detection and speed.

V. Final Steps

Once we finished designing our board, we got them manufactured at JLCPCB. To manufacture your own PCBs, you can use JLCPCB at https://jlcpcb.com/RAT. Just hit “QUOTE NOW” to order your custom PCB. Our team chooses JLCPCB because of the high quality for the price and timely manufacturing.