Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
25 CUSTOM MPPTS FOR ILLINI SOLAR CAR
 Akhil Pothineni
Alex Chmiel
Alex Lymberopoulos
 Matthew Qi design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo1.jpeg
photo2.jpg
photo3.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
proposal1.pdf
video
 Illini Solar Car
# CUSTOM MPPTS FOR ILLINI SOLAR CAR

Team Members:
- Alex Chmiel (achmiel4)
- Alex Lymberopoulos (alexdl2)
- Akhil Pothineni (akhilp3)

# Problem

Illini Solar Car is manufacturing their 3rd generation vehicle to race at the American Solar Challenge this coming summer. The team has recently installed their array and is looking for easy-to-use, configurable, and efficient solar MPPTs. The off-the-shelf models are very expensive and will take time to integrate into the vehicle’s architecture. Also with off-the-shelf components if a part fails, we will not have access to the schematics to replace the component.

# Solution

The idea is to create custom, efficient, and low cost MPPTs built for the team’s electrical system. For some background, the vehicle has the array wired in three separate sections. The goal behind the 3 sections is better resilience to shading and redundancy built into the system. We would make an easy to move enclosure with three MPPTs inside that can be mounted in the vehicle. If one of the MPPTs fails we would still have 2/3 of the solar array producing power.

By making the MPPTs in house lots of problems could be solved. We could drastically reduce the cost, make it plug-and-play with our vehicle’s electrical systems, and be able to debug issues quickly.

# Solution Components

## Subsystem 1: Logic Board

This board will be running a perturb and observe algorithm to vary switching signals sent to an off-board power board.
- LPC1549: Microcontroller used in all solar car projects. Has built in CAN controllers. Data will be sent over CAN.
- Voltage Sensors: To view the voltage and vary the algorithm. Most likely use SPI communication protocol.
- Current Sensors: To view the current and vary the algorithm. Most likely use SPI communication protocol.
- Temperature Sensors: Monitor Temperature of the MPPTs to verify safe operating points.
- Fans Control: Turn on the fan when temperatures get too hot.
## Subsystem 2: Power Board

The power board will be controlled by the logic board to take in the input power and vary the output power to charge the battery. Should handle power up to ~900W. MPPTs should be able to output in the range of 77V-120V. Max charge current is ~2.75A.
- Boost Converter Circuit: Will boost input voltage to charge battery safely. Takes input from logic board.

# Criterion For Success

- Logic Board is able to read temperature and vary fans

- Logic Board is able to send information via CAN

- Power Board successfully boost input voltage

- If faults are induced the logic board is able to stop charging of the batteries.

- Create one logic board that can control one power board to follow a perturb and observe algorithm.

Dynamic Legged Robot

Joseph Byrnes, Kanyon Edvall, Ahsan Qureshi

Featured Project

We plan to create a dynamic robot with one to two legs stabilized in one or two dimensions in order to demonstrate jumping and forward/backward walking. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of inexpensive walking robots and provide the starting point for a novel quadrupedal robot. We will write a hybrid position-force task space controller for each leg. We will use a modified version of the ODrive open source motor controller to control the torque of the joints. The joints will be driven with high torque off-the-shelf brushless DC motors. We will use high precision magnetic encoders such as the AS5048A to read the angles of each joint. The inverse dynamics calculations and system controller will run on a TI F28335 processor.

We feel that this project appropriately brings together knowledge from our previous coursework as well as our extracurricular, research, and professional experiences. It allows each one of us to apply our strengths to an exciting and novel project. We plan to use the legs, software, and simulation that we develop in this class to create a fully functional quadruped in the future and release our work so that others can build off of our project. This project will be very time intensive but we are very passionate about this project and confident that we are up for the challenge.

While dynamically stable quadrupeds exist— Boston Dynamics’ Spot mini, Unitree’s Laikago, Ghost Robotics’ Vision, etc— all of these robots use custom motors and/or proprietary control algorithms which are not conducive to the increase of legged robotics development. With a well documented affordable quadruped platform we believe more engineers will be motivated and able to contribute to development of legged robotics.

More specifics detailed here:

https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=30338

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