CEFAST BAJA-SAE 2025.1 Electronics System

What is BAJA-SAE?

The BAJA-SAE competition is an engineering student teams competition promoted by the Society Of Automotive Engineers. Each team has to develop off-road vehicles prototypes that will compete in harsh environments. The teams are judged on both prototype performance and on the engineering applied in the prototype’s project.

Who are we ?

 Our team has been active for over 27 years as an extension project at CEFET-MG, a federal institution in Brazil focused on technological education, research and innovation. Throughout this journey, we have faced numerous challenges and learned invaluable lessons, which have led to various achievements and significant evolution, as well as the continuous improvement of our project and all the current and former members who have been part of it and remain connected to our cause.

ESP32 Acquisition Board

The purpose of this PCB is to collect the most important data of the car such as RPM, CVT and engine temperature and the vehicle’s speed. We utilize an ESP32 microcontroller to process this data and deliver it to a CAN network, besides also being capable of storing these data in a SD card, preventing any type of data loss.  

ESP32 Dashboard Module

The ESP32 dashboard module receives data from the other modules via CAN bus and serves as the gateway for the telemetry and displaying data for the pilot. The PCB integrates a nextion NX4827T043 for the display and a EBYTE LoRa E220-400T22D for sending the data over the LoRa RF protocol at 433 MHz. It has an integrated sd card slot for redundant data storage in the prototype and eight inputs with optocouplers  for buttons and monitoring digital sensors.

Control Module

The module controls the distribution of power between the modules of the vehicle. In the PCB we have three channels, one for the embedded electronics and instrumentation, one for the DLR  and one for the headlights.

We´re aiming to change from ESP32 microcontroller to STM32 series controllers, since we already have a prototype board that is cheaper to produce and smaller. Although, we still lack the experience with the STM32 platform, so it will be a future project.

As a team limited by budget and a short time period for developing our project, we are sure that the sponsorship of PCBWay would be fundamental for our project accomplishment. Since we need this boards for the next competition and the fast and reliable services of PCBWay would be a great support!

CEFAST BAJA-SAE Contacts

https://www.instagram.com/cefastbaja/

cefast.cefet@gmail.com

Electronics Team Contact

cefastbaja.eletronica@gmail.com