E-Team Squadra Corse custom boards

About us

The E-Team squadra corse is the works team of the University of Pisa, which competes in several Formula SAE events across all over Europe. We are currently developing two vehicles: both of them are powered by an internal combusion engine, but one is a driverless model. 

Last year (2021) we managed to achieve several important results, such as a first place in the cost report category in Germany, and a first place in the driverless design event in Italy.

The Cars

Last season brought the developement of two vehicles: Galileo strong>Kerubless:

Galileo is the traditional internal combustion engine; it sports a Honda CBR600 engine, and for the first time ever it presents an hybrid chassis with a monocoque front part.

Kerubless, the driverless vehicle, implements an autonomous driving system capable of driving through a track defined by cones thanks to its stereoscopic camera, a lidar, and a neural network able to process al the information coming from these sensors.

Our circuit boards

Almost all of the boards present in the cars are custom made by ourselves, in order to save both weight and space by including only the specific functionalities deemed necessary. This also is an extremely valuable experience for the members of the team to get useful hands-on experience in designing, building and testing custom boards.

PDU

The Power Distribution Unit is the component responsible to adequately power every component of the vehicles. It it equipped with fuse sockets for every outbound power line, and presents several ways to control this power delivery: it can be controlled by either the ECU, external emergency buttons (as required by the rules) and an embedded Atmel AT90CAN microcontroller, which is able to communicate to the rest of the car via the CAN bus. To save significant space, it has been designed with a 105um layer thickness in mind.

GCU

The Gear Control Unit is the board responsible for implementing the H-bridge required by our brushed DC motor used in the gear actuation

system. It is capable of a PWM control and as such, it incorporates a MIC4606 IC which mananages this feature, as well as the ability of using exclusively N-channel FETs thanks to a bootstrap capacitor. 

This board too has an AT90CAN: in this way it is possible to finely control the shifting of gears, especially by implementing custom strategies for the launch control. As for the PDU, a thicker copper layer helps with the currents in play, which exceed bursts of 70A, while it also makes possible to save space.

CANopener

A breakout board of our beloved AT90CAN, it makes it possible to access the main peripherals and interfaces available on the microcontroller.

PCBWay's proven manufacture expertise could be useful for making these boards, thanks to the fine tolerances available even for the thicker copper layers, while also providing a quick manufacturing time which makes it possible to correct potential issues well ahead of our deadlines.