Eclipse Solar Car (ETS)

THE PROJECT

The Eclipse Solar car project is a student group from ETS university in Montreal, Canada. The goal of the project is to build a car power solely by solar energy and race it accross the globes in such events as the American Solar Challenge, in the United-States of America, and the World Solar Challenge, in Australia. 

The project first started in 1992, when the first solar car of ETS university, Eclipse I, was built. It has since then been rethought, redesigned and rebuilt many times by passionate students of the university. 

THE CAR

Eclipse X was its latest model. The car was awarded 3rd place at the 2018 American Solar Challenge and will be reworked to participate at the 2019 World solar Challenge.

THE TEAM

As mentionned previously, the Eclipse Solar Car team is made of motivated and talented engineering student from various degrees. Participating in the project awards no extra credits or recognition, so it is the passion of those people that drives them and allowed them to put all those efforts into making Eclipse X the car that it is now.

THE CIRCUIT BOARDS

A solar car is first and foremost an electric car, with the exception that it charges wherever it goes, as long as it is in sunlight. Therefore it needs a large amount of circuit board to function. All of the circuit boards displayed bellow were designed by team members.

Steering wheel

As the car is uniquely designed, so is the interface the pilot needs to control it. That board was designed by the pilots, for the pilots. It features every control the pilots need to drive the car safely and confortably.

Power Supply

As mentionned above, the car runs on electricity stored a battery. That battery is made of several 18650 Lithium batteries arranged in parallel and series to give an output of around 150V when on full charge. While that is suitable to power the vehicle's drive, it is way to high voltage for the common circuit board, which is why th ecar needs a power supply that converts this high voltage to a regular 12V.

Headlights

People would assume that a solar car only runs during the day. And they would be correct during the competition, the car only drive in from sunrise to sunset. However, that doesn't necessarily means that it is bright outside, which means the solar  car still headlights just like a regular car. This board also includes the turn indicators.

BMS master board

When you roll around with around 5kW of batteries, you need to make sure that they are always used within the manufacturers specifications, otherwise things might become dangerous. And that is why each solar car should include a Battery Management System, or BMS. The roll of the BMS master board is to monitor each aspect of the car's battery and isolate the batteyr pack in case of voer voltage, current, temperature, etc. It is essential for proper battery usage.

BMS slave board

The BMS slave board's goal is the same as the master board. The precise role of the slave boards is to monitor a defined part of the battery and then communicate their states to the master board which then takes appropriate action given the situation.

A sponsorship from PCBWay would be a great advantage to our project. As displayed above, solar car need a great deal of PCBs to function and knowing that a reliable source to manufacture them is a great opportunity for our team to gain design experience. Also, as a non profit project, the team needs sponsors like PCBway to make the project happen.

For more information about Eclipse Solar car, you can visit:

Our webpage at: https://eclipseets.ca/wordpress/

Our facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/eclipse.etsmtl/

Our instagram page at: https://www.instagram.com/eclipsesolarcar_ets/