1. Design
The production phase – or the Detail design and manufacturing/ordering/modification of parts as it is called in the project plan – is going towards an end. It may have passed somewhat unnoticed for those of you reading this blog, but that’s just because we’ve been quite occupied with it ourselves.
Anyway, as we’re approaching the end of it, we thought it might be suitable to share some of the knowledge that we’ve acquired during the production phase. Maybe some of you have started thinking about building your own energy-efficient vehicle and wish to get some hints, or you’re a competitor who wishes to know what we’re up to, or you’re a Swedish car-manufacturer who’s just been saved from bankruptcy and need some help getting back on track, or maybe you’re just curious about what’s going on in the project. All of you will find something of interest in our miniseries Lessons learned during production. Tip number one reads The secret of soldering is flux and comes from Kristofer and Erika’s assignment; the Computer nodes.
2. Solder (remember Flux)
As mentioned earlier we are to compete with two vehicles in this year’s Shell-eco marathon. First, we are building a brand new prototype-class vehicle (the Baldos ‘X’). Second, we are making the already available Baldos II even better. One of the Baldos II subsystems that we’re improving is the computer nodes. Since most of us, including myself (i.e. Kristian), don’t know much about electronics, the concept of computer nodes might need some explanation.
In old classic electrical engineering, every system that was to be controlled had to have a separate cable all the way from where the signals come from to the receiving system. This eventually led to A LOT of cables. With computer nodes all signals are instead processed into a network of nodes. All nodes are operating at the same level and communicating with one another using CAN-bus (read more about that on Wikipedia), which can both receive, pass on and/or send out signals. The systems to be controlled are all linked to at least one of these nodes, and each node keeps track of which signals to pass on to its subsystems.
This simplifies things. If, for example, the pilot in an airplane wishes to switch on the “Fasten seatbelts” sign in the rear part of the pressurized cabin, it can be done through the same network of nodes as, for example, the “Occupied” signal coming from the lavatory.
3. Done!
However easy this might seem for a small vehicle like the Baldos II it has required a lot of work. Since early February both Kristofer and Erika has spent literally days and nights with the system. After a lot of time designing they begun the manufacturing of the circuit cards, which basically is soldering various electrical components (thank you ELFA for those), together with microprocessors (donated by ATMEL), on top of tailor-made circuit-cards (supplied by COGRA). The results look kind of promising, perhaps because of Erika’s obsessions for a special soldering solution called Flux, and we now have all cards ready for installation in the car. At the moment both Kristofer and Erika are helping Joel to reorganize the cables in Baldos II in order to try out and troubleshoot their nodes.
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