This year is Formula Electric Berkeley's second season building a raceable car. For this season, we decided to reorganize the architecture of the electrical system of the EV. Last season, the car supported various distributed boards with individual FSMs and "decision making," which convoluted the design and testing of the finished car. This season, we are designing with consolidation in mind, and the ECU project is meant to carry this philosophy into the car. The ECU will host the full FSM, responsible for coordinating torque, braking, and safety signals across the car. Our custom STM32 board, the MicroBasic, will serve as the "brain" and both log and broadcast all information being processed through its peripheral components. The Raspberry Pi will serve as a dedicated graphics driver for the steering-wheel interface, and the onboard Wi-Fi capabilities of the Raspberry Pi will enable SSH access to the ECU. It has been a pleasure working on this project with the help of IEEE HOPE, and we're excited to showcase the current state of the project, which will continue development through the Spring semester and into the competition this Summer!
This project was a large undertaking, and there is plenty left to do before we will be placing the ECU in the car. Nevertheless, this was a rewarding project to pursue in HOPE, and I am glad I decided to choose the ECU as my project for this Decal. Next steps will be procuring the Hirose mezzanine connectors necessary for connecting the PI to the main board, and running tests to measure the maximum throughput and current draw of the board for optimizing power-efficiency under load.