Project eChook Nano

IMG_20170627_110214

If you need to contact the team the current best method is to tweet us @ramjet_gpt, or contact us on our forum. However, please do try to read all the available documentation before asking the team as your question may have already been answered, we are busy improving the kit all the time!

Quick Links

Video Tutorials

Introduction

The weChook Racing (www.wechook.com) and Driven (https://twitter.com/jlrdriven) teams have recently launched a joint project (Project eChook Nano) to develop a standalone system capable of logging important telemetry data from a Greenpower car. Both teams felt like so much learning about their cars came from their current telemetry setups that making this type of information more easily available for other team’s vehicles would be incredibly beneficial and would really help with the engineering and learning aspects of Greenpower racing.

Our aim in developing this hardware has been to create something simple and affordable that will allow those teams without electronics experience to collect live data from their car for analysis during races and, as something to study in between events. The board is based around an ArduinoNano, and is provided with the base software to perform standard logging functions, whilst giving students the opportunity to implement their own code to customise the functionality as they see fit.

The hardware is designed to interface with an android app that Rowan has posted about here:http://www.greenpower.co.uk/forum/discussion/3335/data-logging-and-driver-information-display-android-app-offer. The hardware on the car communicates with the app via bluetooth, and can provide instantaneous readouts to the driver, as well as logging the information for later analysis. The app will also use the phone’s sensors such as GPS to supplement the information gathered from the hardware.

A further aim of the project is to provide the ability to live stream the information to the web interface via the phone’s 3g connection, allowing information to be viewed live from the pit wall. An exciting prospect to try to understand why a competitor car is accelerating past yours but consuming less amps….perhaps time to get the chain oil out during that next pit stop 😉

The eChook Nano design supports the following I/O (here are also some of our suggestions on what they can be used for):
Inputs:
– 2 x Battery voltage (12V, 24V)
– 2 x RPM (Motor, Wheel)
– 3 x Temperature (Different bits of the motor, battery)
– 1 x Current (Motor)
– Throttle Position
– Brake status
– Cycle View & Launch buttons (for use with the app)

Outputs:
– LED x 3 (visual status indication)
– Bluetooth Output (interface to the app)
– 1 x PWM output (Motor controller)

– 1 x expansion header which breaks out additional I/O for schools to expand the functionality of the eChook Nano board.

The functionality and concept is probably best described here in our video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzexJAVEbbs

Our primary intention is for this to be a passive component that can be added to a car with minimal disruption, and will not affect the actual running of the car – we don’t want to be responsible for taking someone out of a race! The pins are there however to receive a throttle position input, and output a PWM signal to a motor controller. Teams can pick and choose what sensors they feel are necessary for their learning, though we would suggest current consumption is the most interesting!

At the recent Rockingham race the weChook (Electric 2galoo) car successfully ran for 2hours using an eChook Nano board V1. During the test the board was used both as a motor controller as well as a telemetry data logger. The phone screen was used to inform me (the driver) how much current we were drawing and was perfect for testing our race strategy plans, some great learning for the team. David Cullimore of Cullimore racing has already taken delivery of our second board ready to go for the Goodwood race.

The team are now working hard to document as much as we can to make using the board and the app as easy as possible for the teams. We will then be focusing our efforts on getting boards out to schools.