SunSPec 5 - Telemetry System

We spent the week preparing for the poster, report, and the presentation. While doing so, we also made a laser-cut acrylic box to hold our circuits for better visual during the presentation. First Attempt Originally planned on building a circuit case for the Bluno circuit. Two separate cases for a Bluno circuit and a power bank. We had our first unsuccessful attempt at building a case   Second attempt We faced many challenges such as last minute realization that the USB cable head was too long with the power bank. Different cable was used to fit it together. The tapes were used temporarily to hold the case. The final attempt would be done using a better mean.

MDP Poster We started the making of the poster that would be used together with our completed circuits to present our work done to the assessors. With the given template, we decided to showcase an overview of the Telemetry system with a brief description of each individual components.  Figure 1: MDP - Telemetry System Poster The poster would be vetted by our project supervisor and co-supervisor. The printing and framing of the poster would be done next week for the final showcase.  MDP Report  We were also tasked to complete our MDP report. The report was to detail all of our process from start to finish. to be submitted next week on Week 17. Finishing the report and constantly editing mistakes being made by John (a fake name is used to protect his identity).  Undocumented experiments When first starting out, we had experimented with other components that we didn't get to mention. Current Sensors Humidity Sensors

Fabrication of case for circuit mount The first task on the agenda is to build the cases for each circuit mount. Each circuit mount would be enclosed by the case for protection and for better presentation. A sliding lid can be removed easily to place the circuit mount. Originally, we had planned to 3D printed the case and drill a hole in the lid for the Lora antenna. However, the time that the 3D printer would have taken is too long and we are currently looking into laser cutting for a more time effective method to building the case, The next available timing for the booking of the laser cutter would not be until 8th February, as such we are putting the fabrication of the case on temporary halt. Testing of LoRa With the LoRa circuit done up simulating the Solar car and the chase vehicle as shown at week 13, We finally are able to test it on the road with the help of Mr Kenny and M Chua (and their cars). Simulating the race convoy for the World Solar Challenge, Mr...

We managed to get the design working at first, however it comes with a big problem. The data received by the chase vehicle is in chunks of 5-7 rows of data at a time, and once every minute or so. After spending some time of trial & errors and testing, we thought that the 9600 baud rate of the LoRa may be the cause, hence we re-setted the settings to higher baud rate transmission through air.  After further testings, we still found the rate to be similar. When we sent the data manually through the RX software of LoRa at different speeds, we discovered little or no delays, even at a large amount of data (Tested up to 10 columns). However, if we were to send at a faster rate (< 1s), the system starts to get sluggish and may even hang, which is how we found the fault in the system. We were handed Arduino Micro (uses Leonardo bootloader), and we use them instead of Arduino pro mini, as Micro eliminates the use of a FTDI serial adapter module, hence savi...

We have finalized on the plan of integrating the system as shown in Figure 1 , and we will start working on it this week and the following weeks till completion. However, this is only a suggestion of our own design which may not be the actual design used for SunSPec 5, as we have yet to carry out further tests on practicality. Figure 1: Telemetry System Overview The main problem of interfacing wireless communication with Arduino is that due to the way the Arduino receives it, it will receive char by char per loop. So any other parts of code in between the sending and receiving part will be sent along each time a char is sent. For example, the word "test" is being sent, and there is another program to send a voltage value, per say "50". The receiving end will receive in the following order: " t ", "50", " e ", "50", " s ", "50", " t ", "50". There is a way to get around this ...

We have finished up the mount display and also prepared for the presentation. For the actual system, we are still working on the speed-sensing part. Figure 1: Overview of Telemetry System (V1)  Figure 2: Mount display for illustration & demo