UMNSVP would like to thank B&K Precision for their generous donation of an Electric Load and Power Supply to our project. These have been extremely useful tools in developing, testing, and debugging many of the electrical systems for Centaurus III, especially our custom DC-DC converters throughout the vehicle. They have also been very useful in characterizing the next car’s battery cells and will be used for testing our array once attached.
The University of Minnesota’s Solar Vehicle Project will be at the FIRST Robotics regional competition this coming weekend. We will be displaying the Centaurus II and showing off its awesomeness!
We’ll be there throughout the entire competition, Thursday March 29th through Saturday March 31st, at William’s Arena on the UMN-Twin Cities campus.
See you there!
After leaving Ann Arbor yesterday we decided to venture into Canada, since it was shorter and one of the members on the trip had never been into Canada before. Before crossing back to the states, we stopped to see Niagara falls from the Canadian side.
When we crossed the border, we decided to give our monitoring systems a test before we started driving the race route. We strapped a panel of solar cells on the trunk and got cameras and GPS set up to record.
We drove to Ithaca, NY for the night and visited our previous project lead, Alan, and another friend that attends Cornell. This morning we are heading back to Rochester, NY. We will be starting route drive today when we reach Rochester Institute of Technology. We currently don’t know where we will be stopping tonight, but we will get as far as possible, daylight permitting.
Three of our members are making a trek across the country during spring break to pre-drive the American Solar Challenge race route. We started our trip today at 9:00AM after stopping by the shop, twice. Our end destination today was Ann Arbor, MI to meet up with the University of Michigan’s Solar Car team and tour their shop. Before we reached their shop, we decided to stop in Kalamazoo, MI for some dinner. When doing a U-Turn to go back to Arby’s, we happened to spot this:
For those of you that don’t know, Little Caesar’s is the unofficial pizza of UMNSVP. We usually go though anywhere between 5-20 pizzas a week. So, we couldn’t help but stop. We found Kalamazoo’s pizza was slightly thinner and the cheese was a little chewier. Still an awesome dinner for the price.
After leaving Kalamazoo, we set out for Ann Arbor. We hit some major storms that produced over an inch of standing water on the road. This set us back a few minutes, but we made it safely. It was great to talk with some of Michigan’s solar car team and see their car that raced across the outback in person!
Tomorrow we will be heading to Ithaca, NY to visit some friends and hopefully our former project lead who attends Cornell University. We hope to test out our data logging systems tomorrow in preparation to start driving the route on Wednesday.
Hey all!
See how your very own classmates are taking what they learn in the classroom to the next level and beyond.
We’ll be in Carlson tomorrow on West Bank showing off one of our top-notch solar vehicles. Be sure to stop by between 11am and 2pm if you are interested in finding out more about us…or just to check out one unique car!
Centaurus 3′s electrical system is coming together! Pictured is the current bench test setup, featuring most of the electrical components of the car. All of the boards are connected together using an National Instruments CAN breakout box. The router in the image is running a special web server that streams the CAN packets to LabView and HTML front-ends.
A huge thank you is in order for Remmele Engineering for working with us on our new wheel design!
Although it may look familiar to some of you SVP alums, this is fresh from the mill and better than ever! We’re very excited about this!
The University of Minnesota Solar Vehicle Project would like to send sincerest thanks to PAR. The service they donate is so valuable to our work. Thank you PAR for your generous contribution to our project!
The semester is in full swing and our team has been working hard on the University of Minnesota’s tenth solar vehicle. The Solar Vehicle Project team is looking for bright and talented students that are looking to gain valuable experience and build their resume. Not only are there openings for engineers to work on the car, but there are also opportunities on the business team in areas like public relations and finance.
The Solar Vehicle Project was founded and is run by undergraduates in a variety of fields. In addition to constructing the car and putting together a business plan, the SVP team races in both the American Solar Challenge and the Veolia World Solar Challenge held in Australia. In recent years, the University of Minnesota has finished in the top three in the American race. Our team also participates in solar power education at schools in the area.
We have a world class team in the making, so if you’re ready to learn, meet new people, and work hard, send an e-mail to svp@umn.edu for more information. We have informational meetings approaching on Tuesday, January 31st at 5 p.m in Tate 170. and Wednesday, February 1st at 6 p.m. in Fraser 101. Also, don’t forget to “Like” us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter!
We received a new, safe table saw this weekend! We would like to thank Mike Maurer, a Public Health Specialist from the U of M, for finding a source of funding though the Office of Risk Management to purchase it!
