Blog Time
Somehow, when I write Blog Time, I think of a song, Christmas Time, Christmas Time. I am not good at singing; just always hear this one at Christmas. Anyway, I am not talking about Christmas today.

Good news! Kyle and I tested our user interface for the vehicle touch screen monitor, and it works! I am so excited to see this result after working on it for so long. Now, I am quite busy, it is time to think about the reports, work term and Engr 446. Yes, it is a raining day again. I hope it would stop soon for our Vancouver Field Trip tomorrow.

Good luck, guys!

Luke
--
Luke Lu
lufeng AT uvic.ca

Wait... what happened... did I black out? The last thing I remember is... hearing about the EcoCAR Challenge... right! Let me tell you guys, one day you’re an undergrad minding your own business, and before you know it you’re a grad student tearing apart (read: strategically disassembling) a very nice SUV in the hopes of making it a bona fide next generation hybrid. It’s madness!

I kid, it’s actually quite awesome, and the gravity of year two is really starting to hit me. Year one was intense; lots of research, design, modeling, report writing. But year two... year two is an animal! We’ve got parts rolling in weekly, volunteers in and out of the shop, events left and right, car components everywhere, and everybody’s feeling the pressure. Is this what we signed on for when we enrolled in engineering (or computer science, or business, or really any other faculty, because yes, we have something for everyone)? Yeah it is.

Jeff
--
Jeff Waldner
jwaldner AT uvic.ca

Nice raining day again. This is Victoria, nice wet winter. Not too cold, I still see many bunnies playing around. They are so cute. So cold in Q-Hut, even we do have a big heater. That is why. Dan has brought his own little heater under his desk.

It has been busy recently on the project, since I have had a new idea for the Hybrid scene in the UI. A two_mode has been added and a new way animation of energy flow been created. It is all working now. I am so excited and looking forward to testing it with the real CAN signals.

And also rebuilt a Vector CANoe application as a hybrid vehicle diagnostic tool with CANcaseXL, which will be test on board asap.

Thanks for reading!

Luke
--
Luke Lu
lufeng AT uvic.ca

Shake and Bake!

Joe and I have finished the first round of tests on the potential pump for the battery cooling system. The results were promising, and worth the flooding we subjected the shop to, as well as the impromptu shower I took when the valve decided it no longer wanted to be attached to R hut, and released immeasurable quantites of water everywhere (mostly all over me).

Now we have to run the tests again and see if we get any difference when using a thermal epoxy to fasten the copper pipe to the aluminum plate.

On a side note, remeber kids, if you want people to show interest in your trade show booth, just offer candy!

If you're not first you're last,

Ricky Bobby

Hey everyone,

It's been pretty busy lately with all the status reports, battery action items, and CAR BEING HERE! Yeah that last one is pretty sweet. The car got here at the end of last week and we got to hoist it up to take a look at what we get to work with. Stuff is pretty crammed in there which makes it look like modifications will be difficult to make.

Personally, with Halloween coming up, I'm thinking the best modification we could make right now is cardboard body kit. If you haven't heard of these before then you will in a second. Think about it this way... why are all the cars in the Fast and Furious movies fast?? cause they have body kits... okay well maybe not all of them, but the ones that do are fast. If we slapped one of these on our GM donated vehicle, then we could have a car that's not only lightning fast, but also an environmentally friendly hybrid.

This is my artist's rendition of what a cardboard body kit would look like on the Vue, along with where I drew inspiration from (thanks google images). With these skills, who needs Photosketch?

My Inspiration:























Our GM donated Vehicle:





















Dan
--
Dan Gao
dangao AT uvic.ca

Lots of exciting news these last couple of weeks. The car has finally arrived, after weeks of false alarms. We resisted the urge to start tearing it apart the second it got into the garage, with great difficulty I might add.

I met with a Snap-On representative to discuss the massive list of parts we will need for our new shop. Yesterday we had Tech Talk with the makers of our battery pack, A123, which gave us some useful information.

An issue with our cooling plate design was brought up and has me frantically looking for a solution. Our cooling plate involves a copper tube in direct contact with an aluminum plate. This is a problem because copper and aluminum have very different values on the Anodic index. Basically what this means is that the copper will slowly decay, water will leak into the battery pack and the car will explode in a huge ball of flames. Well, it might not be that extreme but it is something that needs to be looked into.

I have also been working on a water solution for our new shop as it currently has no running water. Reports have been made, issues addressed and all in all a good time.

More exciting entries to come,

Joe
--
Joe Heap
jheap AT uvic.ca

The GM donated vehicle should be coming anytime today. And Q-hut is ready for it! We have been so excited to prepare for its new home. The automotive hoist has been installed. That makes the new home like a garage, but we do like it. We're also moving many of our office supplies to Q-hut -desks, tools, and our mini track are all getting moved.

Everyone is working hard on their projects, me too (^0^).

I have been adding new features, ideas, and functions into my UI.

Good news, I will be able to change the tabs to individual screens by Expression SketchFlow. I think that makes the UI nicer. Anyway, not final draft. Bad news though, lol, I don’t think anyone wanted to hear that word.

The CANdb editor is not able to merge two dbc files together. That gives me a lot extra work to do. Scared, I had better find another way around.

Tech talk @ 1pm today. Grab a slice pizza for lunch? Sound good.

Talk to you later.

Luke
--
Luke Lu
lufeng AT uvic.ca

So the last little while things have been very busy here in the EcoCar lab. Team members have been slowly moving items into Q-hut, the home of our future garage/workshop. I have yet to see this mythical place, but apparently it's starting to look habitable.

Lots of us (including myself)are madly working away on the progress report that is due on Thursday (tomorrow!). I've been battling with FEA and the floor pan section surrounding the rear seat mounts and seem to be loosing the battle. sigh. Just when I think I've got it figured something else spazes.kaboom!
Other than that, progress is being made on the new rear seat mount design...getting close to finishing the CAD model. wooo.

The vehicle was supposed to arrive yet again. It (actually) crossed the US/Canada border yesterday and should be arriving here SOON...maybe next week?

Well I suppose I should be getting back to work, not that writing blogs aren't work...still many things to do.

Pamela S.
--
Pamela Schmitt
pamrs AT uvic.ca

Listen to our Tweets
EcoCAR is taking off
Join our Facebook group

Follwo us on Twitter: UVicEcoCAR
Join our Facebook Group: UVic EcoCAR

Thanks for reading,

Skyler
--
Skyler Kopelow
skyler AT uvic.ca

It's 11:15PM on Sunday night - a great time to post another blog entry.

I've just been reviewing the presentations we received at the Boston Fall Workshop. The competition organizers have outdone themselves to keep us extremely busy this year. The final Year 2 events in Yuma are on a very tight schedule, and if we want to compete in every event our car will have to be thouroughly tested before we head down there.

Lots of exciting things are happening around the EcoCAR Lab these days. Our students will be gradually moving into our new home in Q-Hut this week. The GM donated vehicle should be crossing the border on Tuesday/Wednesday.

For UVic students, check out our website later this week for some EcoCAR technical projects that you can do either for your MECH450E final project, or as a MECH499 Technical report course - the answer for anyone that says they want to work on EcoCAR but don't have the time...!

Also check out the Co-op website for EcoCAR Co-op jobs for next term. The jobs should be posted by midweek.

Cheers,

Jeremy
--
Jeremy Wise
wise AT uvic.ca

The trip to Boston was a long and tireless journey through the skies of the US. By the time it was over it had seemed like we were in a larger version of Vancouver. We settled into our hotels late that night, tired yet longing for a brew at the local tavern. To get the attention of the bartender, we unexpectedly broke the furniture and requested our drinks. It was a pretty festive night, other teams had either arrived or were arriving as we ate, drank and socialized with incoming teams. Did I mention that it was a Tuesday?

The next day was an early one. For most teams it was a regular morning on the East Coast. For the lone team on the WEST coast it was 3 hours too early! Coffee, come swiftly and in extremely large quantities! The Mathworks staff were top notch, not only do they know how to teach, but they do know how to party, and most importantly they know how to drink (all hail Chris)!

The night’s festivities included a night of F1 go-kart racing hosted by Mathworks. I’ll attest, I did get the Turtle flag, but in my defense I will say that I was put into the last position and got stuck behind a person slower than me(that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). I think by the end of the races a majority of the teams got some good ideas for light weighting the vehicles, stiffening up the suspension, and lowering the vehicle. At this point I had also been enlightened as to the connection between our hotel and TV Tuesdays.

On Thursday all the teams were brought to downtown Boston where we met up with representatives from our industry sponsors at the Boston history museum. The seminars and tutorials were great opportunities to ask questions regarding the competition and clarify any misconceptions. I was hoping to spend a little more time going through the museum and check out some of the exhibits, but the schedule was pretty tight and they told me we were going to Cheers for beer. Yes, beer.
The last two days in Boston were spent working with our industry sponsors, going through tutorials and seminars. These were really great stepping stones for ourselves and opportunities to finally put faces to the names we were in contact with. I think for most of the seminars and tutorials the sponsors were just as excited about teaching us the product as we were about learning them. Unfortunately again our time was pretty tight and we had to catch our flight back to the West coast, so with exchanges of e-mail addresses with the new contacts from the different teams we departed back to our respective regions.

The Boston trip was a great learning adventure and networking event. A lot of good ideas were passed along and new acquaintances were established. Next time I think the event should be held on the West coast, maybe Yuma, AZ?

Kyle
--
Kyle Wong
kylewong AT uvic.ca

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to give a little status update on what I'm doing. Figured out most of the placement details on our motor assembly and now it's all about the finite element analysis (FEA) on the parts. It's being a bit of a pain though since I've never used this software before but I'm figuring things out.







As you can see it's being FEA'd. Still waiting on the Q-hut facility and car. :(

Also on the side I'm working on learning Simulink in MATLAB so that I can maybe do some control system work.












That's basically what it looks like. It looks pretty simple but you can make some pretty intensely complicated models in it and simulate their operation. Hope you all had a good turkey day. BB for now.






Dan
--
Dan Gao
dangao AT uvic.ca

Well a couple things got done in the last little while. The automotive hoist was delivered, installed, and gawked at by the EcoCAR team. Basically it is a huge hoist that can lift a car... How awesome is that? Totally awesome thats how awesome that is.

Kyle bailed me out of my desk work for a short period to construct a couple of cables to do with the Mototron controller. I made a power cable for the MotoTron controller and another cable to communicate with the hardware integration loop (HIL for short).

Other than that I created a technical drawing of our cooling plate test prototype, and then six or seven revisions of the same drawing until it was up to par. The drawing has finally been accepted and is ready to be machined.

We also had an extremely long and important discussion about the ins and outs of the game Battletoads. What was decided is that Battletoads is both the most awesome, and frustrating game of all time.

More entries to come.

Joe
--
Joe Heap
jheap AT uvic.ca

What a nice day in October of Victoria!

Everyone here is working so hard, me too. (^0^)

For couple weeks, I have studied some software tools and designed the user interface (UI). Now, I have some ideas and skills for the first draft. I have built a tab feature UI, which allows us to put so much information we want. But there still are some problems and bugs from the UI like the user control button. We want a toggle button. That means it will assign a value to CAN bus at first click and will clear or reset the value at second click on the button. The problem is FUSE doesn’t have the feature, but only simple button. Of course, we can use two buttons to do the ‘set’ and ‘reset’. But you know, it is a little too much. There are more I have to figure out.

Yes, talk to you guys later.

Cheers,

Luke
--
Luke Feng
lufeng AT uvic.ca

The Q hut is filling up quickly with supplies, and the lift is in!

The GM donated vehicle is still not here (hurray for red tape!). I can't wait for it to show up, so we can get a little shake and bake action going on!

Personally, I have been continuing my quest to reduce the overall vehicle weight, but due to self imposed security clearance issues, I will not share this information with ANYONE!!!

Hopefully next blog entry will be a little more interesting, as work on the car should be underway.

Remember if you're not first you're last

Ricky Bobby
--
Tyler Prest
tprest AT uvic.ca

This little while I've been working on the rear seat mounting system. There
isn't quite enough room for the gigantic motor in there so other things
have to be moved around, taken out, and/or redesigned. I've been doing
some FEA and simulations to figure out what loads the existing structure
can handle. What ever components are changed the safety requirements must be
maintained and the seats need to stay securely attached...maybe I
can also devise a sweet seat ejection mechanism for those unwanted
passengers.

In other news we're still waiting with abaited breath for the vehicle to
arrive. The arrival date keeps being delayed...maybe the people at customs
decided to take it for a joy ride? I guess sometime we'll find out.

'Til next time,

Pamela
--
Pamela Schmitt
pamrs AT uvic.ca

Dear EcoCAR Readers,

This is my first blog
I will write it in Haiku
Have you a question?

Thanks for reading,

Skyler
--
Skyler Kopelow
skyler AT uvic.ca

Well everyone, another day, another... wholly satisfying volunteer experience! You might think that comment was laced with sarcasm, but I’m totally serious. Read on.

First, I’d like to send out a thank-you to all the competition sponsors (for the sake of saving space and avoiding that awkward feeling when you forget to thank someone important, please see our Sponsors page!); I just came back from the fall workshop in Boston, and I got to say, the EcoCAR sponsors are all awesome! I’m not just saying that because of all the free food and the open bar. On a serious note, it felt really great to experience the passion that these sponsors have for this competition, and their total commitment to helping the teams succeed. Thanks to you all! I should also address a thank you to our local sponsors for all their support. We couldn’t do it without you!

Second, I just wanted to say that if you’re thinking about joining the team, you’ve got nothing to lose! If you’re in engineering, we’ve got all you’ll ever need in life (I’m not talking about mail-order brides; I’m referring to the great toys sponsors have given us to play with). And if you’re not in engineering, we still have fun stuff for you to do... and you might just find that us creepy engineers kinda grow on you... like athlete’s foot, but without the burning sensation. Plus, if you suck up enough, we might send you to one of those sweet conferences – like the one in May, in Daytona, Florida!

Jeff
--
Jeff Waldner
jwaldner AT uvic.ca

Hey guys!

Dan here, I figured I should probably post a blog update since I've been on the team about a month now. So basically I've been working with Unigraphics NX to try and figure out some complex engineering problems. But today, I decided that I would do something as an interesting segway to my work. I did a bit of work in finite element analysis (FEA) so I wanted to see how a person might react to a very strong force being applied to their person (eg. a punch). I needed to pick a person to model, but that was difficult, so I just picked a mystery person.

Here is my awesome and perfectly-to-scale model of the mystery person - note the sweet action Photoshop skills!



Then I applied a few loads to the face...



A few loads to the gut...



See how calm and collected he is? that's exactly what you would expect from a fearless team mystery person. But the thing is, he's getting pushed around all over the place... so for the sake of argument let's say he got buff and suddenly turned his body into... steel.





Wow! That's a difference for sure. Not that it would save this mystery guy if say I were to get in a fight with him. Cause you know, that's how it is...just sayin'

Anyway this is what I've actually been working on. Trying to get this huge bulky motor to actually fit into our car. It's pretty ridiculous and I'm not sure how it will work out yet but it will get figured out. If not, the above simulations might just happen irl. Who knows, I'll keep you posted.























Dan

--
Dan Gao
dangao AT uvic.ca

I spent my first week on the job getting up to speed with what has been done on the EcoCar project so far. After reading over two hundred pages of reports I am both cross-eyed and slightly more aware of what’s going on.

Then I was given the task of creating an experiment to test the cooling plates for the Energy Storage System (Which is just 5 big battery modules wired together... Yes Energy Storage System sounds much cooler). This is exciting because at some point I will be putting on my dusty white lab coat to determine whether the plates will be dissipating enough heat.

Somehow during the week I managed to destroy one of the EcoCar computers. I was dutifully working on the day's tasks when, out of nowhere, the computer exploded and flames engulfed the lab. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it was a stern reminder of the importance of fire safety in the workplace.

After that traumatic event, I started working a shop procedure for removing parts from the vehicle, and a punishment for those who don't comply with it. I am considering public flogging, but it may be better to find something that leaves less obvious marks.

More exciting (slightly fictitious) entries to come.

Joe
--
Joe Heap
jheap AT uvic.ca

Dear everyone,

This is Luke Lu. I have be working on the vehicle CAN bus monitoring system for a while. I do get a great progressive process of the Vector CANoe and CANcaseXL. Kyle and I have successfully tested the CAN bus data acquisition by Vectors’ and MotoTrons’. We also successfully tested and are able to write data into the CAN bus via Vectors. Next, I am planning to develop a user interface. The user interface will be able to display readable, graphical, and real-time vehicle information to users (drivers) on an in-dash monitor. I am thinking of using other software applications like MS Expression Blend and MotoTron’s Fuse. Today, I am working on the Blend and Fuse. I hope I can figure out quickly and get a nice result.

Thanks everyone,

Have a good day,

Luke
--
Luke Feng
lufeng AT uvic.ca

This is my first blog entry of all time, so bear with me as we work the kinks out together.

This week has been a little different. With half our team away, those of us unworthy of a trip to Boston continue in our epic battle to produce the greatest, most efficient vehicle the world has ever seen!

Our vehicle hoist arrives tomorrow, and our VUE was detained at the border yesterday, so we should hopefully have it in a month or two!

I am continuing to scour the internet for traces of the test battery pack rumored to meet our requirements, but alas it remains elusive.

Browsing has also begun on numerous methods of putting the Vue on a diet in order to shed a few pounds. A few ideas are ready for discussion next week upon the return of our conquering heroes from Boston.

On a side note, the team is preparing to move to our new facility across campus in the Q hut. If you have any idea where a volunteer team member (me) could park their vehicle nearby to avoid the exorbitant 6 dollar daily fee, please let me know - it would be appreciated.

Keep your head up, and your stick on the ice.

Tyler
--
Tyler Prest
tprest AT uvic.ca

Today marks the start of my 4th week working with the UVic Eco Car Team and so far it has been good. Currently I'm working on the power train system: trying to figure out the best differential to connect to the rear drive. I’m making progress, but it seems like no matter how we figure this out, there will be some alteration to the stock vehicle.

This week the lab is empty; The EcoCAR headquarters is a lonely place. Most of our team flew to Boston on Monday to take part in the EcoCAR Training Session. Hopefully when they return, they will share their newfound knowledge with us.

Pamela
--
Pamela Schmitt
pamrs AT uvic.ca

Things are starting to ramp up here at UVic EcoCAR: the VUE is on its way, our garage is just about ready, and whips are cracking. Two notable things happened today: we got a bunch of free furniture for our soon-to-be-completed garage, and we got to watch the new team members move all that furniture in! Personally, I am not impressed: I’m recommending we enforce mandatory strength training, or heaven forbid I might have to start helping out. Lift you desk jockeys!

Jeff
--
Jeff Waldner
jwaldner AT uvic.ca

Mathworks arrived in Victoria today, to give a presentation on MatLab/Simulink. The topics discussed gave us useful information on using Simulink to create models of the components for the EcoCar. A workshop was given to the students new to Matlab/Simulink so that they can become more familiar with the product.

The Mototron controller is alive and kicking. CAN Bus raw read/write functions work, but the messages are a little tricky. There seems to be some addressing issues that need to be resolved…

Finally the CAN messages can be sent and received,YAY! Does this mean I get paid this week?

The CAN signals can be viewed by the Vector CAN controller and all is well in CAN-d-land.

The EcoCar building is still under renovations. I seriously think we need an interior decorator or a few more female engineers to spice up the place.
The Saturn VUE is expected to arrive next week(again), no, really!

Kyle
--
Kyle Wong
kylewong AT uvic.ca

We've had lots of excitement in EcoCAR over the last little while. Since the beginning of the term six full-time Engineering co-op students have been working on the team. They're doing a great job so far, and I hope the exciting projects they're working on will be a worthwhile experience for them. We now also have an additional Outreach Coordinator that will help promote our team's activities. Check out our updated team roster to read their bios and see what they are working on.

Our car will be arriving next week on the 22nd of September - very exciting! Stay tuned for more information about our plans for the car and our newly renovated shop.

Jeremy
--
Jeremy Wise
wise AT uvic.ca