It’s just three weeks until the Formula Sun Gran Prix at the Circuit of the Americas race track in Austin, Texas, and the CalSol team is looking forward to driving with and competing against the rest of the solar car community! We haven’t posted in a while, and there haven’t been core design changes lately, but the excellent state of this car and this team has us feeling optimistic for FSGP. Addressing potential bugs (mechanical, electrical, and code), implementing optimizations to squeeze out every watt we can, and testing the systems has kept us plenty busy lately, so check out some photos of the work!
Tidying up the wires and securing connections in the all-important battery boxReinstalling sturdy enclosures to hold up and protect the various boards on the underside of the top shellRevising boards to include additional safeties (gotta love capacitors) and power routing optimizations. Shout out to Bay Area Circuits for all their help with the PCB’s!Building the solar array for an off-site “electrical test bed”: a scaled-down version of the electrical system!And with a mini solar array comes an equally adorable mini battery boxMechanical folks contemplating life. CalSol is life.Installing an improved hinged fairing door mechanism with a carbon-fiber axleRoad-testing Zephyr, which now has a few hundred miles on it, brings us admirers of all agesWe’ll be sending out updates during the race, or post another photo gallery at the very least. See you all then!
