Arrabona Racing Team ARTX

Arrabona Racing Team 

About the Team

Our team is a participant in the world class series known as Formula Student. We are students from Széchenyi István University, in Győr, Hungary. We’ve achieved 3 podiums out of the 3 races we’ve attended last year. We are working hard for our goals and trying to improve day by day.

We have seven departments, all working on different components of the car. As members of the electronic department, we are responsible for designing complex circuits that make the car more efficient, and more reliable. On top of that we develop software to help our pilots and our team to gather more information which helps with the manufacture of a better car next season.

Last year’s PCBs

Last year we made several new improvements on the car thanks to our new circuits. We’d like to share these designs to you and talk about this years’ projects.

PDU

The Power Distribution Unit (PDU) is one of the most important circuits in our car. It is responsible for supplying power to the car’s whole system. It is a unique, self-designed component, and one of our most complicated design we’ve ever done. It consists of multiple MOSFETs, that are responsible for delivering certain amount of power in the moment it is required, a microcontroller that is programmed to control the whole unit, and many fuses that protect the whole printed circuit board.

SWU

The Steering Wheel Unit (SWU) is the bridge between the pilot and the car, also to the dashboard. The pilot has many options to choose from the SWU’s capabilities, such as shifting between gears in motion and so on. Every year we try to improve and innovate the last years’ design to help the pilot. With the ability of the unit, we can also look at data on the display, such as battery voltage, oil temperature, basically almost every CAN message the car provides.

Telemetry Shield

One of our long-awaited developments has finally come to fruition last year. With this module we are able to send CAN messages through 4G, and with a graphical interface see the car’s data, such as speed, engine RPM, tire temperatures, throttle position, and so on.

Brake Light

The Brake Light illuminates when the brakes are being used. It needs to supply more than 100 LEDs at the same time. It is the only PCB that is visible on the car, so we make extra effort to make it look as good as it is possible.

ARTX

Our next project is the ARTX which is our tenth car, also our newest. We would like to tell you about our upgrades compared to last years’ car. These designs are already completed and ready to be manufactured.

• System Starter Unit (SSU): To improve the car’s startup current consumption we made a new component that helps reduce it significantly.
• Electronic clutch controller (ECC): We would like to change the mechanical actuation of the clutch to an electric one. The circuit would be responsible for controlling the actuation of the clutch.
• Telemetry: From last year we’ve added a feature to our telemetry unit. We would control the communication between the pilot and the team, changing from radio to VOIP communication.
• PDU: Only slight changes were made to improve reliability, namely the DC-DC converter, filtering any noises on the channels.
• Brake Light: Every year we make changes to the design and the shape according to the rules.
• CAN converter: For easier use we can convert CAN messages to analog signals, which helps us analyze and troubleshoot more freely.

With the support from PCBWay we could make these advancements come to reality and could integrate our electronics into our race car better and make it as competitive as it should be.